Florida Divorce * Child Custody * Domestic Violence Law Lawyer | Boca Raton

Today, there are support groups and boot camps for every conceivable purpose.

Now, one divorcee has made it her mission to be a booster for women going through divorce. Her objective is to empower women with helpful resources and to inform them that life will be good again.

Her tools include a workbook and a book, and, most recently, a daylong boot camp featuring workshops with speakers in complementary disciplines, such as psychology, personal training, etc.

Read more in this Kansas City.com article: Moving on: Living beyond midlife divorce.

A divorce case in which the parties are disputing whether Spain or the UK is the proper jurisdiction for division of the marital assets really needn’t be noteworthy.

But one such case is. Because the parties have spent £ 1.5 million in legal fees.

Merely disputing jurisdiction.

Of course, the precise amount of legal fees does depend upon the exchange rate in effect. Yet, any way you cut it, that’s an awful lot of money.

And the fight over the actual division of assets hasn’t started yet. But it has been decided that that will be duked out in the UK.

One can only imagine what the total legal fees for the entire case will be…

On the other hand, it could be worse. The couple still have about £ 133 million between them.

Read more in this article in The Independent from the UK: Judges attack millionaire’s divorce battle as ‘grotesque’.

An Arizona mother going through a divorce had a lot more than her divorce on her plate.

Her four year old special needs child was stagnating in preschool, unable to speak or communicate. The girl is autistic, has cerebral palsy and is mildly mentally retarded.

Frustrated and desperate, her mother enrolled the child in a private school for autistic children.

The divorcing mother didn’t know how she’d keep up with the tuition, but her parents funded her daughter’s start in the school and she plowed ahead.

A short year later, her daughter is thriving. She communicates with sign language, verbalizes, makes eye contact and interacts with the people surrounding her.

Arizona passed a school voucher program that allows disabled children to attend private schools. That program has enabled this little girl to remain in the private school that has benefited her so greatly.

Despite success stories like this, the Arizona program is dramatically under-utilized. In very sharp contrast to a similar program here in Florida.

How come? Commentators attribute poor response to several factors, ranging from low public awareness to ongoing legal challenges that foster a perception of precariousness and instability. Opponents argue that there is simply little interest.

Despite improvements in public education of special needs students nationwide, local public schools in Arizona were reportedly simply inadequate to this little girl’s needs and, according to her mother, many other area children whose parents struggle to keep them in special private schools.

Private school vouchers, once under hot debate, are again being hotly debated in a dozen or so states.

Read more in this East Valley [Phoenix] Tribune article: Vouchers for disabled students go unused.

April is Child Abuse Prevention Month.

One child in four is reportedly abused by the time of their eighteenth birthday.

Abusers are getting younger.

Abuse is becoming more severe.

Read more in this Chattanooga [TN] WDEF News 12 article: April Is Child Abuse Prevention Month.

The European Union is entertaining a proposal that would require member nations to apply the divorce law of another member nation under certain conditions.

The proposal is reportedly favored by most member countries.

Sweden, Finland and Malta, however, are against the proposal.

Read more in this Swedish radio news article: Sweden Opposes EU Divorce Plan.

An interesting report out of Cornell University offers two key conclusions.

First, men contemplating divorce tend to cut back their efforts on the job. Anecdotal evidence strongly supports this conclusion.

The study does not really analyze the reason behind the finding, simply stating that men “do not throw themselves into work” when things turn unpleasant at home. But one might plausibly explain the conclusion of the study by a desire to weaken a claim for spousal support.

The second conclusion, at the opposite end of the spectrum, is more interesting.

Women contemplating divorce tend to increase their efforts on the job. This is less obvious, although also supported by anecdotal evidence.

The study rationalizes this conclusion in part by the explanation that women throw themselves into the happier environment at work when things turn unpleasant at home. But the larger part of the explanation is that women facing divorce try to prepare themselves to be financially self-sufficient.

Read more in this Australian Sunday Times article: Wives work longer as divorce looms.

It isn’t mentioned whether their divorce court case was nasty. Only that it was in progess.

You can’t help but wonder…

But the outcome of the case was sealed, outside the courtroom, on Easter Sunday, with final and absolute clarity.

There will be no final judgment in court. No modifications or enforcement actions in the future.

Because an Alabama man allegedly shot his wife to death, with a shotgun, that morning, when she approached her front door in response to his knock on it.

She was reportedly killed instantly.

After 16 years of marriage and two sons together.

Accounts indicate that the husband quietly surrendered to authorities afterwards.

There was no mention of whether there had been any history of domestic violence in the marriage. Or any hint or sign of what was to come that morning…

Read more in this Huntsville [AL] WAFF News article: Divorce ends in murder.

A Scottish court has ordered the return of a teenaged girl to Australian under the Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction.

The Court dismissed the child’s history of repetitive vomiting and stomach pains based on its finding that the girl’s habitual residence had been Australia.

This although the court concluded that an Australian court would likely extend considerable deference to the girl’s preference to live with her mother in Scotland.

The court concluded that the mother’s presence in Australia should reassure the girl while she was awaiting a custody decision there.

Read more in this BBC News article: Abduction law decides girl’s fate.

A Michigan judge presiding over family law cases thinks the law should change to make it tougher to terminate parental rights.

The reasons are twofold. First, the number of children who enter and remain in foster care, without families, throughout their entire childhoods, has skyrocketed in Michigan.

Second, most of these children want to be back with their biological parents.

An alternative option to termination of parental rights would be for the courts to appoint guardians for these children – unless and until they are able to be reunified with their biological parents.

This alternative would leave all options open, except possibly adoption. But the adoption option seems more of a pipedream than anything else for an enormous percentage of these children.

Read more in this Detroit News editorial: Reform state law that creates more orphans.

Divorce is hard on the entire family. But kids are often stunned, confused and feel powerless.

How parents handle the divorce can make it relatively better or relatively worse for the kids.

Despite mandatory divorce parenting classes in many jurisdictions, many parents could do a better job ushering their kids through a divorce.

It is critical to convey to children that the divorce is not their fault.

It is also imperative that children feel loved by and free to love both parents. That means no putting down the other parent in front of the kids.

An alternative approach to educating parents is to educate children directly about divorce.

That is the approach adopted in a new children’s book that teaches children subtly, by engaging them in the story of a child going through a divorce. As the story’s main character learns about divorce, so does the child-reader – and maybe their parents.

Read more in this Pittsburgh Tribune-Review article: How to help kids cope with parents’ divorce and this PRWeb article: A Wise and Witty Children’s Book About Dealing With Divorce.

An elderly Brooklyn family court judge is on trial – for accepting bribes to influence his rulings in cases he was presiding over.

The judge allegedly also advised a bribing attorney as to the proper strategies to follow to succeed in his cases – and how to overbill his clients.

Investigations were also conducted into whether choice court-appointed guardianships were awarded as a result of bribes, but the state dropped that component from its case.

A divorce attorney who regularly appeared before, and allegedly bribed the judge was integral in building the state’s case against the judge, as part of a plea bargain.

The attorney wore a wire and facilitated the occurrence of incriminating conversations in the presence of a hidden camera.

For the most part, the alleged bribes consisted of drinks and meals, with occasional payments of cash.

Read more in this Boston Herald article: Prosecutor: $10 stogies bought favors from Brooklyn divorce judge and this Park Slope [Brooklyn] Courier article: Prosecutors smell blood – Former Brooklyn judge takes more hits in bribery trial.

Just a few years ago, someone in China who wanted a divorce needed the permission of their employer, as well as the approval of their relatives and neighbors.

Due to a rapid and dramatic cultural shift, many more Chinese are pursuing divorces today.

And, from a legal perspective, the process is not very complicated, often completed in just a few months.

Chinese divorce law reportedly provides for an even division of marital property, similar to many states in the US.

Many factors are cited for the climbing divorce rate in China, including the spread of individualism, increasing emphasis on personal happiness, declining social stigma, societal transition to nuclear family lifestyles instead of extended family lifestyles, decentralization of employment, and more urban housing styles.

Read more in this Washington Post article: Chinese Slough Off Old Barriers to Divorce.

As noted in a recent post, For High Conflict Exchanges of Kids, Consider a Supervised Visitation Center, supervised visitation centers are a blessing not only in cases where supervised visitation is court-ordered, but also in many other cases where only exchanges of children are fraught with conflict.

But the blessing comes with a price tag.

How large a price tag (and who must pay it) varies from state to state, sponsor to sponsor, program to program, and facility to facility.

But there is always a price tag, for someone.

A New York Times article took up this very issue over the weekend.

According to that article, supervised visitation in New York City costs $100 per hour – a price tag that is beyond the reach of many families.

And the wait for free services under the auspices of a nonprofit organization can take six months, an eternity to a parent who already hasn’t seen his or her child for some time prior to entry of the court order.

And the number of families in need of supervised visitations services keeps climbing steadily.

Private supervisors impose less of a wait, but they are even more expensive.

Of course, in some cases, less formal supervision may be suitable. But not every family has a friend or relative who is willing, able and mutually trusted to supervise – especially after they have been stuck in the middle for a while.

Read more in this New York times article: In Custody Fights, a Hurdle for the Poor.

Czech woman marries autistic American and lives with him in Texas.

Subsequently, she leaves the man and returns to the Czech Republic – with their baby son, who may be autistic.

Some unspecified time later, the father demands the boy’s return to the US.

The mother defends that the father was threatening, if not downright abusive toward them both.

A Czech lower court ruled that the boy should be returned to his habitual residence in the US, under the Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction.

But a Czech appellate court reversed and the Czech Supreme Court ultimately, after three years of litigation all told, agreed that the boy should remain with his mother in the Czech Republic.

The Czech Supreme Court reportedly placed great emphasis on the boy’s bond with his mother and his special needs, apparently concluding that they boy would suffer psychological, if not physical harm, if returned to the US.

Perhaps impacting the high court’s ruling was an earlier decision in which it ordered the return of a six year old girl to her habitual residence, only to have the girl go on a hunger strike and crying jag, which led to her informal return to her mother in the Czech Republic – a day before the date of this article.

If the boy’s diagnosis with autism is accurate, however, one has to wonder whether living in a country where, according to the source report, if accurately translated, autism is misclassified as a mental illness, is in fact in the child’s best interests …

Read more in this Czech news article: Czech woman need not return ill son to father in USA — court.

When a high conflict divorce comes to an end, if there are children, the conflict usually doesn’t dissipate.

Too often, it flares regularly, during exchanges of minor children for visitation.

One common solution is to conduct exchanges at police stations. But that’s less than ideal.

A better approach, where available, is to conduct exchanges at a supervised visitation center – even if visitation by either parent is not required to be supervised.

Supervised visitation centers are equipped with the personnel and facilities to orchestrate exchanges that avoid contact between parents.

Read more in this Ironton [OH] Tribune article: Center to help troubled families.

The Nevada legislature will be considering passing an unusual law soon.

Under the proposed law, having previously stripped parents of their parental rights, a court could later reinstate them under three conditions:

1. The child must be unlikely to be adopted.
2. The reinstatement must be in the best interests of the child.
3. The child (or their current guardian) must request the reinstatement, not the biological parents.

A judge who is a proponent of passing the statute explains that many children who come before him would like to return to their parents but, under current law, they cannot – even if the parents have improved their circumstances.

The judge also pointed out that there are far fewer adoptions than terminations of parental rights.

If the situation contemplated by this proposed bill arises very often, one has to wonder whether Nevada terminates parental rights too quickly or easily in the first place, if the terminated parents are able to rehabilitate themselves independently, without the benefit of social services.

Or whether Nevada’s true motivation is to save the state money spent on foster care.

Read more in this Las Vegas Sun article: Nevada law would let courts restore parental rights.

The two children of a Cuban mother living in Miami were placed in foster care by the State of Florida as a result of the mother’s alleged medical and psychological difficulties.

The mother and her children have been living here in the US since 2004.

The boy’s father consented to the boy remaining in the US.

But the little girl’s father wants her returned to him in Cuba.

Soon, a Miami juvenile dependency judge will have to decide the little girl’s fate.

Florida’s Department of Children and Families argues that the girl’s father is not a fit parent.

If the girl is returned to Cuba, she will have to leave behind her brother and the only home she really remembers, to return to a father and country with whom she has reportedly had little contact.

Read more in this Miami Herald article: Cuban mom tried to give girl away.

A Muslim woman recently applied to a German judge for an immediate divorce under German law based upon her husband’s alleged physical abuse of her.

The judge, a woman, denied the immediate divorce.

The judge’s reason: the Koran (Muslim bible) condones physical abuse of a wife by a husband.

The judge had already granted the wife a restraining order for her protection.

The ruling touched off a firestorm in Germany (and beyond). The judge was criticized both for seemingly approving domestic violence and for apparently subordinating German law to Muslim law in a divorce in Germany.

Now the case will be re-heard by a different German judge.

A new English translation of the Koran is anticipated to “soften” some of the language of the previous translation of the Koran.

Read more in this Fox News article: Abused Woman Denied Divorce on Grounds That Koran Allows Men to Beat Their Wives and CBC News article: German judge denounced for citing Qur’an in divorce ruling.

A Florida man took his ex to court in an attempt to have his obligation to pay spousal support terminated.

The original support obligation was part of a marital settlement agreement, which provided that support would terminate upon the receiving spouse’s death or remarriage.

The receiving spouse neither died nor remarried.

So what was basis of the former husband’s argument?

His ex-wife is now a man.

Since a man can’t marry a man, a man can’t divorce a man and a man can’t be ordered to pay spousal support to a man, the ex-husband contended.

Good try, but the judge didn’t buy the argument.

The court held that the former wife’s birth gender was what mattered for this purpose and that the sex change operation didn’t qualify as a substantial change of circumstances for purposes of modifying or terminating the support obligation.

The former husband vowed to challenge this ruling as far as he could.

This Florida ruling is consistent with a similar ruling handed down in Ohio a few years back.

Read more in this CNN article: Judge: Ex still due alimony when she becomes he.