Help! My child calls stepmom ‘mom’ now!

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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Even if you’ve been unhappy for a really long time, it’s sometimes hard to put a label on your relationship, especially if that label is “abusive.” Its kind of like rape.  We all understand what it is, but, at the end of the day, often have a hard time describing our own experiences in these...

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Virginia Divorce After 15 Years of Marriage

By any reckoning, 15 years is a fairly lengthy marriage.  At some point – and I’d theorize that’s somewhere along the ten year mark – there comes a time when, even if you break up, you and your soon-to-be ex owe something to each other. The longer the marriage, the more difficult it is to...

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Spare the Child: Virginia Custody Disputes

As everyone always says, there’s no book on how to be a good parent.  The nurses at the hospital didn’t send you home with a manual.  There are books and online courses and old wives tales, but there’s no consensus on how to raise a child in the best way possible. We all screw up...

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Child Abuse Cases in Virginia

  I’ve said it before and, though it pains me, I’ll say it again. Where domestic violence and child abuse are concerned, the court is very, very jaded. It’s not just the courts, either. Attorneys, too, can become jaded. We hear terrible stories, day in and day out, and, sometimes, they’re not true, or they’re...

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Your Boundaries and Virginia Divorce

Boundaries are a hard thing for women everywhere. There are a million reasons, but I think that most of us feel essentially required to take care of the feelings of everyone around us. The feeling that we’ve disappointed someone is almost physically painful, and we take a lot of abuse – we’re programmed, in a...

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Virginia Abusive Divorce and Custody Litigation

  Most people want to avoid extensive litigation if at all possible. After all, it makes a case take longer, cost more, and (generally speaking) yield poorer results. Most people, after getting a couple bills from their attorney, will suddenly become much less litigious. Most people, of course, are fairly sensible. They’ll instead start to...

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