I talked last week about cases where a prenup is already signed (spoiler alert: YES, it IS a big deal!). The gist of it is that, in any case, a legal contract like a prenuptial agreement or a separation agreement exists in order to modify the law, and to make specific conditions apply to the case...
Un-Signing a Prenup
I’ve written a bit on this before, but it was early on in the pandemic. It feels like eons ago to me now; the shock of actually facing a pandemic – which, to me, still sounds a bit like an actual plague – was surreal. When the schools were closing, back before the stay at...
“Divorce is expensive.” I know that was certainly my impression, before I started practicing family law, though I can’t tell you now where I heard it first. I can’t tell you, even, what “expensive” means, exactly, because I think it’s probably safe to say that it means a lot of different things to a lot...
In Virginia, you have to be separated to get a divorce. In fact, you have to be separated for a year for most types of divorce. (The notable exception to this rule is divorce when you’re using adultery as your grounds, but you should read up on this, and its specific limitations, HERE if that’s something...
Lots of people are, at some point or another, the beneficiary of some kind of inheritance. For many of us, it’s not significant monetarily, but, for others, it is. In fact, for some people, it’s a tremendous amount. An inheritance can be life changing. I’ve had clients who live in a home that they inherited,...
Sun Tzu wrote, “The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting,” and I think it’s a quote that applies really well to family law in general. To be fair, almost all of my cases come in with both parties feeling pretty agitated. Many clients tell me that they think their case...
Whenever there is domestic violence involved in a case, we advise our clients about protective orders. It’s really one of the only tools in our arsenal available to help protect clients who are at risk from their former partners. On the one hand, it’s just a piece of paper. On the other, it works in...
One of the attorneys in our office recently had a consultation with a woman who couldn’t get what she wanted. It wasn’t her fault; it wasn’t our fault. In this case, the law simply didn’t allow for it to happen. What did she want? She wanted child support to extend for her nearly-adult child to...