Posted on January 23, 2018 in Divorce

Are you splitting with your spouse?

It may not be that easy, especially if your spouse isn’t exactly happy about the prospect of dividing up the family assets — or even the idea of letting you go. You may physically leave your spouse and still remain tethered by invisible electronic ties that your spouse has installed all around you.

Feel creeped out? You and a lot of other people have good reason to be. It’s becoming increasingly common for someone to turn to technology in order to stalk or spy on a spouse that’s leaving.

The statistics tell the story. While 1.5 percent of adults in this country are victims of stalking, that figure jumps to more than double the national norm for couples in fragmented marital relationships.

If your spouse is determined to spy on you, he or she could resort to a GPS tracking device on your car. Or, he or she might just download spyware onto your smartphone. Since it probably goes where you go, your spouse can then track your location and peek into your emails, texts and phone calls all at once.

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 Posted on January 19, 2018 in Divorce

There’s a saying that, “when one door closes, another opens.” However, for someone going through a divorce, it usually feels like all the doors are slamming shut at once.

Divorce can destroy any sense of calmness or peace that you have — and it’s easy to get angry or even bitter. Unfortunately, anger and bitterness can also lead you to mistakes. Here are some important ones to avoid:

• Don’t try to interpret everything you read on the internet. There are thousands of articles out there about divorce — but each case is unique. There’s no online guideline to your divorce. By the same token, don’t listen to your relatives over your attorney, either. None of their experiences with divorce are exactly the same as yours.
• Don’t trust your divorce case to the first attorney whose name you see. Do your research and make sure that the attorney you choose is the right one for you.

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 Posted on January 12, 2018 in Family Law

There have been few periods in history as fertile as this one for an entrepreneurial seed to take hold. Those with a passion and a plan can find their fortunes through a combination of quality work, good marketing and a consumer market that’s willing to embrace the artisan, the craftsman or the unique intellectual offerings of a visionary.

Unfortunately, embracing your passions and dreams can kill your marriage.

While there isn’t a lot of research on the subject, the anecdotal evidence is high that entrepreneurs experience a lot of marital troubles. According to the experts (including some entrepreneurs who have been there), this is why:

• The business eats into family time. The entrepreneur is forced to focus on business so often that there’s little time for family vacations, family time or even family dinners.
• The amount of mental attention the business requires can leave the entrepreneur too mentally tired to engage with his or her spouse — even when there is a social occasion or some “downtime.”

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 Posted on January 04, 2018 in Child Custody

Conventional wisdom convinces a lot of people that divorce is terribly harmful to children of any age, leaving them prone to depression, anxiety, trouble with authority and poor grades.

But what if conventional wisdom isn’t so wise and divorce really isn’t that harmful to children after all?

All of the tests and studies that have been done on the “children of divorce” suffer from essentially the same fatal flaw: It’s easy to study groups of people who came from homes where the parents divorced and compare them to groups of people where the parents remained married.

It isn’t possible, however, to peep into a parallel timeline in order to compare the children of divorce to the versions of themselves that would have come into being if their parents had stayed together.

That leaves scientists pondering a much tougher set of questions. Would those children who supposedly suffered psychological trauma from their parents’ divorce have suffered even worse trauma if their parents had stayed married?

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 Posted on December 28, 2017 in Divorce

Have you been struggling with the question of divorce? How do you know when it’s time to give it up and move on with your life instead of trying harder?

There are several different signs that can give you that answer:

You understand the consequences and are ready for them

Divorce doesn’t mean just accepting the end of your marriage, it means accepting the end of your life as you currently know it. Your entire lifestyle — from your relationship with your friends to where you live — will likely change as a result of the split. If you can’t see yourself “making it” on your own, you aren’t ready for a divorce. On the other hand, if you have a clear exit strategy and prefer a clean slate rather than staying stuck as you are, you’re ready.

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 Posted on December 27, 2017 in Blog

There may not be a perfect time to divorce, but there is a popular time to do so. Divorce rates surge upward significantly between January and March, reports CNN. Why do so many people file for divorce at the beginning of a new year?

The reasons are many, and understanding them can help you determine when the right time can be for you to divorce.

Holding off until after the holidays

Relationships do not suddenly head south at the beginning of the year. Often, they get rocky before then. With the holidays in the way, couples may wait until after the celebrations are over so as not to ruin the season for their children and families, or even for themselves. It may be easier to go through the motions for a couple months than to figure out child custody and/or new holiday arrangements right away. Couples may even have the hopes that the holiday festivities will help heal their marriages so divorce goes off the table.

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 Posted on December 21, 2017 in Family Law

DNA kits like those from Ancestry and 23 and Me are becoming commonplace everywhere. What was mostly a cottage industry has seen tremendous growth thanks to aggressive advertising in the last year or two.

That’s creating all sorts of unexpected complications for adoptees, their adoptive parents and even some birth parents. It also suggests that the law may have to eventually take new steps if it wants to keep up with the science of the times.

DNA kits are a huge hit. However, they also stand the potential for disrupting lives in numerous ways. For example, someone who hasn’t been told he or she was adopted may find out the hard way after doing a DNA test without mentioning it to his or her family in advance.

Similarly, DNA kits also sometimes unexpectedly turn up something — or someone — else: A birth parent or even siblings that might otherwise have remained a mystery. It can even uncover details that were placed under court-ordered seals and designed to stay that way in bygone years before the science was possible.

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 Posted on December 15, 2017 in Child Custody

The Ghost of Christmas Past can wield a lot of power over a family. The small, homely rituals of each previous year combine to create a certain excitement and expectation for the current year’s holiday season.

Divorce disrupts all of that — and your children may feel that disruption even more strongly than you do. So how do you help your kids regain their sense of family when it hasn’t even been a year since your divorce?

1. Talk about everyone’s feelings.

You may be afraid to bring up the subject of grief over the way things were — especially if your child hasn’t mentioned it.

However, children may just not know where to start or they may be afraid of upsetting you if they don’t seem happy. Never equate silence with the idea that everything’s okay.

Let your kids know that it’s okay to feel sad or nostalgic about the good times when your family was still intact.

Reassure them know that even though things are different, you can still have a good time over the holidays.

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 Posted on December 08, 2017 in Divorce

Are you ready for a divorce but not ready to upset the kids, your in-laws, your parents or even your spouse over the holidays?

If so, you aren’t alone. There’s something about the season that either gives people renewed hope about their marriage or makes it utterly clear that the romance is finally over.

That’s why lawyers have come to call the first Monday following the Christmas break as “Divorce Day.” According to many attorneys, Divorce Day isn’t strictly an American custom — it’s a phenomenon seen in several different countries where Christmas is an important tradition. Come the following Monday, however, appointments to file for divorce nearly triple the usual number.

Some relationship gurus even think that there’s a combination of factors at play:

• People don’t want to associate the holidays with their divorce or set that image up in their children’s minds (if they have any).

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 Posted on November 30, 2017 in Family Law

Domestic violence is a very real hazard when it comes time for couples to split up. The sad truth is that domestic violence can spill over from just the two people involved in the relationship into the lives of others in tragic ways.

For example, the recent shooting in a Texas church that took the lives of 26 people and inflicted injuries on another 20 people as they were praying stemmed entirely from complicated family issues.

Among the victims were several relatives of the gunman’s estranged wife. He and his mother-in-law had been exchanging text messages and his had taken a threatening tone. It’s believed that he felt that his wife’s family was to blame for the couple’s estrangement.

In the past, the shooter had been violent with his wife. According to records that were recently made public, the gunman had previously hit and choked his wife. He also stuck his wife’s child hard enough that he could have either seriously injured or killed the girl.

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