Posted on May 18, 2018 in Divorce

Texas is one of the “community property” states, which means that marital assets belong equally to both spouses. However, when your marriage ends after just a year or two, it may not seem fair that your spouse who contributed very little to the household finances could end up with half the assets.

Fortunately, he or she probably won’t.

Dividing up the family assets is seldom as simple as splitting everything down the middle. There are a lot of factors that can ultimately affect the financial consequences of a divorce — including the length of the marriage itself.

Community property rules only apply to the assets that are either earned during the marriage or otherwise mingled together. If you owned your house prior to the start of your short marriage, for example, you will likely still own the house after the marriage ends.

In addition, alimony is unlikely to be awarded when a marriage lasts less than a decade. While there are always exceptions, you probably can expect that to be off the table if your marriage was brief — even if your income is significantly higher than your spouse’s.

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 Posted on May 11, 2018 in Family Law

It’s easy to make mistakes when you’re going through a divorce. Frankly, there’s a lot to remember and a lot of different things that have to be handled — everything from deciding what to do about the house to splitting up the furniture.

It’s really important, however, that you don’t lose sight of the value of any 401(k) plans or pensions for your future, as a mistake there can cost you in ways you don’t anticipate.

What’s one of the biggest mistakes that someone getting a divorce can make in regards to a pension?

It’s forgetting to get a qualified domestic relations order (QDRO). It happens more often than people realize simply because they think that the judge’s order on their divorce decree is enough to give them access to their ex’s pension funds. But it isn’t.

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 Posted on May 04, 2018 in Child Custody

Teenagers are complicated people. Parents are often troubled by the sudden changes their children experience when they hit their teenage years — particularly when a child that was once very agreeable suddenly asserts his or her independence by disagreeing with just about everything, including the visitation schedule he or she has been following for years.

If you’re the parent whose visitation is being interrupted and you don’t know of any obvious reason your child would suddenly want to stay away, take heart. The odds are good that you’ve done nothing to cause the problem. Nor should you assume that your ex-spouse has suddenly encouraged your child to stop visiting. It’s most likely that your teenager is being…well, nothing more than a teenager.

A lot of teens start to resent having to pack up every weekend to go stay with their noncustodial parent. Even if you’ve always tried to make the weekends enjoyable, your teen may be developing other interests. He or she may start making weekend plans with friends — friends who don’t live as close to your ex-spouse’s home. Or, your child may simply be burdened with a lot of homework, particularly if he or she is in any accelerated-learning programs. Your child may also simply be going through a phase where he or she wants to spend more time alone, so the prospect of hanging with Mom or Dad all weekend just doesn’t sound as enjoyable as it did when he or she was younger.

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 Posted on April 26, 2018 in Divorce

Both parties in a divorce are expected to completely disclose all of their assets when it comes time to divide up the marital property.

Of course, it doesn’t always work that way. A lot of spouses have attempted to hide assets from their warring partners in the past — but the internet age has made it harder to get away with that sort of thing as money trails have become vastly more traceable online.

Then cryptocurrencies like bitcoin hit the market. These forms of wealth are fairly new and they allow people to deposit their wealth in ways that are still exceptionally hard to trace — which was an intentional part of their design. As more people of wealth start to invest in bitcoin and similar currencies, asset valuations in divorces may get increasingly complicated.

Trying to locate a spouse’s hidden fortune has always been a problem for some people — but attorneys who specialize in those sort of things are fairly good at tracking down hidden wealth. However, cryptocurrency is so new that many attorneys haven’t had time to learn much about it.

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 Posted on April 23, 2018 in Blog

If you are like many Americans, using social media may be something you do multiple times every day, but if you are going through a divorce, you might be wise to refrain from visiting and posting on your favorite sites. Nowadays, you need to consider the fact that virtually anything you do publicly and online can come back to haunt you, and when you are in the middle of the divorce, the stakes are especially high.

Just how can your use of social media complicate your divorce?

It can imply infidelity

When you are going through divorce, refrain from making any actions that might make it appear as if you have already moved on to a new romantic interest. For example, never create a profile on any type of dating website before your divorce finalizes, as doing so may indicate potential infidelity. Additionally, avoid posting photos of you and others doing anything that might look like a date or otherwise suggest a romantic relationship.

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 Posted on April 18, 2018 in Divorce

If you’ve been in an unhappy marriage for a long time, it might be tempting to move on with someone new even before your divorce is final. After all, you probably feel like you’ve wasted enough time in your life already.

However, starting a new relationship right now can be a major mistake — for several reasons:

It can affect your rational judgment

The business of divorce is just that — business. While emotions may have led you to this path, you’ll fare best when you keep your emotions in check and let reason be your guide.

If you’re already involved with someone new, it can be a lot harder to keep your emotions from clouding your judgment. That can lead you to agree to things in your settlement that will negatively affect your future for years to come.

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 Posted on April 12, 2018 in Child Custody

A lot of people in the nation are struggling with drug addiction — and parents aren’t immune to the problem. The problem can be bad enough when only one parent suffers from an addiction. When both parents are addicted, however, other family members can be forced to seek custody of the minor children.

If you think that you may soon have to ask a court to grant you custody of a family member’s children, you need to take some steps to strengthen your case. Otherwise, custody may go to someone else — and that can compound your sense of frustration and grief.

Get involved now

Judges tend to favor relatives who have a pre-existing relationship with the children before they pursue custody. Get involved with your relatives’ lives and make sure that you’re staying connected with the kids. Take them overnight, if possible. Familiarize yourself with their school routine and social activities. This helps cement your case as the right person for custody later.

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 Posted on April 05, 2018 in Family Law

A Texas man has been convicted of perjury after he signed his wife’s name to the completed divorce paperwork and filed it. The divorce wasn’t contested and the couple still had an amicable relationship, so his ex-wife is unsure why he took such an unusual step. She was perfectly willing to sign.

There are, however, a few clues to his reasons. For one thing, his social media accounts indicated that he’d already remarried — before his divorce was actually filed and finalized. He may have been concerned that one or both wives would find out about the issue.

Some adjustments he made to the paperwork before he filed it also give some clues to his motives. He changed the paperwork on the divorce settlement to show that he owed only $700 in child support each month, instead of the $1,000 a month that was agreed. He also took the liberty of giving himself an extra three weeks of visitation with his children in the summer.

As a result of the deception, the Texan ended up being the focus of a criminal investigation and he ended up losing his military career in the navy. The original divorce was voided because of the fraud — an action that’s highly unusual — and the new divorce’s terms give him no visitation rights at all and require $1,300 per month of child support. For the perjury conviction, he received a sentence of home detention for six months.

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 Posted on March 27, 2018 in Child Custody

Even though religious freedom is a cherished constitutional right, disputes between parents over religion can put the issue into play when it comes to a custody fight.

What generally happens is that one parent tells the court that the other parent’s religious pursuits are somehow harmful to the children. At that point, the court is obligated to balance the rights of the parent against the children’s interests.

For example, imagine that a Jewish mother and Christian father had agreed to raise the children in the mother’s faith. After their divorce, however, the father returns to the church of his youth — which has a decidedly evangelical nature. The Sunday sermons — to which the father takes the children during his time with them — preach that all nonChristians are doomed to spend eternity tortured in a flaming pit.

The mother, responding to her children’s alarm that they could end up that way, is naturally upset and takes the issue to court. She may simply ask the judge to bar the father from taking their children to services and preaching to them.

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 Posted on March 25, 2018 in Blog

The default position of courts in Texas is that both parents should be involved in their child’s life to the greatest extent possible. Often, this translates to joint custody, legally called joint conservatorship in Texas.

Does that mean you are basically restricted to living out the next X years in the city where you live? For example, could you accept job offers several hours away or move across the country for a few years to take care of an ailing parent?

Geographic restrictions

Visitation orders and child custody orders have geographic restrictions that explain where the parents may live under the terms of the current agreement. So, yes, if you want to relocate, your child’s other parent could make a case that doing so is not in the child’s best interests. You may have to choose between the relocation and custody of your child.

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