The lender intent rule in California family law is, at once, one of the most consequential and one of the most unfathomable rules.
The general idea is this: if a loan is incurred during the marriage, that loan, and any proceeds acquired with said loan, will presumed to be a community obligation/property. The burden then falls on the party seeking to show that the loan is separate to produce evidence to that effect. What exactly is that burden? Well, therein lies the rub.
The State of California imposes very broad duties of disclosure between spouses that are in the midst of a divorce. Inevitably, a spouse will try to cut corners or try to defraud their spouse altogether in an attempt to get an edge in the divorce case. The Family Code has built-in provisions that severely punish or otherwise disincentivize this kind of behavior. We will talk about a few of these provisions below.
Billionaire tech mogul Elon Musk’s wife, British actress Talulah Riley, filed for divorce on March 21st in Los Angeles. Musk may be experiencing deja vu right about now, as this is the second time that the couple will be going through a divorce. Originally married in 2010, the two already divorced in 2012. Then they remarried just a year later, in 2013. And yet again, Musk filed for divorce in 2015, only to later dismiss his request. This time it is Riley who pulled the trigger to initiate the divorce process once again.
At a recent continuing education seminar for San Diego family law attorneys, a family court judge was asked what, if anything, the court tries to do to minimize the harmful impacts of divorce on children. The judge responded that she often refers families in her courtroom to a program called Kids’ Turn San Diego, and that she has found the program to be very beneficial for children whose parents are going through a divorce. I began to do some research on the program out of my own curiosity, and I’ve decided to share a bit about the program in case any of our readers with children are also interested in knowing more about what they can do to help their child cope with divorce or separation.
Let’s be honest shall we? I am a custody attorney, and there is only one kind of custody case that I take to trial; the high conflict custody case. (Okay…To be fair I take other custody cases to trial that are not “high conflict”, but those are generally move away cases that almost always require a trial.)
But just as a robbery detective does not do his job because he loves theft, as a custody lawyer I do not do my job because I love high conflict cases. Quite the opposite is true. My favorite case is the “low conflict” custody case. The problem is those cases do not get talked about.
One of the most frequent complaints I hear from family law litigants is the length of time it takes to finalize their divorce. Some of the fault for this complaint is institutional while a good deal of the time it takes to finalize a divorce is a result of each case’s unique issues. In this blog I want to discuss some of the institutional reason why divorce cases take time to resolve.
Rabbi Mendel Epstein began a 10-year sentence on March 1st after being sentenced by a New York judge in December 2015 for kidnapping and torturing men into granting their wives religious divorces. This may sound a bit outrageous, but in order to understand the Rabbi’s crime, you must first understand the basics of Jewish divorce.
This blog is a follow up to a previous blog titled “Should I go to Trial.” If you have not read that blog it is worth reading, and not just because I wrote. There are many factors you should discuss with your attorney before you go to trial. The two main factors are the amount of time required to go to trial and the cost of doing so. Each of these is unique in every case so my earlier blog does not go into them. Before you ever set a trial date it is imperative you discuss this with your attorney.
Online dating is everywhere these days. As I hear more and more stories from friends and family members who meeting their significant others online; I receive a wedding invitation for my college roommate’s wedding to a man she met online; and my TV becomes increasingly flooded with eHarmony and Match.com commercials; it is inescapable! And, I don’t doubt that you have experienced the same or similar things I have. Although online dating intrigues me on many levels, as a divorce attorney, I can’t help but wonder what, if any, impact the rise of online dating in our society has had on marriages and divorces today.
Spend any time watching American television or movies and you will witness scenes filmed inside a Courtroom. Sometimes they are filmed in a soundstage and other times in an actual Courtroom. No matter the location they convey the same message. Everything else failed in a case and now it is time for the exciting conclusion that is your trial. The lawyers get together in their perfectly pressed (and well fitting) suits, witnesses are called, evidence is argued, and eventually Ben Matlock gets a witness to admit they are guilty. These moments, colloquially referred to as “Perry Mason” moments, are thrilling on TV. I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but they almost never happen. If they do happen, they are never as exciting as on TV.
San Diego Divorce Attorneys Blog