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 […]
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 […]
A father sat in our office last year with a folder he had been keeping for months. Inside were dates and times, every Sunday his ex had brought their son back late. Some of them were six or seven minutes. The worst one was fifteen. He wanted to take her back to court over it, and he was not […]
A practical guide to choosing the right divorce attorney in Volusia County, and the mistakes that cost people the most. By the time you go looking for a divorce lawyer, you’ve usually got a name or two written down already. A cousin who went through her own a few years back gave you one. Somebody […]
