Do I need grounds for divorce? What if I don’t have any?

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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Grounds for Virginia Divorce

My college roommate/best friend texted me this morning to ask whether, in my professional opinion, a recent transgression of her husband’s was grounds for divorce. She included a picture, of a bottle of syrup, with the name “Vermont Maid” proudly displayed across the bottle. I should probably also mention: my friend, Erin, is from Vermont....

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Cruelty in Virginia Divorce

It’s not one that we see all the time (in fact, we prefer not to have cruelty come up!), but, in Virginia, cruelty is grounds for divorce.  Cruelty can mean a lot of different things to a lot of people; in fact, I think most of us can agree that to verbally or emotionally abuse...

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Text Messaging and Divorce

Having everything available digitally makes some parts of the divorce process more difficult and makes other parts easier.  Most of the time, it just makes things more time consuming, as more and more clients bring in pages upon pages of text messages and pictures that they’ve saved in the hopes that they will prove “important”...

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Fault Based Grounds for Divorce

Most people, at some point or other, really want to explore all of their options when it comes to divorce. For most people, too, that starts with carefully considering fault based grounds. They’re definitely appealing. For a lot of people, selecting from among the fault based grounds of divorce feels almost compulsory, if those grounds...

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