When mom and dad don’t agree about fundamental things – like summer school – but have a court order awarding them joint legal custody, we often run into problems. When parents live nearby, summer school isn’t such a challenging issue, even if both parents aren’t on the same page. For two parents living in the...
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There are many things about a divorce and custody case (or just a plain custody case) that are pretty anxiety-inducing. Ove the years, I’ve written about a lot of them as it relates to custody cases – from relocation, to issues with grandparents wanting their own specific parenting time, military deployments, mental illness and...
I can tell you how the conversation always goes. “You represent women only? Your poor husband.” “Women only, huh? Scary for men!” “Family law – how awful!” “Young people these days, they just don’t try hard enough to make a marriage work.” It’s pretty predictable, and it actually happens all the time. People are...
There’s a difference between the way regular, normal, people use the word separated in a sentence and the way Virginia divorce lawyers use the word separated. I think it’s often a little confusing to reconcile the different understandings of the word. For one, because on each side it seems so clear that everyone seems to...
We recently got a question from a man through our live chat system, and – I’ll admit – it really got under my skin. He explained that a spousal support order had been entered in his case, and that it was based on his wife’s having been imputed income. At the time, the judge...
In many divorces, things are fairly amicable. There is often – though certainly not always – a certain amount of respect between the parties, even if one or both spouses ultimately intend to end the marriage. In these cases, there’s often a fair amount of negotiation that takes place behind the scenes. Clients will come...
Child support is one of those areas of Virginia family law that is simultaneously easy and also complicated. I spend a lot of time trying to explain it, and exactly what goes into the calculation, because I think it’s important that women know what questions to ask. At the end of the day, whether or...
We talked Wednesday about relocation, and specifically about how to answer one big question (that’s sure to come up in your relocation case): will you move no matter what the judge decides? It’s a tricky question, and definitely a double edged sword. There’s no right answer, only wrong ones! I wish I had a secret,...