Relocation is often a big issue in divorce and custody cases. It’s not limited to moms or even dads; it happens pretty frequently that, wherever you happened to reside when the marriage began to fall apart at the seams, one (or both) of you would prefer to live somewhere else. Especially when your marriage is...
Common Coparenting Issues: Coparenting After Relocation
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...
As much as I’ve written about child support over the years, I think there are still a lot of things that people don’t understand about how it works. Custodial arrangements – or parenting plans – vary dramatically these days, and though it’s true to say that more parents share custody than have primary physical...
There’s a lot of mystery surrounding our local area judges, and that’s probably especially true in the juvenile court. In case you’re not yet all that familiar with the Virginia court system, most custody cases start in juvenile court – unless they’re part of a larger divorce action (in which case they’d be filed in...
As you’re probably more or less already aware, custody and visitation of children – whether as a standalone custody case or part of an underlying divorce action – really only deals with minor children. In Virginia, child support ends when a child turns 19 or graduates from high school, whichever occurs first, and you lose...
Parenting Plans and Parenting Time These days, its probably safe to say that shared custody is more the norm than primary physical custody, except in cases where the parties agree otherwise. There is no explicit, legal presumption for shared custody in Virginia, though; in fact, the law only provides that the judge should consider “all”...
You’ve been married a really long time. At this point, probably almost every asset (or liability) you can think of is one that was earned, purchased, or acquired during the marriage. While it doesn’t have to be harder to end a longer marriage as opposed to a shorter one, there are often a lot...
It might not seem possible, but, under the law, a parent can kidnap his or her own child. It’s not common – in fact, it’s actually quite rare – but its something that can and does happen, and that you should be aware of. Parental kidnapping happens when a parent takes a child in...