Blog

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 ...

So you’ve just been handed your divorce decree, and you’re once again on your own. Your spouse has been the breadwinner for the past several years, and your work experience pre-marriage was decent, but no longer immediately relevant. How do you get a job when your experience is too old to count? This is the dilemma that faces thousands of ...

This question came up over a lunch with some associates: if someone is going through a very rough divorce, and their spouse is obviously acting out of spite and malice and with zero empathy, should the two attempt to use counseling to make the divorce process less horrible? The answer to this question is pretty obviously yes, so the question ...

It’s a pretty common understanding among those of us who watch shows like Law & Order or read about corporate lawsuits: when there’s a big court case and neither side is ‘The State of XYZ,’ the side that loses the case pays the court costs for the side that won. Of course, that understanding isn’t terribly correct — the American ...