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...
Grandparent Visitation When Your Coparent is Dead or Incapacitated
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...
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...
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...
Custody cases are interesting because they can come up in a number of ways, unlike divorce. In a divorce, you have essentially two options: (1) negotiate a signed separation agreement, or (2) litigate in court. Divorce Cases Where Custody is an Issue Divorce is filed in the circuit court. Custody, though, can present differently. Custody...
It is incredibly difficult to go through a separation and/or divorce (or even a breakup, if you and your child’s father never married) when you have children in common. Going from ‘you’ time and ‘me’ time to ‘your’ time and ‘our’ time is a huge change. There’s not enough said about navigating those complicated and...
I’m biased. I’m a lawyer. I earn my living handling family law cases on behalf of the women who become my clients. Also, because I am a lawyer I also (1) see the people who can’t resolve things on their own (and very few of the people who can), and (2) deal, essentially, in worst-case...
Making the decision to hire a divorce attorney is a difficult one. Once you’ve reached the already difficult decision to separate and, eventually, to end your marriage, you have to decide whether or not you’ll hire an attorney to represent you in the divorce and then, if so, whom. I probably don’t need to tell...