An old joke of P.G. Wodehouse novels1 is the costly indulgence of sending a telegram. In the stodgy old days of vintage telegram communications, stage stars received opening-night accolades via telegram, hearts broke from pithy little memoranda, and everyone was impressed that the sender spent so much money on something billed by the word. American Telegram nowadays charges $34.95 plus ...
What color is a zebra? You think that’s a (you can choose: cutesy, smart-ass, or trick) question, but it is not. Grevy’s zebra1, for example, is actually dark with white stripes, and the young foals emerge with brown, not black, stripes. Why do you care about zebras? Because sometimes things that seem confusing actually are remarkably clear. Like the perennial ...
Lewis Carroll was an inventive writer who gave the world the concept of plunging down a rabbit hole, and in the 21st century this has come to mean following a path to extreme distraction. If you take a moment to plunge down the rabbit hole of “courtroom fights” on YouTube, you can find some mighty angry people there. To be ...
The Pony Express only existed for 19 months. Its outsized stamp on our imaginations is due, probably, to the audacity of the idea — delivering important documents in a wholly original way that beat all other ways, like railroads, ship, stagecoaches, and freight wagons. Today we have even more methods for getting an important letter into someone’s hands. One of ...
“Some things are not forgivable. Deliberate cruelty is not forgivable.” When Tennessee Williams wrote that for his play, A Streetcar Named Desire, the Mississippi native could well have been thinking of Virginia couples struggling with failing marriages. You can almost understand a spouse who has fallen out of love with you, or been swayed by vices. But a wife who ...
A stereotype about lawyers is that we love words — because we sure use a lot of ‘em. That may be true; words are funny things, like the word “counsel,” which can mean an attorney, a marriage therapist, or a financial consultant. Before, during and after your divorce, you can benefit from the services of all three counselors. Counseling before ...
The full retirement age is increasing. That is not us talking; that is the Social Security Administration (SSA). Beginning with folks born in 1938 and continuing on through the baby boomers born in the psychedelic 1960s, full retirement age inches upward to 67. This matters because, whether you are paying or receiving spousal support payments, new laws could affect those payments when ...
Divorce in Virginia is generally a long process, beginning with a long period of separation (up to a year) and then continuing through the actual, often drawn-out divorce proceedings. During those many months, your children are still growing. Your son may have been a high school junior when you separated from your wife, but by the time your divorce is ...
If it involves the law, the Romans had a phrase for it. You have probably heard the expression, “bed and board,” but in Latin it is divorce a mensa et thoro, or divorce from table and bed. Whether you say bed and board or table and bed, is the same idea; you and your wife no longer satisfy each other’s ...