Articles

Drug and alcohol abuse is an issue that comes up all the time in custody cases. Sometimes, it’s nothing but an embittered former partner making nasty allegations in order to bolster their own case. Sometimes, it’s more than that. And, when you feel like your child’s father has a problem (or, worse, you know for...

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Drug or Alcohol Use in My Virginia Custody Case

Drug or alcohol use can pose problems in a Virginia child custody case, as you can probably pretty well imagine. Judges – who are notoriously conservative, especially in Virginia, and especially when it comes to things like drug use – don’t like it. In Virginia (as in pretty much everywhere), custody cases always comes down...

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Refinancing in Virginia Divorce: 3 Things to Know

3 Things to Keep in Mind When Refinancing Your Home Real property is often one of the biggest items to address in divorce and we have to figure out what will happen to it. A lot of our clients tell us they want to keep living in the former marital home after the divorce, which...

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In honor of our former managing partner, Kristen D. Hofheimer, who passed away on January 19, 2019, after a long battle with breast cancer, we’ve decided to shake things up a bit. We’ve always been the first, largest  family law firm in Virginia dedicated to representing women exclusively. Kristen was, of course, a very large...

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How does a retainer work in a divorce case?

Some of the most frequently asked questions we get are about money, and how it all works when you hire a divorce lawyer. It’s a little extra confusing because different attorneys handle money differently, so, if you’re not already fairly familiar with how law firms do things, it can look a little wonky. There are...

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Spousal Support and Abuse

Abuse is, for me, always one of the harder subjects to discuss. It’s not that it makes the law complicated, or really that it changes what a person might be entitled to receive — but maybe that’s part of the problem for me, too. Abuse changes a person. After years and years of it, it...

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I can’t afford a Virginia divorce lawyer

Legal representation is expensive. I get it. And it’s often especially scary because, at the beginning of a case, it is difficult to know how far and how long it’ll go. Family law attorneys take cases on retainers, and work is done on an hourly basis. We don’t know how long a case will last,...

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Dividing Retirement Accounts in Divorce

One of the biggest assets that we divide in divorce are retirement accounts. Whether we’re talking about IRAs, 401(k)s, 403(b)s, pensions, stock options, TSPs, or any other type of account, if they were earned during the marriage, they’re marital property and subject to division in any action for divorce. Retirement is actually (usually!) an easy...

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