How will your life change after a divorce? Much like stopping smoking, your body will know immediately that you have shed some of the worry, stress, and apprehension you have been bottling up for months or possibly years. Other parts of your world change, too, like your taxes, finances, savings, and estate. One matter to tend to immediately: updating your ...
Sometimes in these pages we joke around a bit, get a little weird, or push a few buttons. Yet one area is always off-limits to those attitudes: children. Virginia's children are among the most helpless, fragile and innocent among us. Virginia's adults, and even more so Virginia's attorneys, have a high calling to protect Virginia's kids. Emergency custody hearings are ...
Who is a reasonable person? A reasonable person, simply put, can make commonsense decisions just as you or we would. We have handed the American legal system that legacy, in the form of a standard of behavior: what would a "reasonable person" do in this legal dilemma or that situation? What would that same "reasonable person" consider to be a "reasonable and ...
In Virginia, some parents have an interesting (if inaccurate) view of court documents. Apparently, they feel they are optional, as in, the parent can ignore the specific directions of a court. These same parents may feel "Shampoo, Rinse, Repeat" is a little bossy, or that advice not to look at solar eclipses is just fear-mongering. Imagine their surprise, then, to ...
The clothes wringer was invented in the 1880s by a woman, Ellen Elgin, and is still sold today. We mention it in passing because many of our clients feel as though their divorce has put them through the wringer, at least figuratively. After divorce, if you feel wrung out, twisted in knots, and a bit soggy, could counseling help? Counseling ...
You can be forgiven for thinking lawyers could write a 180-page handbook for using shampoo. Legal "briefs" tend to be anything but brief, and legal pads are deliberately three inches longer than regular pads because, well, words, words, words. So, when you examine a Virginia court's child support order, you may be surprised at how much is left out, considering ...
Representing yourself in court is almost always a bad idea, as Eric Saub found while acting as his own attorney.1 Saub ignored a judge's advice to accept free legal counsel, instead dismissing his attorney and handling his legal matters himself. At his murder trial. He was found guilty of the Isle of Wight County, Virginia murder and sentenced to 33 ...
Kevin Walter, Virginia turkey hunter, most definitely did not have custody of the charging bobcat1. The word "custody" means "immediate charge and control exercised by a person or an authority." While the bobcat may have charged, and while Kevin was clearly not in control, a bobcat is not an animal anyone wants to take into custody. Your children, though, are another ...
Technology is a marvelous thing. Some cities, for example, have an "online do-it-yourself" divorce program rooted in artificial intelligence. That's great, if you can get past all the questions that "screen out users with procedurally complicated situations;" and "screen out contested cases and those cases involving the potential, unintentional loss of rights." The courts recognize that some divorces are trickier ...