Lawyers love words. We use them a lot, in both English and Latin. Our “briefs” are anything but, and legal paper is notorious for being several inches longer than letter-sized paper because, well, we like words. Here’s an epigram (a sharp saying) you may not expect: “To err is human; to forgive, humane.” When forgiving a spouse some egregious act ...
Audi's four-wheel drive system, the Quattro®, is a great automotive innovation, but it's no QDRO. They are both nearly identical in pronunciation, but a QDRO has legal muscle, whereas a Quattro®, which admittedly handles great in the snow, is ineffective in court. A QDRO is, in the memorably bureaucratic words of the U.S. Department of Labor, “a domestic relations order ...
The world’s oldest recovered message in a bottle1 was awash in the sea for more than a century. It was (eventually) safely delivered to the sender’s 62-year-old granddaughter 101 years after her grandfather tossed it into the surf. Most of us do not attempt our own mailing system, since more efficient, timely and reliable means already exist. Similarly, most of ...
A lot of people and things have budgets. Households have budgets; nations have budgets; even the earth has an energy budget. From budgets come options we label as affordable or unaffordable. If money were limitless, affordability would never be a concern. Most Virginians, though, have to learn to live within their means; they do not have bottomless pockets. They have ...
For our purposes, a “prenuptial agreement” is identical to a “premarital agreement,” which is the legal expression found in the Code of Virginia. In fact, the Code (never one to use a single word when 27 would do) has an entire chapter devoted to it (Chapter Eight, with its nine elegant parts1). You may feel, since you are unlikely to ...
As that great legal scholar, Basil, once said, “No one can have a higher opinion of you than I have, and I think you're a slimy, contemptible sewer rat!” In Disney’s “The Great Mouse Detective” the object of this insult, Ratigan, really was a slimy, contemptible sewer rat. Your goal, in working through your family law issues in Virginia, is ...
Divorce-proofing any part of your life is likely not something that was on the table prior to your joint nuptials, but saving your business in the event of a divorce is something to truly hang onto. With 40-50% of marriages in the United States ending in divorce, you may think twice about safeguarding your business and business assets from an ...
For anyone in our nation’s military services, acronyms are a fact of life. From Weapon Of Magnesium, Battalion, Anti-Tank — aka WOMBAT — to Man-Portable Air-Defense Systems (MANPADS), weird clusters of letters invariably mean something important. The USFSPA, or Uniformed Services Former Spouse Protection Act, is an important acronym that could be a path to a comfortable retirement in later ...
Dear Jason, My ex-wife was so uncaring about my pain from our separation and divorce, I could not bear to go home so I spent the next six weeks sleeping on the floor of a friend’s house. What should I do? Your Friend, Brad Dear Brad, I notice your separation and divorce was important enough to make the newspapers ...
