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 ...
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 ...
