By any reckoning, 15 years is a fairly lengthy marriage. At some point – and I’d theorize that’s somewhere along the ten year mark – there comes a time when, even if you break up, you and your soon-to-be ex owe something to each other. The longer the marriage, the more difficult it is to...
Virginia Divorce After 15 Years of Marriage
In virtually every case I’ve seen, spousal support is a specific amount of money paid each month from the higher earning spouse to the lower earning spouse. In virtually every case I’ve seen, the higher earning spouse hates this. Like, really, really hates this. In virtually every case I’ve seen, he (it’s usually a he)...
Spousal support is always – always – a hot button issue. There are very few things we can say ‘always’ about in family law, but the fact that spousal support is contentious is pretty much a given. No one wants to pay it. It’s also not something that is awarded in every case. There...
Historically, divorce has been a bit of taboo. Henry VIII’s legacy notwithstanding, even the British royal family has had its own issues with its various brushes with divorce. In fact, Princess Margaret was the first to divorce in the immediate royal family – in 1978 – since Henry VIII, when he divorced Anne of Cleves...
Divorce changes things. Though many women are quick to point out to me that the equitable distribution factors cite the standard of living established during the marriage, there’s often no way to maintain that standard post-divorce. Most people live up to their means, and there’s just not room in the average family’s budget to...
I’ve written about spousal support SO MUCH, and that’s mostly because it’s one of those areas of law that is not at all set in stone. There are things we don’t litigate all that much – like retirement, the marital home, and child support, for example – but there are other things, like spousal...
Lots of people are, at some point or another, the beneficiary of some kind of inheritance. For many of us, it’s not significant monetarily, but, for others, it is. In fact, for some people, it’s a tremendous amount. An inheritance can be life changing. I’ve had clients who live in a home that they inherited,...
In a marriage, you make all sorts of decisions every single day. At some point, a decision that a lot of married couples make, especially if they have children together, is whether one parent should stay at home to care for the children. It’s not an easy decision, but it’s one that, for one reason...