Marriage with Eyes Wide Open and Divorce
This past week I met with two separate clients who were each planning to get married. One of them was hiring me to assist them with a premarital agreement. The other wanted information about what a premarital agreement was, but was really much more interested in...
Winning, Losing and Divorce
There is an African proverb that says “When elephants fight it is the grass that suffers.” Much can be drawn from this wisdom. There is a lot of collateral damage that arises from conflict and there is often harm done to the innocent bystanders looking on. In the...
Happiness, Unhappiness and Divorce
I will readily admit that Divorce is not a happy topic. Most of the couples I am working with are going through a life event that is understandably making them very unhappy. There are studies that show that unhappiness is not good for your health and can lead to...
Taking the weight off our shoulders and Divorce
Back in 2020 I shifted my divorce practice to full time mediation and two years ago I made the final Court appearance in my last remaining contested case. As a mediator I do not represent either side so, while I am regularly filing paperwork with the Court to...
Upcoming Changes to Child Support and Child Support Add Ons
It wasn’t too long ago when I wrote about how little guideline child support has changed over the past 30 years. Change is now afoot. The California legislature has adopted SB-343 which modifies the formula for calculating child support and makes some notable...
Gratitude and Simple Things That Matter
I have this little practice that I implemented a few years ago where I wake up each morning around 5 o’clock, enjoy my cup of coffee in the quiet house, spend a little time with my thoughts and do a little writing. It gives me a little time to just be and invariably...
The things we control, the things we don’t, and Divorce.
I spent last night in the Portland airport. I was just finishing up a nice little vacation and it was a late flight to maximize the last day of the trip. After a couple of nominal delay notifications from the airline, we boarded the plane 45 minutes or so late and...
Positivity, Appreciation and Divorce.
When the walls are closing in and the world is crashing down, one of the hardest things for us to do is to find anything positive in all of it. It is human nature to have our failings bring us down and put us in a negative place. I have certainly had difficulties in...
Maintaining Control and Divorce
There are many different emotions that we experience heading into a divorce. A couple of big ones are the sense of losing control and the fear of the unknown and unexpected. We are afraid of being unfairly treated and taken advantage of. We have never done this...
Fault and Divorce.
The issue of “no fault” divorce has become a recent topic of interest on the national stage. There has been talk of certain conservative states walking back their “no-fault” divorce policies and reinstituting a requirement for a spouse seeking a divorce to show that...