For the first quarter of 2017, American households carried $764 billion in credit card debt, says the Federal Reserve Bank of New York1. If your estranged wife is doing more than her part to add to that debt load, what can you do about it? More important, how does her behavior put you at risk? Estranged is a Strange Word ...
A popular riddle of decades ago recently resurfaced, in which a father and son are injured in a car accident; Dad is out of commission, and the son is wheeled into the operating room. The surgeon takes a look and says, “I can’t operate on my own son.” Decades ago, this riddle1 turned on the radical thought that the surgeon ...
Mark your calendars now: July 28, 2061 will be the perihelion of Halley’s Comet. No, don’t scratch your head; it’s when Halley’s Comet returns; its perihelion is the comet’s closest approach to the sun. Science is a marvel: we can know to the day when an important astronomical event like Halley’s Comet will be on us. Law is sometimes a ...
You know who has a very limited sense of humor? Attorneys and judges, that’s who. When you are embroiled in, say, a custody case, fighting for physical custody of your children, your fabled wit and insightful sarcasm should be conspicuously absent. The law, in Virginia and elsewhere, is a treasured, serious and honored idea. Judges especially do not enjoy courtroom ...
Though the fact may surprise some 21st-century Virginians, women did not have the same rights as men for most of our nation’s history. From 1769 onward, English Common Law treated a married man and woman as one person (coverture), meaning the wife’s identity disappeared1 into the man’s (though the man’s identity remained). Not until 1839 did any state give women ...
Whether you already have a great relationship with your kids, or are trying to improve upon it, there are plenty of ways to work on your family interactions. No two situations are alike, and of course there's always room for improvement when it comes to your children (sky’s the limit, pal!). If it’s important to you to grow as a parent, ...
“See you in court! I will be your worst nightmare and easy to spot. I will be the one in the crop top with the baby blue sport coat.” No you most certainly will not, young man. What may have been okay for Ezekiel Elliott at the NFL draft1 is not okay for Virginia courts. Men are not usually hailed ...
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 ...