In any divorce case, one of the primary issues willl likely be the division of property. While the couple’s marital home may be the largest asset, another important asset for many couples is retirement accounts. In the recent case of one Riverside County couple, their April 2010 divorce order gave…
For many divorcing couples, one of the larger and more important assets is often retirement benefits. To the extent the pension or other retirement asset was earned during the marriage it is community property and subject to division in the divorce, while whatever portion was earned before the marriage of…
A big question in many California divorce cases is what happens to the family home. Property held by spouses during the course of a marriage is generally split evenly between them in divorce under the state’s community property system. Still, there are a number of ways to handle the issue, including by…
One of the many issues that often come up in California divorce cases is what to do with the family home. The state’s Fourth District Court of Appeal recently explained that a spouse who uses his or her separate money to help purchase the property is entitled to be compensated…
Once upon a time, back in the 50’s/60’s when divorce was considered somewhat shameful and there were few of the wonderful, wise and supportive divorce professionals that, with some effort, can be found these days, Bill and Helen divorced. It was a long, drawn out, torturous divorce that ended badly…
Retirement benefits are often among the most significant assets in play when a couple decides to divorce. The question of how to divide those benefits can be a tricky one that implicates both state and federal laws. As California’s Second District Court of Appeals recently explained, state law in California generally…
California divorce courts generally consider any property owned by one spouse before a marriage that spouse’s separate property to be kept by the spouse in the event of a divorce. Community property, on the other hand, includes anything that one or both spouses acquire through their efforts during the marriage,…
“Dogs are our link to paradise. They don’t know evil or jealousy or discontent. To sit with a dog on a hillside on a glorious afternoon is to be back in Eden, where doing nothing was not boring–it was peace.” ― Milan Kundera It is estimated that about 50% of…
When a divorce involves a business of one or both spouses that is community property, issues of valuation arise, including how and when the business is valued. California’s Second District Court of Appeals recently considered the question of when a business is valued. Husband and Wife divorced in April 2012,…
California law imposes what’s called a “fiduciary duty” on spouses, which mandates the highest duty of good faith and fair dealing in their interactions with each other and to not take advantage of each other through fraud or other means. As the state’s Third District Court of Appeals recently explained, however,…