What color is a zebra? You think that’s a (you can choose: cutesy, smart-ass, or trick) question, but it is not. Grevy’s zebra1, for example, is actually dark with white stripes, and the young foals emerge with brown, not black, stripes. Why do you care about zebras? Because sometimes things that seem confusing actually are remarkably clear. Like the perennial ...
The Pony Express only existed for 19 months. Its outsized stamp on our imaginations is due, probably, to the audacity of the idea — delivering important documents in a wholly original way that beat all other ways, like railroads, ship, stagecoaches, and freight wagons. Today we have even more methods for getting an important letter into someone’s hands. One of ...
Even in the age of the internet, ancient wisdom still resonates. Heraclitus of Ephesus1 tells us that the only thing permanent in life is change. If, bracing yourself for a divorce, you educated yourself on family law a just a few years ago, you may be surprised at how the legal landscape has changed since then. Just this past May, ...
“Some things are not forgivable. Deliberate cruelty is not forgivable.” When Tennessee Williams wrote that for his play, A Streetcar Named Desire, the Mississippi native could well have been thinking of Virginia couples struggling with failing marriages. You can almost understand a spouse who has fallen out of love with you, or been swayed by vices. But a wife who ...
The full retirement age is increasing. That is not us talking; that is the Social Security Administration (SSA). Beginning with folks born in 1938 and continuing on through the baby boomers born in the psychedelic 1960s, full retirement age inches upward to 67. This matters because, whether you are paying or receiving spousal support payments, new laws could affect those payments when ...
Divorce in Virginia is generally a long process, beginning with a long period of separation (up to a year) and then continuing through the actual, often drawn-out divorce proceedings. During those many months, your children are still growing. Your son may have been a high school junior when you separated from your wife, but by the time your divorce is ...
If it involves the law, the Romans had a phrase for it. You have probably heard the expression, “bed and board,” but in Latin it is divorce a mensa et thoro, or divorce from table and bed. Whether you say bed and board or table and bed, is the same idea; you and your wife no longer satisfy each other’s ...
The Broadway musical, Music Man, has a wonderful song called, “The Wells Fargo Wagon,” written at a time (1957) when Wells Fargo was noted less for its banking irregularities and more for its express shipping services. That song, and indeed the entire musical, is an example of intellectual property. In Virginia divorces, intellectual property must be protected just as vigorously ...
In these esteemed pages we have discussed books, movies, law, history, Latin, food, and Dinosaurland. Yet, to our memory, we have not touched upon one of the foundation stones of our modern civilization: Star Trek. Today, we present the legal equivalent of Star Trek’s Corbomite Maneuver1 (Never heard of it? Hang in there!). Today, we address constructive desertion in Virginia ...