Though I’ve only ever practiced family law in Virginia, I’m pretty sure that everywhere – Virginia included – requires grounds in order to finalize a divorce. In Virginia, those grounds can be either fault based or no fault based. Whether you choose to file on fault or no fault depends, of course, on the facts;...
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I found out, 9 years ago today, that I passed the bar. I’ll never forget the day. In that time, I’ve handled a LOT of divorces. A lot of uncontested divorces (LI), in particular. Contested divorces, too, but, in so many cases, even if we start out in court, eventually the parties end up able...
Custody and visitation are always major hot button issues in divorce and custody cases, especially because there are so few guarantees. The whole ‘best interests of the child’ standard means that there’s not a standard custody and visitation arrangement ordered; it’s a subjective, not an objective, process, which means that a variety of different arrangements...
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...
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...