Blog
What is a parenting plan?
In terms of vocabulary, there are all sorts of things that we say when it comes to custody and visitation that may seem new to you. I’ve written extensively on legal and physical custody, the different types (primary, shared, and split), coparenting, parenting education seminars, and many other topics related to custody and visitation that…
I want sole legal and physical custody of our child
In a divorce and/or custody case, you can get whatever you and your soon-to-be ex/child’s father can agree to or whatever the judge is willing to award. In many cases, we’re really limited by what the judge will do. When the other side knows that, for example, the military retirement will be divided so that…
Do I have to respond to my child’s father’s requests for information?
When your child’s father abandons you, there are hard feelings. I’ve heard some pretty horrific and heart rending stories throughout the course of my career, and, even though I’ve been doing this a pretty long time at this point, it still weighs on me. A woman I talked to the other day told me how,…
Virginia Joint Legal Custody and School Enrollment
In Virginia, there are two different types of custody: legal custody, and physical custody. Most of the time, parents fight over physical custody, because that has to do with where a child spends the majority of his or her time. Legal custody, on the other hand, refers only to the right to make three types…
Custody in separate homes
At some point, after you and your child’s father call it quits, you’ll live in separate homes. In some ways, that makes custody of the child you share more difficult. In other ways, though, it lightens the burdens on you both. If you and your child’s father have just recently made the decision to separate,…
Small issues in Virginia custody cases
It’s easy, in a divorce, to lose sight of the forest for the trees. There’s a lot at stake, and so many different elements involved, that it’s easy to become fixated on something to the exclusion of almost everything else. Sometimes, it’s something big—like custody—and other times, in other cases, it’s something that, to me…
What does shared custody even mean?
Custody cases are the worst, especially in terms of the levels of anxiety that moms feel as they begin to prepare for one. There’s a lot of fear there (and understandably so), and often that fear makes it difficult for moms to separate the horror stories from the actual, factual truth about what could happen…