I met with a woman the other day who had a separation agreement – prepared by her mediator – that she wanted me to review. She had gone to mediation with her husband, and then they had modified the agreement. She wanted me to tell her whether it was a fair offer for her. It...
Should I sign…? Separation Agreements in Virginia
I spend a lot of time talking here about separation agreements, uncontested divorces, and how, in general, it’s often ideal to avoid going to court to have your assets and liabilities divided. In most cases, that’s quite true. But “most cases” is not every case, and you have to think critically about your case, and...
A client of mine, who had retained me to help her draft a separation agreement, forwarded me the draft separation agreement that her husband had prepared while we were working on ours, with the caption “Things just got ugly.” I was confused – after all, I was retained to prepare a separation agreement, much like...
I find there’s often a lot of confusion about what it means to serve someone and at what point you have someone served in a divorce case. There’s so much confusion, and it’s really almost nearly universal, that I feel like service of process is something worthy of the devotion of an entire article. What...
You’re probably familiar with the idea that you have to separate from your husband before divorce – not just in Virginia, but in most places. Every state (and indeed every country!) handles this a little bit differently, and the required period of separation differs from one to the next. Sometimes, separation of longer duration is...
How do you tell your husband you’ve prepared a separation agreement? It’s a question I get almost every single time, with almost every single client. There’s (understandably!) some anxiety about the moment they tell their husband what their plans are. There’s also (again, understandably) some concern over how their husbands will feel about them staking...
It happens from time to time that a woman comes into our office with an already signed agreement. I won’t lie to you, it makes me die a little inside. I always read those agreements with a cringe, worried about what I’ll find in the next paragraph and on the next page. Simply put, one...
I hear the same objection all the time: “But my husband says he won’t sign an agreement unless I waive child support.” They’re upset. They’re scared. They don’t know what to do. Most are loathe to accept any kind of financial assistance from their child’s father anyway, but they’re still not quite sure how they’ll...