California courts usually won’t change a spousal support award unless the person who wants to alter the award shows that there’s been a sufficiently significant change in circumstances to warrant the modification. On the other hand, state spousal support law carries with it a strong preference that a person receiving…
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…
Few, if any, parents would wish to punish their children for something they had nothing to do with, and would bristle at such a suggestion. And yet, so many do just that. This frequently happens in divorces where a parent has had an affair, has spent an inordinate amount of…
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,…
California law operates under a set of guidelines in child support cases that is used to calculate a parent’s support obligations based primarily on each parent’s income and time with the child. The overall aim of the guidelines is to set the support at an amount that attempts to equalize the…
“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,…
An annulment is a legal procedure in which a court rules that a marriage is legally invalid. Unlike a divorce, in which parties agree to legally end their marriage, an annulment treats that marriage as if it were invalid from the start. There are limited grounds on which an annulment…
Filing a petition for dissolution of marriage in California, just like filing any other type of lawsuit in the Golden State, requires a lot of dotting of “I’s” and crossing of “T’s,” so to speak. In other words, there are a number of rules and regulations that must be closely…
When a couple decides to divorce, one of the many issues that they often grapple with is how to divide community property. California law provides that any and all assets acquired due to the efforts of either spouse during the course of the marriage are to be split evenly between them…