Blog

Categories

What is parental kidnapping?

It might not seem possible, but, under the law, a parent can kidnap his or her own child.  It’s not common – in fact, it’s actually quite rare – but its something that can and does happen, and that you should be aware of.   Parental kidnapping happens when a parent takes a child in…

Dealing with in laws after divorce

  Like entirely too many things in life, there’s no rule book for how to handle certain things after divorce. Before I go too far, allow me to say one thing. Actually, I’m going to give it a header tag, so that it’s bigger than the rest of the text, and so that it really…

Can I refuse to send my kids to visitation?

I first started writing articles about COVID-19 related concerns back in March of 2020, never expecting that an entire year later I’d still be dealing with concerns related to the ongoing pandemic. Custody and visitation issues are some of the biggest that we face in family law, especially when parents share children between two different…

Virginia Child Custody: Moving and Taking the Kids

If you and your child’s father are no longer together, it makes sense that, sooner or later, one or both of you will find someone else. And it probably goes without saying that your someone else comes with his own baggage as well. Blending families – and making it work – is a complicated contention…

What if a shelter in place order is issued? What about visitation?

I keep hearing a lot of “what ifs” lately, and it makes sense. There hasn’t been another pandemic like this in living memory, and these are exceptional times. Every morning these days, I get up and check the news, terrified of what I might see. I keep seeing news articles and hearing rumors that suggest…

Overnight (Romantic) Guests After Divorce

There are a lot of things that are often important to my clients when it comes to custody post-divorce, but one of the first things they mention (particularly if their divorce is related to some sort of adultery) is that they don’t want overnight guests of the opposite sex while the child is in the…

Custody and Visitation on Halloween

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…

Support of Another Child: Reduction in Child Support

There is no shortage of ways that sly fathers will seek to avoid responsibility for their child support obligations. I’ve seen a lot of creative solutions – and even outright requests for downward deviations from the guideline amount of child support – over the years. One of the trickiest ways I’ve seen a child’s father…

When will he start paying me child and spousal support?

When will he start paying me child and spousal support?  It’s a question we hear all the time.  Financially, divorce can be complicated. In most cases, even in cases where there’s plenty of money, there’s some nervousness and confusion when it comes to how everything will be divided. Even though, in the Virginia Code, the…