What is parental alienation – and is it really real?

  There has been so much – sooo much – discussion, especially online, about parental alienation that it’s easy to get confused.  Some camps maintain that parental alienation isn’t a thing, while others hammer the point home; and, in any case, you may have seen stories about children in other states who have been sent...

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Divorcing an Abuser: Is he gaslighting me?

If you’re asking whether he’s gaslighting you, the answer is almost certainly yes.  Right?  I mean, when it comes to abusers, nothing is up to chance.  It’s intentional and he’s doing it on purpose.  It’s designed to impact you in the most cruel way possible. The thing about gaslighting is that it often happens in...

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Do Virginia Family Courts Get It Right?

Recently, on Facebook, as I mindlessly scrolled (come on, you know you do it, too) I saw a video that showed a child fighting a visitation exchange. The video alleged that the child was resisting going to spend time with her mother, because her mother’s boyfriend abused her. The end of it – the moral,...

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I’m a mom, too, so I get it. Protecting those little people is literally the only job in the world that matters, and when you feel like the health, safety, and well being of your children is threatened – well, it’s understandable if it makes you feel a little crazy. When the health, safety, and...

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Protective Orders and Divorce

Domestic violence is often a big part of a divorce case. It’s sad (and really, really scary) but true. We see these types of cases all the time. When I first started practicing family law, I was surprised at how many cases there were that involved some kind of physical, emotional, or sexual abuse; maybe...

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Cruelty in Virginia Divorce

It’s not one that we see all the time (in fact, we prefer not to have cruelty come up!), but, in Virginia, cruelty is grounds for divorce.  Cruelty can mean a lot of different things to a lot of people; in fact, I think most of us can agree that to verbally or emotionally abuse...

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