Sometimes custody cases can take time, especially if we want to make sure you receive the best representation possible. We get it – it’s frustrating playing the long game, and there will be times when you feel like there is no movement happening in your case. The goal...
Children
Does Signing a Birth Certificate Legitimize a Child?
When it comes to parenthood, one of the most important questions parents or guardians might face is whether signing a birth certificate provides a child with the legal recognition and status they deserve. It’s a decision laden with emotional, legal, and lifelong...
How Old is Old Enough?
Every so often, I get a question related to children being left home without adult supervision; the particular inquiry being at what age a parent can do that without consequence of the legal variety. My short, immediate answer is always it depends (ugh yes, I know)....
Who Gets the Church?
One often overlooked aspect in the divisions that occur with a divorce is that of continued participation in the church the family attended. While certainly there’s a possible outcome where both spouses continue to attend the same church post-divorce, for many...
Geese
You don’t need me to tell you that children are very impressionable. They imprint on pretty much everything that you say and do. You set their standards. You establish what is normal, what is acceptable, what they should tolerate, what they should seek for...
Involuntary Termination of Parental Rights
The thought of losing their child fills most parents with abject terror. Losing a child to disease, accident, or fate is what most parents imagine, but it is also possible for the State to terminate your parental rights completely. This is more than just a social...
Child Hearsay: When Can We Use it?
I hear it time and time again: clients asking why we cannot use the video or audio recording of their children in court. It can be so tempting to record your child saying that they don’t like going to dad’s house or telling you that mom yells at them a lot. And we get...
The Art of the Emergency Hearing
Going through divorce is hard enough. Facing a custody battle with your soon to be ex can be excruciating. Losing a loved one in the face of having children or grandchildren who need your help, your care, all of this is new territory, something unfamiliar and...
When It Lingers, It Festers
When it lingers, it festers. And, my life, it is festering; it is uncertain in its transformation of a rancid variety. It is less than ideal. The wounds opened in divorce were not healing. Seventy-four days have passed since that day, a day I realized was more wound...
Violence as Entertainment. What on Earth are We Doing?
I’m on the airplane. As is often the case, I’m noticing what movies other passengers around me are watching. The guy in a row ahead of me, just to the right, is watching Expendables 4. Here’s an early scene: Bad guys want something nuclear from the keeper of this...