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Once a divorce has been filed and the waiting period is over, if the Complaint for Divorce hasn’t been dismissed, the first phase of the divorce process begins: Discovery. It’s during this phase of the process that each spouse’s attorneys work to (in theory, at least) uncover the truth about the other’s financial and other information that might be relevant ...

Over the next couple of weeks, we’re going to go deep — we’re doing a short series on what, exactly, a Michigan divorce looks like. We’re starting at the very beginning: at the moment that a spouse decides that the most reasonable way forward is to file the papers necessary to start a divorce case. What Do I Need Before ...

The Internet is part and parcel of our daily lives — not just in America, but world-wide. Smartphones are more common than clean water in some parts of Africa, and experts estimate that somewhere between 25% and 50% of the U.S. economy is currently operating through the ‘grey market’ of barely-regulated Internet transactions between individuals. And of course almost everyone ...

So, CPS has decided you’re a horrible parent, and despite all of your efforts, you ended up getting served papers: they’ve got a court date, and they’re suing for custody. It’s all on the line now — this is your last-ditch effort to keep your children, so put everything on hold and pour your life into this battle until it’s ...

In Part I, we discussed the first part of any CPS investigation — the part where they do their best to prove that you’re a horrible parent, potentially using all kinds of tricks that would get the police in huge trouble if they did the same thing. But what if it’s too late, and you’ve already been deemed unfit by ...

When Child Protective Services (CPS) takes your children away from you, it’s always because there’s a suspicion of abuse or neglect. No matter how unlikely the facts, CPS is obligated to investigate every complaint they receive about abuse or neglect, and if they have any reason to believe it would be better for the children, they are obligated to remove ...

We recently encountered a situation that caught a few of us off-guard at the office, and we thought we’d share it with everyone. A client came in asking if she needed to talk to us or a bankruptcy lawyer, because he thought he might be broke soon. As the story came out, we were all mildly shell-shocked. This particular gentleman ...

One of the more commonplace activities for a Michigan family law office is helping divorced parents who have had significant life changes get their child custody orders modified. For example, a divorced father who was denied custody due to alcoholism may ask the court to reconsider after staying sober for 2 years — that’s a genuine, legitimate request. But if ...

Prenuptial agreements are one of the most powerful tools to enable marriages available under Michigan family law. They’re powerful, flexible contracts that allow a couple to predetermine the answers to a wide variety of questions that might come up later in the marriage — or during a divorce. But there are limits to a prenuptial agreements power, and we’re going ...

Many Americans assume that when the Supreme Court made its historic decision in Obergefell v. Hodges, legalizing same-sex marriage across the United States, that the status of homosexual couples in essentially every area of the law was naturally going to follow. Unfortunately, the legal world is rarely so organized — or cut-and-dried. For example, Obergefell wasn’t just one case — ...