Lee’s Divorce & Family Law Blog

Here’s the page on steps we can take to prepare for life in a post-petroleum world.

I’ve added some new pages on Divorceinfo.com dealing with Peak Oil. Here’s the first. I’d love to know your thoughts.

I just got word this morning that the Alabama Supreme Court has rejected the proposed new child support guidelines. I understand from my friend Julie Palmer that the court has asked Justice Lyn Stuart to articulate the court’s concerns to its Advisory Committee on Child Support Guidelines and Enforcement. At this point, I’ve heard nothing about the specifics of the court’s concerns.

We’ve known this was coming for decades, and now it’s here. More than 50% of households in America (and Alabama) are headed by a single person (either divorced, never married, or widowed). The figure hovers at just over 50% for the U.S. and for Alabama. Here’s a story about it from the Athens News Courier.

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Today is One Web Day, set aside for people around the world to celebrate the Internet and ponder how it has changed our lives. I invite you to join.

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Driven by the anecdotal interviews and the peripatitetic web presence of Judith Wallerstein, the culture accepts it as a given that divorce is always terrible for children. Now comes research from the University of Florida challenging this widely held assumption. The doctoral dissertation looked at two groups of girls between the 1st and 10th grades, those whose parents divorced and those whose parents filed for divorce but remained married. The girls whose parents divorced scored eight points higher on standardized tests than the girls whose parents filed but stayed together.

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I’m seeing an epidemic in my practice now of parents designing their own arrangement to avoid the need for child support. Many of their custom-designed plans work smoothly, but many of them disentegrate later. Are you sure it’s a good idea to give up child support?

Read about the disadvantages of plans in lieu of child support.

Once again Alabama appears to international readers to be a haven for brutish, ignorant men and women. The latest is an AP story in the International Herald Tribune, describing the arrest of a man in Cottonwood who’s charged with holding his estranged wife’s leg in an ant bed, causing her to be stung at least 100 times.

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Yeah, been away too long. Call it the summer doldrums, nothing going on, or too many distractions, but my last entry was in July. Inexcusable. I apologize.

Divorce is at a five year low in the UK, and predictably, the therapists are crediting more people with being cautious before trooping to the altar. That’s a nice reframe. My anecdotal observation is that more and more couples are enjoying the benefits of marriage (companionship, saving money on living costs, sex, and making babies) and simply aren’t bothering to marry. I may be right or wrong.

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It’s fairly well-known how divorce courts approach the painful issues about where children should live. Pets are a different issue. Vastly different.

Read about visitation with pets after divorce

A writ of mandamus (man DAMM us) is a way to get appellate review of a case when an ordinary appeal would be inadequate. Technically, a writ of mandamus asks the appellate court to order a judge to do something. If the appellate court orders a judge not to do something, it’s called a writ of prohibition.

Read more about the Writ of Mandamus in Alabama

Whether the court intends it or not, pendente lite (temporary) orders for custody or visitation can have explosive consequences. Can you appeal a pendente lite order? The Alabama Court of Civil Appeals dealt with this question in P.B. v. P.C., Case No. 2050280 (Ala. Civ. App. June 30, 2006). The answer is no, but you can file a writ of mandamus.

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Alabama’s rule on what it takes to support a change of custody is murky, but one principle is working its way through the muddle: the preference of a child for a change in custody is not enough to justify a change. You’ll find the latest illustration of this in Marusich v. Bright, Case No. 2050035 (Ala. Civ. App. June 30, 2006).

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When is a claim for custody so frivolous, so groundless, that the party filing it should pay the other party’s attorney fees for defending it? That’s the question the Alabama Court of Civil Appeals faced in Scarbourough v. Darling, Case No. 2040659 (Ala. Civ. App. June 30, 2006).

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Yesterday we reviewed the case of Toler v. Toler. In that case the Alabama Court of Civil Appeals balanced the McLendon rule of repose against the no-move presumption built into the relocation statute. The mother in Toler had sole physical custody. Today we deal with the flip side of that analysis, a case in which the relocating mother had joint physical custody with the father. The case is Drew v. McCullar, Case No. 2040866 (Ala. Civ. App. June 30, 2006).

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The Alabama Court of Civil Appeals has made its strongest statement yet in defense of, and interpreting, the Alabama Parent Child Relationship Protection Act, commonly known as the relocation statute. Speaking in its Per Curiam (for the Court) opinion in Toler v. Toler, Case No. 2040757 (Ala. Civ. App. June 30, 2006), the appeals court reversed a trial court’s decision to allow the mother of a child to move and take her child with her without rebutting the presumption against relocation built into the statute.

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A couple of days ago we talked about when to give the notice required by the Alabama Relocation Act - the “Alabama Parent-Child Relationship Protection Act.” Today we’ll think through who must give the notice.

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Alabama has succumbed more than any other to the Father’s Rights power complex, and it has the most restrictive relocation statute in the nation. How does its notice provision work? Let’s take a look. Today we’ll explore when to give the notice. Tomorrow we’ll think through who must give the notice and how to respond to it.

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The Supreme Court of Canada has ruled that, although misconduct like adultery is not relevant in a divorce case, the consequences of that misconduct may be. In Leskun v. Leskun, 2006 SCC 25 (Sup. Ct. Canada June 21, 2006), the husband had argued that alimony ordered by the trial court in 1999 should stop.

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The right to adopt in Alabama is a creature of statute, not common law. So unless the statute “by express provision or necessary implication” confers the right of adoption, it doesn’t exist. Courts require strict adherence to the statutory requirements in adoption proceedings. Just how strict was the question before the Alabama Court of Civil Appeals in Hays v. Hays, Case No. 2040482 (Ala. Civ. App. June 23, 2006).

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