“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,…
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…
California’s community property system is meant to simplify property division issues in divorce cases by making it clear that all property gained through the efforts of either or both spouses during the marriage is to be split evenly between them. The reality, however, is that complicated issues still arise, including…
If you’ve read this blog before, you may already know that we prefer to help clients resolve divorce and other family law matters through alternatives to litigation that help them work collaboratively with a former spouse to reach a positive solution. One of the many drawbacks of the traditional litigation…
Gwyneth Paltrow’s announcement on her website Goop last year that she and husband Chris Martin were divorcing presented the views of Dr. Habib Sadeghi & Dr. Sherry Sami, apparently experts on what it means to divorce. Sadeghi and Sami use evolutionary biology and the structure of the human skeleton (“Life…
California courts typically look at both the kid’s needs and the parents’ ability to pay when considering child support after a divorce. The second factor often centers on the former spouses’ incomes, but sometimes that figure doesn’t tell the whole story. The Second District Court of Appeals recently considered a…