The intersection of medicine and law often lead to carts before horses, as when medicine has honed surrogate pregnancy to a nearly mundane thing, while Virginia’s laws creep to catch up. We noticed the D.C. Council recently lifted its 25-year ban on surrogacy contracts1, which made us consider the many ways surrogacy and divorce can become entwined. Surrogacy intersects divorce ...
You faced a difficult decision to separate from your wife. You arranged your life so that, after you broke the news to her, you could quietly slip away, out of her life for six months to a year before filing for divorce. You retreated to a tiny, dingy motel room unreliably lit by a single bare bulb swaying from a ...
Gather round, children, and Ol’ Grandpa Jason will read to y’all from the Code of Virginia. Doesn’t that sound nice? What? You want to hear the story again of how your stepfather adopted the lot of ya? Well, sure! But don’t y’all be nodding off now, just before I get to the good part. Why a Step? The Origin of ...
A property settlement agreement or separation agreement in a Virginia divorce is like the world’s weirdest grocery list. It will have a lot of details on it, in odd juxtaposition, and not a single item can be left out or you will certainly regret it later. In a moment of inspiration, we put together this convenient checklist while picking up ...
In 1935 you could mortgage the Boardwalk for $200. The Monopoly property, not Virginia Beach’s. That $200 was the highest on the board, with classy Park Place coming in at only $175. (Poor Baltic Avenue; it was only worth $30.) If you seek a Virginia legal separation today, who covers the mortgage? And can you pay with Monopoly money? (Umm ...
Wage garnishment is unrelated to garnishes for food, though they come from the same word root. While you may love having parsley atop your mac n’ cheese from The Public House in Norfolk, you definitely will not love having your employer redirect a portion of your wages to the Virginia Division of Child Support Enforcement (DCSE). If you owe, you ...
Wouldn’t we all like to not have to work? While for most of us that is a daydream, for some women it is a conscious strategy in a divorce. The “logic” your ex-wife uses is, with no visible income, she will require you to provide spousal support, so that she (and potentially your children) can continue to live as they ...
Real Virginia police recently arrested a man for wearing police attire1 to get the drop on his victim. This earned the fake cop two real two charges: malicious wounding with a caustic substance (he pepper sprayed him) and impersonating a law officer. While the fake cop broke the Virginia law against wearing a fake uniform, but he did not break ...
The origin of the word “secretary,” for both the furniture and the person, is the Latin word secretum, meaning secret. Secretaries (furniture; person) help you hide secrets. Sometimes the cabinet makers building secretaries went a bit overboard, as with the Roentgens' Berlin Secretary, which was carefully filmed while on loan to the Metropolitan Museum of Art1. If you wanted to ...