Question: My husband and I are separating. He’s verbally and emotionally abusive, and I can’t take it anymore. After I told him it was over, he told me he was going to leave the apartment we’re renting and I’d have to “figure it out.” I’ve been a stay at home mom and he knows I...
Articles
If you have a parenting plan or a court order that specifies custody and visitation, you’re supposed to follow it. And, probably, most of the time, you will. The ideal scenario is to come up with something that you both – you and your child’s father – can rely on, predict, and understand intuitively. I...
It doesn’t happen often, but every once in a while there’s a terrible storm – or the threat of a terrible storm. When you have a parenting plan or a custody order in place, you’re supposed to follow it. But does a storm create an exception? Let’s talk about it. Life is anything but predictable,...
Question: When my husband and I married, he owned a home. It was in his name but not paid off; we paid the mortgage together and made small improvements over time. Later, I became disabled. I took some money that I had – a little bit from an inheritance, and some from my retirement accounts...
In Virginia, a couple of things go into a child support calculation: both parents’ combined incomes (if you are receiving spousal support, this is included as ‘income’), the amount either or both are paying for support of other children, the total amount of work-related childcare that they are paying, and the cost of health insurance...
Question: My child’s father and I share custody. Our child is involved in a number of activities and there are practices, games, recitals, meets, and more, all on a regular basis. I’ve always taken the child to everything, and I’ve never missed a game or performance, but now that we’re divorced, my child’s father is...
Drug and alcohol are a major issue in divorce and child custody cases – and it’s one of the things that, in my experience, both Guardians ad litem and judges take seriously because it is very clearly and obviously not in the best interests of a child (or children) to be in the care of...
We definitely get a lot of questions about our decision to represent women only and, because it’s unusual, we get it! One of the first questions we get – often when a man inadvertently calls our office – is “Isn’t that discrimination?” What they mean isn’t to really ask whether it is discrimination; by definition,...