It’s probably not what you envisioned when you thought about what life would be like as an adult. The marriage, the home, the 2.5 kids, the golden retriever… but, then again, so many things are different than what we envisioned, and that doesn’t necessarily make them any less wonderful (or, conversely, make them less...
When your child’s dad is a deadbeat in Virginia
When your child’s father abandons you, there are hard feelings. I’ve heard some pretty horrific and heart rending stories throughout the course of my career, and, even though I’ve been doing this a pretty long time at this point, it still weighs on me. A woman I talked to the other day told me how,...
Divorce and custody cases do all sorts of things to people. Things that, before the case were on the horizon, would have seemed unthinkable—in both good ways and bad. One of the most annoying things that happens is when a formerly deadbeat dad decides that he now wants custody, or at least wants more parenting...
It seems like we have a couple of cases like this lately. Dad wasn’t involved in the child’s life (and when I say wasn’t involved, I mean, like, he was completely and totally uninvolved) until, suddenly, he decided that he wanted to be. And not just that he wanted to see the child on occasion...
“I don’t want to send the baby to his father,” mothers often say to me. They can cite a bunch of reasons, from the fact that he hasn’t yet changed a single diaper (a single one!), that he isn’t vigilant about avoiding her allergens, he doesn’t stick to the schedule with respect to her medication,...