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Child Custody Across National Borders
The recent swearing-in of our newest Commander in Chief had left no small number of people openly talking about emigrating from the United States. While that’s a much more difficult task than many people realize, it can happen — which leads us to wonder, what happens if someone who shares custody of a child should move to a different country? ...
CONTINUE READINGJust In Case: Life Insurance as Supplemental Child Support
Child support orders are made by taking a lot of factors into account and applying a huge, legally-ordained formula that filters those factors together and comes to an amount that must be paid each month. But as powerful as that formula is, the one thing it cannot take into account is the passage of time, and how likely it is ...
CONTINUE READINGChild Support Myths Exposed: The Deadbeat Dads
There are some stories common to American culture that have known roots in real events or people. The Robber Barons. The hippies. The Lone Ranger. But then there are other ideas equally common to American culture that are just stories we tell each other. Some have absolutely no basis in reality, like the ‘razor blades in apples’ story. Some are ...
CONTINUE READINGPension in Military Divorces: the Law has Changed
In December of 2016, every state had its own laws about how military divorces handled pensions. Most states handle all pensions the same way: by giving the spouse a percentage of the pension equal to the percentage of years-married to years-worked, divided by 2. For example, if you worked for 20 years to earn your pension, and you were married ...
CONTINUE READINGCards for Humanity…Or At Least for Struggling Co-Parents
Divorce is hard. But it’s not just the emotional rollercoaster and the adversarial headbutting in court — even after all that is over, you wake up the morning after and you face the task of reconfiguring your life. That’s difficult enough when you’re only taking care of yourself…if you have a child or three, the challenge grows exponentially. It gets ...
CONTINUE READINGThe Devil is in the Details: Family Court Appeals are Tricky
I was talking over a minor but interesting case with a few of my colleagues this week, and someone pointed out the lesson to be found. I liked the example enough that I decided to turn it into a blog post. The case is Bergh v. Bergh [PDF], and in short, the story is this: Two fairly well-off people were ...
CONTINUE READINGMarriage Troubles: Talking About Seeing a Therapist
In our last post, we talked a bit about how a couple can easily end up skipping the ‘let’s talk to a relationship counselor’ phase of a large martial dispute, and end up going straight to ‘let’s get a divorce.’ That’s a shame, and to help combat it, we introduced a few steps designed to make sure ‘the talk’ about ...
CONTINUE READINGMarriage Troubles: Try a Therapist Before You Try a Lawyer
One of the most devastating realizations a comfortably married person can have is that the other person in their relationship isn’t happy with the way the marriage is working out. And because oftentimes people don’t effectively communicate, it’s frequently the case that the first warning you’ll have that your spouse wants to get a divorce is the paper you get ...
CONTINUE READINGDomestic Violence and the Truth about American Gun Culture
Americans, by and large, love guns. But we have a weird relationship with guns: some of us firmly believe that guns make the public safer, and others believe exactly the opposite. Some believe guns promote crime, others believe guns are the only thing stopping crime. Interestingly, both groups are wrong, and we have enough data on the subject now to ...
CONTINUE READINGMichigan Family Court-Ordered Supervised Visitation
Only being able to see your child with someone looking over your shoulder is one of the more frustrating positions it’s possible for a parent to be in, but it’s not one the court chooses lightly. To be specific, if you’ve ended up with a Parenting Time Order that only allows you supervised visitation of your child, it’s because the ...
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