Today's Latin lesson brings us the word “putativus,” which comes from a Latin stem meaning to believe or suspect. From this we get putative, as in Virginia's putative father registry. Lawyers love Latin. Putative means “generally considered or assumed to be.” As in, you are the child's putative father. How Virginia Birth Certificates Work We think of birth certificates as a legal magic wand, casting ...
A cornerstone of the Constitution enshrines states' rights, saying anything not specifically laid out in the Constitution by default falls to the states. This is why we have state control of education, fair housing, the death penalty, and marijuana laws. Sometimes we have conflict between federal and state law, and sometimes federal laws are enacted specifically to overrule states' laws. ...
Thomas Aquinas, medieval philosopher, offered two sides of one argument when he said, "It would seem that several angels can be at the same time in the same place. For several bodies cannot be at the same time in the same place, because they fill the place. But the angels do not fill a place..."1 This has morphed into the idiomatic ...
The astounding military leader, Alexander the Great, marched into Gordium in 333 BCE, encountered the much-ballyhooed Gordian Knot1, and sliced it apart with one swift swipe of his sword. While plenty of military men "tie the knot," many also need a way to untie their own Gordian knots. Divorcing a military spouse is more complicated than you might think. Kids, ...
Why an "A" for Effort? Effort begins with E; the traditional grading system does not even have an E. You can thank Mount Holyoke College, circa 1897, for letter grades. We are certain most of our loyal readers were Straight-A students, but imagine getting a C- on something. Not too impressive, is it? Virginia's "Shared Parenting Report Card" earns the ...
We are going to do you the courtesy of avoiding any reference to a certain Disney animated movie that begins with F and has r-o-z-e in the middle and ends in n, even if its name appears in our title. I think most Dads are a bit ... worn out? ... by that particular cinematic gem. But we do need ...
She loved you, once. She loved her children, too, presumably. But for whatever reason — drugs, alcohol, mental illness, gambling addiction, criminality — she has become a threat to not only you but to your children. How can you cope? Priority One: Get Your Kids and Get Out As experts at Domestic Shelters states, getting yourself and your children to a safe ...
Let's be clear: very few of our readers are actual elected officials with the federal government. We apparently have almost no U.S. Representatives or U.S. Senators among our readers, so when we say "fixing the frozen benefit rule," we are really talking about a workaround. Because, unless you are a member of Congress, you cannot ignore or change the law ...
In a nation with 50-year record low unemployment1, the idea of choosing to be unemployed seems ... odd. Whether underemployed or unemployed by choice, the spouse who connives to get by with less may be buying herself a world of misery. If she tries this strategy attempting to get more spousal support, let her know you have her number. She’s Too ...