Often I meet parents who do not know that they can get the help they need from a family court* even if they cannot afford to hire a lawyer. Please do not misunderstand. Almost any time you need a court to make a decision about your child’s wellbeing, it is good to seek advice […]

  Once I read a news article that said divorce is so expensive that many low-income Americans cannot afford it. Although this may be true for some extremely poor people, almost any pair of spouses who can afford to live apart from each other can afford to get divorced. In Virginia, a little time with

  At work, in your neighborhood, and in your family, you may from time to time run into a dispute that matters. You may want to negotiate with the other party about solving the problem. My work consists of facilitating negotiations, so here are a few tips. 1. If, like many, you have a win-lose

Most mediated Parenting Agreements address at least three topics: decision making, the parenting schedule, and child support. The first, whether one parent will make most of the decisions alone or the two parents will confer with each other when making major decisions about the children’s care and upbringing, is sometimes labeled in court as legal custody.

A divorced dad once told me how he thought about child support. “My ex-wife committed the crime of taking my child away from me, and now I have to pay her for it.” I get it. That is how it feels to a non-custodial parent who never wanted the spouse and child to stop living

I know a lot of people who thought their divorce hearing date would be Independence Day.  Some were wrong. Some were right. They were at last free to go their separate ways, with assets and debts disentangled and divided. Actually, they could have been free in that respect months earlier if they had worked with

For more fun, start with the “Test Your Marital IQ” quiz in the June 21, 2015 blog post on this site. Here are the questions (without the multiple choice answers). 1. Which was the LEAST traditional form of marriage in history? 2. What was the most important function of marriage from Paleolithic times to the Early Modern

  My daughter inspired this article. Her father and I separated when she was just 2 1/2 years old. She cannot remember a time when her family was just one family in one house. When she graduated from college, she wanted to have a party at which everyone she cared about could celebrate with her.