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Division of property as part of a divorce gets pretty hairy in even the best of cases. But what happens when the process is complicated by a antenuptial agreement and several limited-liability companies? As it turns out, according to the Michigan Supreme Court, you can actually end up with a martial estate worth zero dollars. A Crazy Antenuptial Agreement In ...

As Family Law attorneys, we encounter a lot of interesting…and some sheerly desperate…ideas about how a recently-divorced single parent can get by. Often, these come up when the other parent files a custody-change motion or a support-change motion in response to one of these more desperate ideas. For example: what happens when a single mother wants to save child support ...

Once we’ve helped someone with a divorce along with a joint custody agreement, they tend to move on with their lives and never come back into our office. When they do come back with a complaint that they want our legal help with, a startling number of them have the same complaint. It’s “my ex just enrolled my child in activity, ...

Last week, we talked about the legalities behind giving a child three parents, and why it means that a loving step-parent can’t adopt their stepchild if the other biological parent doesn’t relinquish their parental status. First, let’s talk about why not. Why Michigan Has Disallowed Three Parents There are a few reasons why Michigan, along with many other states, have ...

Relatively common scenario: two people are married, but one has a kid by an ex-spouse. The new spouse loves the kid and wants to show their dedication to the kid, so they decide to attempt to adopt the kid. The old spouse has joint custody of the kid, but doesn’t particularly object as the adoption wouldn’t affect the custody agreement. ...

Divorce is an inherently messy process. We know from scientific studies of eyewitness testimony that three people who saw the same car will describe it, just minutes later, as a “brown SUV,” a “blue minivan,” and a “black truck.” If the brain can’t even specify concrete facts about something that happened just minutes ago (or even pass this profoundly insightful ...

There are a number of reasons why someone can get ‘locked’ into an abusive marriage — peer pressure, children, financial dependency, and blind love among them — but the reason that is the most confounding for outside observers is that some people simply don’t understand that they’re being abused. It can be extremely challenging for people who are living abuse-free ...

The law is clear in nearly every state, and ongoing efforts to enforce gender non-bias are proceeding in several states: the gender of the parent shouldn’t matter when determining the best interests of the child. Unfortunately, there are precious few guidelines for judges as to what “best interest” actually means — which opens up the courtroom to the opinions of ...

I’ve said on this blog a few times before — some quite recently — that the Michigan court system (and in fact the American court system) is biased toward mothers when it comes to child custody. This is true in a strictly legal sense, as the assumption regarding the children of unmarried parents is that the mother should automatically retain ...

In the state of Michigan, if you feel like your current child custody arrangement no longer meets your child’s needs (or has become hostile to your child’s well-being), the burden is on you to show ‘proper cause’ for a change. The Michigan courts are charged with the protection of a child’s best interests, but one of the basic assumptions the ...