Blog

Many Americans are unfamiliar with the idea of a religious marriage contract: essentially, it’s an agreement that two people of shared faith write with the help of their local religious leader that lays down the ‘rules’ of their marriage. The most commonly-seen are the Jewish and Islamic variations on the theme. One of the sections of these two religious marriage ...

One of the major portions of a divorce proceeding is the division of assets. As a part of that process, the court is obligated to first create three categories of assets to be divided: a separate property pile for each spouse, and the “martial property” pile. Each separate property pile usually goes entirely to the spouse it belongs to, and ...

Michigan divorce law isn’t exactly easy to wrap your mind around, which is a good part of why family lawyers like the ones at Gucciardo Family Law hear so many misconceptions about how the law works. We did 3 earlier this week — let’s do 3 more and call it good. Once My Son is (13, 14, 15, 16) He’s ...

One of our assistants at Gucciardo Family Law encountered a place he’s been enjoying immensely lately: the Family Law topic on the Quora website, a place where anyone can ask any question and get answers from anyone who feels like writing them. After a few days of giggling at some of the questions he read, we asked him if he ...

Gucciardo Family Law’s attorneys deal with the details of divorce law on a near-daily basis, and we’ve heard so many urban legends about how divorce law works in our state that they don’t surprise us anymore. But we thought we should do our part to put some of these myths to rest — so here’s a few of the most ...

Michigan State law is very straightforward: when you are getting divorced, you are under a legal obligation to present the court with a detailed accounting of all of their assets and debts. Failure to disclose an asset brings harsh penalties, including a charge of fraud, contempt of court, stiff financial penalties, or worse. In rare cases, discovered assets that were ...

There are cases under Michigan State law that, “right” or not, allow a mother to put her child up for adoption without the father’s consent. Obviously, if no father is known, the mother has sole discretion about the status of her child’s availability for adoption — but the court does require that a “reasonable effort” to find the father has ...

There are exactly two situations in which paternity is easy to establish under Michigan law: When the mother is married to a man at the time the child was conceived or born, and no other man disagrees with the assumption, the man is assumed to be the child’s father. When the mother and a man agree that the man is ...

Adopting your step-child isn’t always easy in the state of Michigan, but it’s almost always at least possible. The most important question is, “Will the noncustodial parent voluntarily terminate their parental rights?” If the answer to that question is yes, you’ve practically succeeded already. If the answer is no, you might have a long fight ahead of you. But let’s ...

There are a lot of very conflicting bits of advice about how you should deal with the emotional aspect of a painful divorce. There’s the ‘Clint Eastwood’ advice of gritting your teeth, showing nothing, and pushing forward until it’s over before you break down. There’s the ‘Dr. Phil’ advice of letting it all hang out and putting yourself first. Is ...