I first started writing articles about COVID-19 related concerns back in March of 2020, never expecting that an entire year later I’d still be dealing with concerns related to the ongoing pandemic. Custody and visitation issues are some of the biggest that we face in family law, especially when parents share children between two different...
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My sister in law asked me a question the other day – for a friend of a friend – and it really irritated me. Not that she would ask me a question; that’s fine, we’re really pretty close. But the question itself irked me. Her friend had a friend, from a really long time ago,...
On Wednesday, we discussed what a contested divorce means. We touched a little bit, too, on uncontested divorce – because it’s hard to understand one without the other. Contested refers to a divorce where the parties have not reached an agreement about how the assets and liabilities will be divided; in an uncontested divorce, on...
When you’re researching something new, the terminology can be confusing. The same can be said of divorce, and not only because so many Latin terms and phrases are used. “Contested” and “uncontested” aren’t words that come up very often in everyday life and, if you’re wondering what it means, you’re not alone. If you’re like...
I get a lot of questions about cost in family law cases. I get questions about attorney’s fees, retainers, how to save money, how to pay for the case, and even how to get pro bono help (seriously, though, don’t count on it). It really runs the gamut. And I get it. It’s a...
I got this question the other day – what’s in the divorce seminar that I can’t find on Google – and it made me laugh a little. In one sense, of course, literally everything you need to know about divorce in Virginia probably IS already in Google. In fact, as you probably are also already...
On Monday, I wrote about Virginia’s child support guideline calculations, and what might happen to child support in a situation where a mom, who previously stayed at home, re-entered the workforce. I wrote the article for a couple of reasons, but mostly because I’ve recently encountered two different attitudes. One was a woman, telling me...
There’s a lot of mystery surrounding the child support guidelines. Though I often hear from women that they don’t know how they’re going to support themselves post separation and, ultimately, post divorce, I don’t think there’s a lot of really robust conversation surrounding that topic, which can make it hard for women to know how...