At the root of most custody disputes is fear. The fear that you won’t be able to be the kind of parent you always wished you’d be. The fear that a court order, or a custody agreement, would prevent you from having the kind of relationship with and time with the child that you envisioned,...
Holiday Custody and Visitation
There are a lot of divorce-related things that are difficult to discuss, but it’s important to hire an attorney with whom you can be honest. There are not a whole lot of things that feel worse than finding out – at trial or some other inopportune moment – that you don’t really know what’s going on...
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;...
I found out, 9 years ago today, that I passed the bar. I’ll never forget the day. In that time, I’ve handled a LOT of divorces. A lot of uncontested divorces (LI), in particular. Contested divorces, too, but, in so many cases, even if we start out in court, eventually the parties end up able...
I’ve been practicing family law for close to a decade now, and, even in that time, I’ve seen a lot of major changes to how we do things that (I think, anyway!) are really interesting. One of the biggest changes I’ve seen is that, instead of doing uncontested divorce hearings regularly, almost all of our...
I hesitate to use absolutes, because, in law, there are very few. We rarely say “never” or “always”; we often say “it depends”. But I’m pretty sure I can absolutely say that, if you or your husband own a business, your divorce is going to be more expensive than a divorce where we have two...
Though divorce attorneys are no strangers to pretty salacious details coming out in lots of our cases (sorry, though, it’s all confidential!), every so often there’s a detail or a case that surprises even us. There’s a pretty shocking case pending before the Supreme Court right now that originated out of the Virginia Beach Circuit...
Child abuse cases are seriously some of the most harrowing cases that family law practitioners have to deal with. To be honest, I can only imagine what it must feel like to have children in a position where you worry that, if your child’s father receives custody, they may be abused or mistreated in any...