Though they may appear to never step down from their lofty perches behind the judge’s bench, Virginia’s judges really are just regular folks, aware of how little time other Virginians have for the often drawn-out pomp and procedures of a family law courtroom. A shortage of time is part of the reason for the 2003 creation of Virginia’s Judicial Settlement Conference ...
Sometimes we are glib. Sometimes we are silly, or outrageous. With a topic like parental alienation, we see no room for silliness; too many Virginia men suffer from being the victim of what clinicians call Parental Alienation Syndrome (PAS). PAS pits the normally unbroken circle of family members against one another. If you as a Virginia father are suffering from the ...
Christopher Robin was never happy with the limelight his famous father, A.A. Milne, brought him. While Winnie the Pooh and his animal friends are dear to millions of fans, Christopher Robin Milne grew to resent the inhabitants of the 100 Acre Wood. Fatherhood, for the author of the beloved children’s books, was apparently just a bit beyond his abilities. It ...
Ah, marriage! As James Joyce once said in his work, Ulysses, “What’s yours is mine and what’s mine is my own.” If your marriage started off with the two of you sharing everything 100 percent, but now you are trying to claw back roughly half of everything from a woman you now consider (to borrow from Dickens) a “grasping, clutching, ...
After your divorce, who owns your home? Though financially and legally you or ex-wife may own it, you do have the option to let your kids have the house. Not unsupervised, like some 21st century version of The Little Rascals, but by having each parent take turns living in the family home during their parenting time. This technique, in which the ...
Some surprises are happily wonderful, like U.S. Army soldier Brent Mount, fresh out of Afghanistan, surprising his nine-year-old daughter1 at her Virginia school. Some surprises are best kept under wraps because the news is not welcome, like you wanting to divorce your wife. Try these suggestions for keeping the word from spreading until you have everything arranged as you need for ...
The character Roger “Verbal” Kint in Usual Suspects is a charade, disguising the evil genius of (spoiler alert) Keyser Söze in the same body. He is called “Verbal” because he can talk your ears off. He should, technically, be called “Oral,” but the connotation is a bit racey for the role, so Verbal it is. Verbal vs. Oral You see, ...
Almost nobody plays Monopoly by the printed rules. A genuine game of Monopoly takes approximately eleventy-seven hours, so most people make up their own ways to play so that, if they started at sunup, they stand a reasonable chance to finish by supper time. By Monopoly’s printed rules, the Banker is supposed to hold an auction for any property a ...
Sometimes treasures hide in plain sight. What was true of Edgar Allen Poe’s Purloined Letter (you can read it courtesy of the University of Virginia)1 held true in the recent discovery of a genuine, multi-million-dollar Auguste Rodin sculpture2 sitting unrecognized for years in the Madison, New Jersey municipal building. The same is true in legal circles; important, valuable information for ...