Working with a Guardian ad litem (an attorney appointed to represent the interests of the child to the court in a custody and visitation case) isn’t easy, to put it mildly. And, if you’re one of the many, many, many women I’ve worked with or talked to over the years who hates your Guardian ad...
My Guardian ad litem is SO biased!
Adultery, Spousal Support, and Custody We talked Monday about adultery, and the difference between filing a divorce (which is a civil case) using adultery as your grounds and an actual criminal prosecution on adultery (which is a level IV misdemeanor in Virginia). The purpose of that article was to alleviate concerns I see around adultery...
I get it. Your kids are your life, and there’s nothing you wouldn’t do for them, including (but not limited to) staying in your unhappy marriage. But what’s the right choice? Do you stay, knowing that it’s entirely possible that your kids are aware of more tension than you even realize? Or do you go,...
Holidays are hard. They’re always hard. I field questions about holidays probably almost every single day. Generally speaking, holidays are alternated between parents. We alternate legal holidays – the Fourth of July, Memorial Day, Labor Day, and Thanksgiving. We usually alternate Christmas and Spring Break, too, to varying degrees, both to reflect the need for...
Under the law, a child magically becomes an adult on their 18th birthday. But what does that mean, and how does it impact custody and visitation? When you have an older teenaged child, what options do you have? What does the court allow? These are all good questions, and, if you’re the parent of an...
Financial abuse is a major issue in many divorce cases, especially when there’s a big disparity in income between the parties. For two spouses with a roughly similar income (even if that income isn’t super large), the act of separating and setting up separate houses, though difficult, isn’t nearly as complicated or as consuming as...
As you probably are already aware, once you have a child with someone, they never really go away. In a divorce or a breakup where there are no children, the parties are free to go their own separate ways and never see each other again. It’s not only desirable but encouraged. There’s no reason for...
Temporary Agreements are complicated issues in divorce and custody cases. If your husband (or child’s father) proposes one, you should proceed with extreme caution. That being said, we often use temporary agreements for all sorts of reasons. I’m working on one right now for a client who needs custody and spousal support determined on a...