Family law – which includes divorce, child custody, visitation, child support, and spousal support – is a particular area of law that is incredibly state-specific. What you find to be true in one state is not necessarily true in another. Even states that are nearby – like, for example, North Carolina and Virginia – are...
Is there a 50/50 presumption for custody in Virginia?
If you’re a woman in the military and you’re getting a divorce, you’re not alone. Though the reverse dynamic – a man as the active duty military service member and a woman as the dependent spouse – is more common, that doesn’t mean that the reverse doesn’t also occur. Plenty of women are active duty...
They say that marriages fall apart in increments of 7 – 7 years, 14 years, 21 years, and so on. It’s where the whole “Seven Year Itch” thing came from. In a lot of ways, I see it. Even though the first year of marriage is sometimes tumultuous, people tend to settle into a groove...
Marriage doesn’t always last forever, and that’s okay. In fact, I generally think that, the shorter the marriage, the easier the divorce, mostly because there’s not often THAT much to divide. Life changing money usually isn’t made in just a few years, which means the stakes are generally correspondingly smaller. Why is that good? It...
As you already know, if you’ve found me and the Hofheimer Family Law website itself, I represent women only in family law cases in Virginia. I don’t – nor have I ever – represented husbands or dads, though I have a husband and a dad and I know that they are not all terrible. At...
In virtually every case I’ve seen, spousal support is a specific amount of money paid each month from the higher earning spouse to the lower earning spouse. In virtually every case I’ve seen, the higher earning spouse hates this. Like, really, really hates this. In virtually every case I’ve seen, he (it’s usually a he)...
You’ve probably heard a lot about father’s rights groups. They’re all over the place, campaigning for 50/50 custody, and arguing that dads should have more of a role in raising their children. You probably haven’t heard a lot about mother’s rights groups. They…don’t really exist. Though there may, in fact, be a need for them...
It’s probably no secret to you that an attorney isn’t necessary in absolutely every case ever. In some cases, there’s really no need to hire an attorney – as I was reminded yesterday in a conversation that I had with a really sweet prospective client. The thing is, though, that it’s really hard to...