What to look for when the thing on the table is your kids, and why the word you searched for is already the wrong one. You type child custody attorney into your phone because that’s the phrase everybody uses. Half a dozen firm pages come back, all of them promising to fight for you, and […]
Couples getting married again in their late sixties tend to show up with the same three documents. A brokerage statement or two, the deed to a condo a couple of blocks off A1A, and a will one of them signed during a first marriage that ended in either a funeral or a courthouse. He is […]
Most alimony questions start at a kitchen table with a household budget written out by hand. Mortgage, car, insurance, the pharmacy. Then a line at the bottom with no name on it, because you have not decided what to call the money that used to arrive every other Friday from someone else’s job. Twenty-three years […]
The first appointment usually goes fine. People come in worried about the big things. The house, the kids, whether they have to keep paying for a car their spouse drives. Then we get to the part about the financial paperwork, and I watch the room change. Someone always says some version of the same thing, […]
Every year around the middle of August somebody in this office starts talking about the shutters, and by the end of the week we’ve all checked our own. You know the routine. Water, gas, batteries, the argument about whether the generator got serviced. It is a good list and it works, and every item on […]
Every year around the middle of August somebody in this office starts talking about the shutters, and by the end of the week we’ve all checked our own. You know the routine. Water, gas, batteries, the argument about whether the generator got serviced. It is a good list and it works, and every item on […]
Most of the boxes are unpacked. The car has Florida plates. In a folder you marked “Important” the week you moved, there’s a will you signed up north a long time ago. Ohio, maybe. New Jersey. You haven’t looked at it since. Nobody moves south thinking about their will. It’s paperwork from an old life, […]
How settling out of court actually works in Florida, and when it’s the smarter way through a divorce. If you’re heading into a Florida divorce, chances are you’ll sit through mediation well before you ever see the inside of a courtroom. A lot of people don’t realize that going in. You brace yourself for the witness stand and the cross-examination, and […]
Filing the petition feels like the finish line to most families, when it is closer to the starting line. All you have done by filing is ask the court for permission to begin. The estate itself does not open until a judge reviews everything and issues the personal representative a document called Letters of Administration, and the […]
A Florida family law guide to protecting your position when a divorce turns into a fight. There’s a moment in a lot of divorces when you stop expecting it to stay civil. You text about switching a weekend and get back three paragraphs about everything wrong with you. Or a few thousand dollars leaves the joint account and nobody says […]
