I’ve been practicing family law for close to a decade now, and, even in that time, I’ve seen a lot of major changes to how we do things that (I think, anyway!) are really interesting. One of the biggest changes I’ve seen is that, instead of doing uncontested divorce hearings regularly, almost all of our...
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Cohabitation is a key component of legal separation in Virginia. For a lot of reasons – chief among them being the fact that separation is a sort of loosey goosey concept here in Virginia – we get lots of questions about separation. When are you separated? Am I separated? Do we have to sign something to...
OCTOBER 26, 2020 BY KATIE CARTER Contested cases are hard on everyone involved. I work with women, so my perspective is often that of the wife and mother. I actually rarely see children. It’s really not appropriate; for me to do my job, I have to have conversations with my client that could be harmful for...
I hesitate to use absolutes, because, in law, there are very few. We rarely say “never” or “always”; we often say “it depends”. But I’m pretty sure I can absolutely say that, if you or your husband own a business, your divorce is going to be more expensive than a divorce where we have two...
Though divorce attorneys are no strangers to pretty salacious details coming out in lots of our cases (sorry, though, it’s all confidential!), every so often there’s a detail or a case that surprises even us. There’s a pretty shocking case pending before the Supreme Court right now that originated out of the Virginia Beach Circuit...
Drug and alcohol addiction is a serious problem in our society. Many families have loved ones who struggle under their addictions for years and years at a time. Watching the recent presidential debate, where President Trump mentioned Senator Biden’s son, who was discharged from the military because of his struggle with addition. I’m not here...
Child abuse cases are seriously some of the most harrowing cases that family law practitioners have to deal with. To be honest, I can only imagine what it must feel like to have children in a position where you worry that, if your child’s father receives custody, they may be abused or mistreated in any...
Today, I’ve been practicing family law, representing women exclusively, for a little over 9 years. I’m inching ever closer towards a decade of dedicated, women only, divorce and custody practice. There are still new, novel issues that present themselves – I am told, from veterans like Lori Michaud and Sheera Herrell, that it is always this way, even...