Check out the desk of a family law attorney and you're likely to see a box of tissues positioned on the client's side of the desktop. During the early stages of the divorce proceedings, the tissue box gets plenty of use. Clients who are consulting with counsel about the legal...

When live-in lovers decide to call it quits, the parties' relationship is not always severed by a simple division of their furniture. If romantic partners have been cohabitating for a lengthy period of time and have commingled their assets and debts, their break-up in any jurisdiction may quickly give rise...

Getting ready for trial in a divorce or child custody case can be a stressful time as litigants and litigators attempt to condense the details and documents of a relationship into the hours or days of a trial. If you're represented by counsel, it is your attorney's job to prepare...

As a practitioner of family law, I am often reminded of the childhood fable involving the scorpion and the frog. For the uninitiated, the story is as follows: A scorpion and a frog meet on the bank of a stream. The scorpion asks the frog to carry him...

Amid the flurry of accusations in child custody disputes, allegations of marijuana use rank high on the list. Until recent years, the court's position on this subject was easy to predict since judges and child custody evaluators maintained a zero tolerance policy toward smoking pot. In child custody cases within...

Several years ago, I was retained to represent "Joey", a 35-year-old gym teacher who had recently been served with divorce papers. When he arrived for the first office appointment, Joey brought his mother and readily waived confidentiality so that Mom could participate in the conference. For the next hour, I...