Grandparent Visitation When Your Coparent is Dead or Incapacitated

Grandparent visitation is often a hot button issue – especially when parents separate and/or divorce.  In general, grandparents don’t have a lot of rights to custody and visitation of minor children which, in my opinion, is as it should be.  The parents are the ones who are tasked with making the day to day decisions...

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No sooner than you and your child’s father separate than you suddenly start dealing with all sorts of issues that would never have been issues before – one of them, or at least one of the ones that I often come across, is related to medical testing and diagnoses. Maybe you’ve suspected for years that...

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Discovery – whether as part of a divorce or a child custody case – is essentially the same.  It’s the legal process we use to determine and gain access to the information that we don’t have.  In a divorce case, much of the information we’re looking for is financial, especially if our client has stayed...

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Can I draft my own custody agreement?

If you don’t want to have a trial in your court case, you have to settle your case first.  In a divorce or custody context, settlement is achieved when there is a signed agreement negotiated between the parties.  In a divorce case, you would sign and negotiate a separation agreement – a legal contract that...

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Divorcing Virginia Women in the Military

If you’re a woman in the military and you’re getting a divorce, you’re not alone.  Though the reverse dynamic – a man as the active duty military service member and a woman as the dependent spouse – is more common, that doesn’t mean that the reverse doesn’t also occur. Plenty of women are active duty...

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  As much as I’ve written about child support over the years, I think there are still a lot of things that people don’t understand about how it works. Custodial arrangements – or parenting plans – vary dramatically these days, and though it’s true to say that more parents share custody than have primary physical...

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Help! My child calls stepmom ‘mom’ now!

Mom is a special word.  For months, I couldn’t wait until my babies said it back to me – though, to be honest, at this point, I wish they’d use it a little less often over the course of the day.  Still, there’s no question that it’s a special thing to be called.  It’s a...

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Should I file for custody proactively?

It’s scary to break up with your child’s father.  Not only does the breakup itself generally carry some challenges – like moving, separating finances, the possibility of dating again, and more – but knowing that, at some point, you’ll have to work out custody and visitation is also pretty daunting. Not every situation is highly...

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