What does the “date of separation” mean and why is it so important? When a spouse files for divorce the first issue to tackle is often the parties’ date of separation. One might think that the date of separation is when the petition was filed in the divorce, or when…
For most people, the decision to get divorced is not reached on a whim. More often than not, “Breaking up is like knocking over a Coke machine. You can’t do it in one push. You gotta rock it back and forth a few times, and then it goes over.” (-Jerry…
During marriage, neither spouse is supposed to devalue the community estate by wasting of assets. “Wasting” means spending community money for a non-marital purpose. The classic case has been the spouse who changes his lifestyle, often in the process acquiring a friend to whom the spouse gives money, pays expenses…
Earlier this year, Amazon tycoon Jeff Bezos announced his divorce from wife MacKenzie after 25 years of marriage and four children together. The couple met and married before Jeff founded Amazon. Jeff, who has a reported net worth of nearly $157 billion is the world’s richest man. The couple, who…
In a previous blog, we talked about different classes of experts (Joint, Hired Gun, Review) employed in family law cases. In this blog, we will talk about the different “types” of experts we use in family law. Forensic Accountant Forensic accounting is a specialty practice area of accounting that is…
Lawyers love to make jokes about how bad we are at math. Often those jokes include statements like, “if I were good at math I would have become an engineer” or if “I was good at math and science I would be a doctor not a lawyer.” Nobody likes lawyer…
A new product has just come on the market that may have piqued your interest if you are going through a divorce: Divorce Insurance. That’s right, you read correctly, divorce insurance actually exists! A man named Richard Zizian, a legal educator and holder of a California Juris Doctorate (not a…
Every once in a while, there is a divorce case where there is a real risk that one of the parties is going to bilk a community property financial account and run. This is more likely to happen in cases where one party has connections to another country and wishes…
It is no secret that getting a divorce can be pricey. While there is almost no way to estimate exactly how much any particular divorce will cost to finalize, there are some fees that will be present in any divorce case. In this blog we will break down some of…
Discovery is not the first topic that comes to mind when parties meet with a family law attorney for the first time. In fact, there is a good chance most litigants have no idea what discovery actually is. Sure, anyone who watches any of the serialized crime dramas on TV…