Alimony and the new tax code

P Lease check out the latest post from Gentile, Horoho & Avalli regarding the new  Tax Code and its affect on alimony.

http://gha-lawfirm.com/tax-alimony/

New Year, New Resolution (Methods): Collaborative Divorce

I find the beginning of a new year is a good time to remind people of the some of the new alternative to divorce and custody litigation, as well as other, more traditional means of dispute resolution.

When someone realizes that they are facing a divorce or custody dispute, they often face a moment of terror. Not just because there are now major questions looming as to how they will divide their assets or see their children, but because of the images it conjures up. Many immediately think of the tall, dark, imposing wooden panels of the courtroom walls; the stern, gavel-banging judge deciding their fate; the watchful eye of the gallery staring down the parties as their lawyers shout objections and witnesses burst into tears.

Fortunately, most of these images come more from a poorly written episodes of “Law & Order” than from reality. Even if a divorce or child custody disputes do proceeds towards litigation, typically the family court does not involve any of these sensationalized components. It’s more likely to involve modern facilities, a lack of gallery, limited objections and, frankly, I’ve never seen a judge bang a gavel once. There are, however, plenty of tears.

Nonetheless, the idea of something as personal as a separation from your spouse, or the custody of your children, proceeding in court can (and to some extent probably should) be a little terrifying.

In essence, in the traditional litigation process, a party appears in court, where they will sit quietly while someone they barely know (their lawyer) argues the facts and circumstances of their life to a person who essentially does not know them at all (the judge), who ultimately decides how they live the rest of their life—both financially and with regard to their children.

Many of the decisions in family court will be made without the parties even being present, and when they are, much like traditionally good children, they are preferred to be seen and not heard. All of this isolation from the decision making process can be quite terrifying for parties. In some ways it is even more terrifying than the specter of the dark wood panels and booming echoes of the stern Judge’s words off of the walls. It is for this reason, over the years, many parties have sought to find an alternative means of dispute resolution to assist them with their divorce and child custody matters.

One of the newer movements in alternative resolution in family law is the use of Collaborative Law techniques.

Collaborative divorce has been cited in several studies as offering parties an alternative to traditional litigation which is more confidential, faster, and potentially less expensive than the traditional path. More important to the parties themselves, I believe, is the fact that they are active participants in the collaborative divorce process.

By design, the collaborative divorce process focuses on the parties’ goals and interests, and their ability to work with one another, not just to finalize an initial agreement but also in the long term. Often the parties will have many years of co-parenting ahead of them, and a collaborative divorce can help them to communicate better, allowing them to address minor issues which may arise over the years without the need to lawyer up and run to court.

So What is Collaborative Divorce? Visit my website or keep an eye out for my next post to learn more.

For more information about collaborative law, or other means of dispute resolution, please feel free to contact me at 412-261-9900 to schedule a consultation. You may also contact me through my website at www.uncouplingpittsburgh.com.

Please note that commenting on this blog or otherwise electronically corresponding with Attorney Myers does not create an attorney/client relationship.

Which Home for the Holidays?

Its that time of year again! I'm not speaking of inappropriately early to arrive Christmas commercials and Toy books, I'm talking about holiday custody disputes.

For families that have separated, or are separating, deciding on holiday custody arrangements can be difficult. Below are some thoughts from an experienced child custody attorney on how to work through these issues.

With Thanksgiving arriving in just two (2) weeks, and Christmas, Hanukkah and a host of other holidays just around the corner, I wanted to recirculate my previous holiday post, updated slightly. Though another year may have passed, it rings just as true.

On the Simpsons, Helen Lovejoy is often quoted as saying, “Will someone please think of the children?”

I think this is a particularly appropriate sentiment during the holiday season. For families who have not been “intact” for some time or others who are going through a transition, often the stress of the holiday season, coupled with the additional stress of new living circumstances, makes the holidays particularly trying.

I find clients who are transitioning to their new lives find the first holiday season to be particularly difficult. Everyone faces stresses associated with the holidays in the form of decorating, baking, buying presents, making merry and balancing budgets. Those facing the new world of contemplating whose Christmas festivities the kids will attend and what holiday traditions can survive the transition have it particularly hard.

To those of you who have already worked through these issues, and who know exactly what you will be doing this holiday season, where the kids will be over their break, etc., I commend you on the efforts that had to go in to finalizing these arrangements and making peace with the new schedule.

To those of you who are just facing these challenges for the first time, I wanted to share some thoughts.

1) Helen Lovejoy was right. We should be thinking of the children. The holiday season, Thanksgiving and Christmas break…these are magical moments for them and getting bogged down in the stress or fights over exactly how they will be spent detracts from that magic. Even if you are not so foolish as to try and discuss these issues with your children (which is hopelessly inappropriate), your stress still shows and they’ll still pick up on it. First off, never, ever, ever talk to your children about difficulties that you’re having making holiday arrangements, or tell them you’re sad that they won’t be there with you Christmas morning or anything of the like. They’re your children, let them stay that way. The world is going to do enough to disavow them of their innocence and hope; don’t speed up the process.

2) Do talk to somebody. Separation and divorce are incredibly stressful and emotionally painful experiences. Going through them alone and maintaining some degree of self and sanity is nearly impossible. Talk to your friends. Talk to your family. Talk to your priest. Talk to your therapist. Talk to somebody. Anybody—(except your children). You can talk to your lawyer, too, but it’s best that you rely upon them for some education on your legal rights and responsibilities and not the emotional issues. We bill at a higher hourly rate than therapists and we’re never covered by insurance.

3) You should talk to your co-parent. Now that you’ve talked out some of the emotional pain that goes with trying to navigate these new issues, it’s time to talk to somebody else, and that’s the other person, the person with whom you’re sharing custody of your children, not just for this holiday season, but for the rest of your lives. The sooner you can work out a schedule for how holiday custody will work and where the children will be over their break, the sooner you can close this chapter and move forward with actually enjoying the holiday season.

Not everyone can talk through their issues in a reasonable, productive manner. They may have to turn to lawyers or to the Courts for help. Let me assure you of two things:

1) There is emergency Motions Court on December 22nd which will be filled with almost nothing but last minute motions trying to resolve Christmas custody disputes; and

2) You do not want to be there.

Please make the effort at resolution. If you can’t talk it through between yourselves, perhaps you can try mediating, or having your attorneys negotiate, but I assure you, you do not want to be litigating where your child eats dinner or opens a gift.

Divorce or separation from the parent of your children will be hard. Nobody can make it easy. Talking to the right people, learning the right information, and addressing your outstanding disputes in a timely manner will make it easier.

There is no cure for the hurt, but there are many proactive things you can do to try to minimize how that impacts you and your children and how you navigate the co-parenting relationship moving forward.

In all likelihood, you will share custody of your children. It’s almost a guarantee that you will share custody on the holidays. It will be necessary to make new traditions and work on moving forward. The better you do that, the more positive lessons you teach your children about how to work with others, to manage your emotions and hurt, and to move forward in a responsible manner. As I said above, life will do plenty to eat away at your children’s innocence and hope. Don’t help it. What you’re doing now is teaching them the skills to deal with those upsets that will happen in their own lives.

Teach them well and enjoy the holiday season.

www.uncouplingpittsburgh.com

School Choice?

Well, the Facebook page keeps telling me that it's been quite some time since I posted.   This, of course, forces me to think to myself, “What have I been up to since the last time I put up a blog post?” For the most part, the answer is school choice hearings. Anyone who practices in family law or has had much experience with it knows exactly what I'm talking about. People who do not probably are wondering what in the heck that means.

In Family Court, summer is school choice season.  What does that mean exactly?  Well, if you live in one school district and the person with whom you share custody lives in another, you will have to decide what school your child is going to attend. If you have been sharing custody and a parent moves to another school district, you may also face this issue.   Somebody might move, necessitating dealing with this tough issue. It could be that your child does nothing more than make it out of 5th grade and into middle school and now you're left wondering which middle school, because while you and your ex live in the same district that doesn't necessarily mean that your houses feed to the same middle school

You should probably just try to figure this one out, but if you don’t, what happens?

If you’re paying attention, you probably have your lawyer in court by late winter explaining to the Judge that, “Mom and Dad can't agree where Johnny should attend school and could the court please help us sort this out?“   

If the Court is going to help you to sort this one out, the first step is to have a judicial conciliation. I think I've mentioned judicial conciliations before in the context of a general custody case.  The principle is pretty much the same in the school choice context.  The parties’ attorneys explain to the Judge why it is they believe a particular school would be in the best interest of the child, and the Judge may offer some assistance in resolution if a compromise can possibly be reached.  However, most of the time you can’t just split the difference on schools, and where your child attends can often have an indirect impact on your overall custody schedule.  Transportation, activities, and a whole host of other issues are affected. 

When selecting between two different school districts there may be arguments that one is superior to the other based on test scores, class sizes, the teachers that you met when you went on a tour, and a thousand other little things that parties are likely to go find on the internet when they want to prove that they're making the better choice for their child.

School choice can be approached one of two ways.  First, the parties can ask the Court to decide which of the parents should have the right to make the decision because they're the superior decision maker and they are more likely to make a decision in the best interest of the minor child, etc.  More often though, the parties agree to allow the Court to make the decision as to which school Johnny attends.

Assuming that no compromise is reached at conciliation, the parties will then be scheduled to have a hearing (typically lasting a half-day) in front of the Court to present the Judge with information as to why their school should be chosen for Johnny.  

Prior to the hearing, the parties will be required to file Pretrial Statements telling the Court why you want what you want,  the people you will bring in as witnesses, documents you will  present, etc. Pretrial Statements are typically used to lay out the history of your case for the Court and bring up any other relevant issues in the past that may help them to make a decision with regards to school choice.   Many times, people want to use school choice as an opportunity to rehash and re-litigate their overall custody case.  This only expands the scope and prep of an already expensive decision making process.

Then there is trial prep--Meeting with attorneys to prepare for the case, having attorneys speak to witnesses, review documents, outline testimony, etc.

Then there is the hearing itself.   For every hour your lawyer spends in Court, there are several hours of preparatory work behind it.  So your lawyer meets with you, heads over to Court and is there for 3 or 4 or even 8 hours.  Math that out several times over, and your bill is really starting to add up for not being able to talk this through with your co-parent.

If it’s starting to, once again, sound like if you put more effort into working with each other and less into litigation you'd be happier and save a whole lot of money, that's because it’s probably true.   While there will always be situations that involve issues that simply do not allow for compromise (when there is abuse, or addiction, or other concerns for the child’s safety and well being), those are the exception, not the norm.  

So what's the takeaway?

If you haven't yet decided where Johnny is going to kindergarten in the fall, you are behind, but it’s not too late to raise the issue and if there's something very pressing going on, you may even get to talk to a Judge before fall semester.  Nonetheless, if you are facing a school choice issue or anticipate doing so in the future, you should probably start thinking about contacting an attorney now to see if anything can be done to resolve the issue or to, at least, have sufficient time to submit it to the Court.

If you like this post, please let me know by liking and sharing and, as always, if you have any questions, please don't hesitate to post in the comments section.  (Which does NOT create an attorney-client relationship.  You actually have to actually schedule an appointment and retain me for that to happen.)

Vacation (custody) All I Ever Wanted - updated for 2017

With the arrival of Memorial Day weekend and the official kick off of summer, it seemed a good time to share my post regarding vacation custody time. While another year has passed, the thoughts remain and will likely continue to be true. If you have a child, and the other parent has ANY custody time, I strongly suggest you read the below post, and contact me if you find yourself in a situation requiring legal assistance.

I am sure that if you haven’t already, at some point this summer just about all of you have had a conversation with a friend or relative about their plans for their big summer vacation this year: where they are taking the kids, what they are doing, how much those ride-all-day passes cost at the amusement park, etc.

What they probably didn’t share with you is whether or not their attorney had to go to court to make that happen. Seems kind of crazy, doesn’t it? That somewhere between airfare, hotel rooms, and tickets to Wally World, your friend or relative may have also been paying someone $300 per hour to go to Motion’s Court to ask for permission for a relatively mundane thing like a vacation with their children.

Unfortunately, I can assure you that this is an issue that arises in family cases and which has me spending a couple of days every summer standing in Motion’s Court along with numerous other attorneys (also billing their clients) to fight about the right of someone to take their children to the beach.

Maybe some of you reading this had to do exactly that.

Maybe some of you reading this are the reason someone else had to do exactly that.

In either case, it seems like a timely topic and a good opportunity to provide some advice:

1. You aren’t stopping a vacation request.

Are you co-parenting with Charles Manson?

If the answer to that question is no, then the answer to their vacation request is yes.

Even people who have minimal custody time throughout the year are going to have some entitlement to summer vacation. Yes, there are exceptions.

Family court is ruled by exceptions, not governed by rules.

Certainly, if there has been a history of abuse, substance abuse, etc., this may raise more questions about vacation time than your average case, but even in these situations, chances are the other side is getting a vacation with their kids. They may have to take a supervisor. That supervisor might be a parent, sibling, or some other relative/agreed upon third party. People on Megan’s List have taken their children on vacation. I am aware of more than one.

Saying that the court recognizes a very strong right to be able to take your children out of town for a week would be a gross understatement. While there may be whistles and bells and stipulations, chances are the vacation is happening. As always, the particular facts and circumstances will dictate whether or not there should be strings attached, and if so, what strings, but chances are you are losing your anti-vacation argument, or at least compromising your position considerably.

2. No, there is not an absolute right to throw your child in the car and drive towards the sunset. Much like any other issue that involves co-parenting, there has to be a sharing of information. Both parties are entitled to know where their kids are, on vacation or otherwise. This is true whether they are in town or out of town. It is particularly true when crossing state lines, international boundaries, etc.

At a bare minimum, the other side should know where you are going, how you are getting there, and how you can be reached once you have arrived. Depending upon how much the parties trust each other, there could be more or less information that needs to be exchanged, like how often you will communicate with the children via phone, if there is to be Skyping, exactly what family members will be there, whether or not alcohol can be consumed, etc. Itineraries for flights should be exchanged, hotel address and phone number should be provided, and agreeing to send a text to confirm you arrived safely isn’t going to kill anyone.

3. Vacations are generally also a “good for the goose, good for the gander” situation. You would like to take a week’s vacation to the beach and you want to tell the other side that they can’t? Again, unless you are sharing custody with Charles Manson, they are getting the same vacation rights you are.

You will probably get the same vacation rights every year so long as you are sharing custody of your children. Some people need these to be memorialized and go into painstaking details in a formal agreement as to who gets to select their vacation dates first in odd years versus even years, how many days’ notice you must provide, how detailed your itinerary has to be, etc. But, again, you are going on vacation.

Quite frankly, in more than a decade of practice, I don’t know that I have ever seen a vacation request denied. Certainly not in a situation where someone has provided reasonable notice, has a reasonable plan and is willing to reasonably accommodate the concerns of the other side.

Noticing a theme about reasonableness here? It is the golden rule in custody arrangements between parties. Make reasonable requests, grant a reasonable permission, don’t pay $300 per hour to go have a judge decide whether or not your kid should get to go to Disney World. They probably already think that they do.

If you found this helpful, please like and share and don't forget to visitwww.uncouplingpittsburgh.com for more information

I'm a Super Lawyer Again!

Super Proud to again be named a Super Lawyer Rising Star!

ACBA Elections !!

Thank you to everyone who voted for me in the ACBA elections.Proud to announce I am now a Member of the Judiciary Committee !