In Virginia, when you file for child custody, you also often file for visitation and child support. These petitions go hand in hand for a number of reasons, but probably the biggest one is that, if you don’t ask for something, the court doesn’t have the power to award it. So many things in law...
Parenting Time v. Visitation
If you’ve never been through it before, it’s hard to know what to ask for when it comes to custody and visitation. Probably you realize that your soon-to-be ex (husband, boyfriend, partner – whatever the label) will have at least some parenting time. But what will that look like? How can it be structured? What...
Question: My child’s father and I separated and he stayed in the marital home. Our kids go back and forth. This week, my daughter came back to my new place after spending a weekend at dad’s. She cried and told me that dad had taken down all of our family photos. She was really upset...
Question: I have been following your firm for awhile and I thought you represented women only. I guess my husband looked through my phone; he said he called your office and hired you to represent him! Is that true? This question comes from an actual real life conversation I had recently. To be honest,...
The best parenting plans are always the ones that include just enough details to provide parents with a framework for how to move together through the inevitable challenges that coparenting will bring. The best parenting plans don’t just deal with the here and now – though they do a good job with it, because the...
Question: My husband and I are separating. He’s verbally and emotionally abusive, and I can’t take it anymore. After I told him it was over, he told me he was going to leave the apartment we’re renting and I’d have to “figure it out.” I’ve been a stay at home mom and he knows I...
In Virginia, a couple of things go into a child support calculation: both parents’ combined incomes (if you are receiving spousal support, this is included as ‘income’), the amount either or both are paying for support of other children, the total amount of work-related childcare that they are paying, and the cost of health insurance...
A protective mom is one who take action, particularly in a child custody case, to protect her child from harm. Though protective moms are sometimes reviled in the media as helicopter moms, unnecessarily over-protective women who interfere in their children’s lives, in the custody context they are often the only ones speaking out about the...