Louisiana Mother gets pregnant with Father’s Child.

Father knows that he will have to pay child support for Child.

Father allegedly beats Mother about the belly.

Father’s reported goal is to destroy the unborn baby … to avoid child support.

Father is charged with attempted feticide and other charges.

Father prepares to enter a plea agreement.

The criminal court fines Father $300.

Then all charges against Father are dropped, with Mother’s blessing.

This is not Father’s first arrest on domestic battery.

Read more in this [Abbeville, LA] Vermilion Today article: Charges dropped against Eunice man accused of attempted feticide.

Mexican Mother and Mexican immigrant Father, living in neighboring Fort Pierce, Florida, have two Children together. The Children, who are eleven and nine, are US citizens.

Mother and Father split up. Mother returns to Mexico, taking Children with her.

Father regularly deposits child support money into a bank account for Mother. The support money accumulates in the account, unspent.

And Father hears worrisome gossip.

Father travels to Mexico to check on Children.

It turns out Mother left the Children with her eighty year old Grandmother … indefinitely. Without visiting them or seeing to their needs.

Children are living in terrible poverty. Daughter is malnourished. Children forage for food in dumpsters.

Grandmother and Father appear before Mexico’s child welfare agency. No one knows how to reach Mother to inform her.

Grandmother gives up custody of Children to Father, who will take them to the US.

Children settle in with Father in the US. Children do not miss Mexico.

Two years go by. Mother files an application for return of the Children to Mexico under the Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction.

The US judge hearing the case rules that there was no abduction, because Grandmother agreed to Father taking the Children to the US and the Children are now well-settled. Further, Mother’s action is untimely and barred.

Read more in this Treasure Coast [FL] Palm article: Anthony Westbury: This judge really got it right.

Parents are allowed various tax breaks under the Internal Revenue Code.

Some of them deserve highlighting when parents are divorced or unmarried.

1. Child Dependency Deduction. The early bird gets the worm. The first parent to file snares the deduction. If they were not entitled to it, the other parent will have to prove that to the IRS. Part of the proof will be documentation showing that the parent seeking the deduction provided more than fifty percent of the child’s support

2. Child Care Tax Credit. The cap on this has increased. Obtain a statement of the amount paid from the provider

3. Alimony or Spousal Support. The recipent must remember to include alimony in their reported income. The paying parent may deduct it. This is the default tax treatment. The spouses may agree differently.

4. Adoption Credit. The cap on the credit has been increased.

Read more in this Fox Business News article: Tax Breaks Every Parent Should Know.

Massachusetts has been struggling with alimony reform for quite some time. Like many states. Including Florida.

In Massachusetts, proposed legislation would limit how long alimony can generally be ordered for, based on the length of the marriage.

It would also protect a second spouse’s income from going to alimony to the former spouse. And end alimony upon cohabitation of the dependent spouse.

It would even permit a spouse to retire out of their alimony obligations.

All of these proposed amendments mirror trends sweeping the nation.

Florida has already passed its own version of alimony reform.

Read more in this Boston Herald article: What would change under alimony reform and this Boston Herald editorial: Antiquated law pure insanity.

There are many ways that parties and/or conscientious counsel can try to keep costs down in divorce cases in family court (among others). Unfortunately, the legal system often doesn’t make it easy.

And may punish you. Regrettably, economizing can turn out to be very expensive.

The above observations apply in countless situations in divorce courts (and others) throughout Florida, New York, New Jersey (these I can speak to from personal experience). Likely, the world.

Here’s yet another example that just caught my attention.

Husband and Wife are working toward an amicable, uncontested divorce.

They own a marital business.

Husband and Wife agree on a fair market value for the business of $60,000. It’s not clear how they arrive at that number.

But that number underlies their property division, marital settlement agreement and final judgment of divorce.

Several months later, Wife seeks to throw out all three.

She now asserts that the business was worth $172,000, rather than $60,000. A difference of $112,000, half of which, presumably, would be allocated to Wife.

How does Wife arrive at that $172,000 value?

Wife hires an appraiser to perform a limited, qualified valuation – after the fact.

What’s that?

In a nutshell, a limited, qualified appraisal is performed based on strictly limited documentation and inputs.

Why?

Such documentation and inputs are often within the sole control of one spouse, and often may only be obtained through what is called the discovery process in the divorce court case. (Less documentation and inputs requires less expert review and analysis.)

In amicable cases, discovery may be sharply curtailed to contain costs and because there is trust.

In adversarial, contested cases, even where full discovery is desired by the spouse with less knowledge of the finances, it may nonetheless be limited because of the cost in both legal fees and experts’ fees of pursuing it from a spouse who is fully committed to avoiding full disclosure and who likely has the resources to stonewall, dodge, delay, and otherwise drive up the cost and increase delay as much as possible.

In this particular case, it is likely that timely discovery was voluntarily limited. And then, after Wife’s window of opportunity closed (there are rules that bar going back after the fact to do what you could have and should have done at an earlier time), Wife realized she “got took”.

And, likely because of limited information as well as limited financial resources, all Wife could obtain at that point was a limited, qualified valuation. And that just wasn’t good enough to persuade a court to set aside a previously agreed upon valuation, however arrived at.

If Wife’s change of heart was right on, she took a beating in the divorce property division.

She certainly saved legal fees up front by not pursuing discovery timely. And she certainly saved experts’ fees by obtaining only a limited or qualified valuation.

Hopefully, Wife saved enough money in the original case to offset the loss of her half of the difference between the two valuations. (Of course, the qualified valuation may have been low too. That will never be known for certain now.)

Read more in this Business Valuation Resources LLC newsletter article: More problems using preliminary valuations in divorce

Florida Woman obtains domestic violence restraining order of protection against Man.

Undeterred, Man reportedly calls and sends text messages to Woman repeatedly.

Woman contacts police to report Man’s violations of injunction for protection against domestic violence.

Patrolman comes to Woman’s house.

While Patrolman is at Woman’s home, Man calls Woman.

Patrolman advises Man he is violating domestic violence injunction.

Man excuses his conduct by the fact that he is presently in another state.

Patrolman advises Man that that does not excuse or insulate Man from restraining order.

While Patrolman is still at Woman’s home, Man calls again.

Patrolman again advises Man he is violating the order of protection, and admonishes him against calling Woman again.

Man states he is calling Patrolman, not Woman.

Patrolman instructs Man to call him at police station and not to call Woman’s phone again.

Man is arrested for violating Woman’s order of protection.

Read more in this [Crestview] Northwest Florida Daily News article: Man calls woman twice while she’s reporting him to police.

Litigants complain about the California family courts – a lot.

The California Bureau of State Audits has been auditing the family courts in Marin and Sacramento counties for the past 17 months.

What did they find out?

According to the Marin Center for Judicial Excellence, both counties’ family courts are substandard in most every category measured.

A California senator reportedly reacted by characterizing the report as “disturbing”.

But local officials in Marin county reportedly interpreted the same reports as “proving beyond any doubt … there’s no problem”.

The Center for Judicial Excellence is particularly concerned (and requested audit specifically on) children involved in custody disputes who are placed with parents who are violent and/or sexual abusers instead of the parent who is not abusive.

But politicians in the court system may have succeeded in ejecting such issues outside the scope of this audit.

But what has come to light is not encouraging. For example, the court system could not show that five of seven of their mediators were even minimally qualified. And the mediators’ supervisor is reportedly not qualified to supervise them.

Similar criticisms apply to custody evaluators as well.

And complaints and potential conflicts are reportedly not documented or followed up on in any systematic way.

The Center also alleges “mass document destruction” hindered the audit.

The Center’s expressed concern is for the impact of these deficiencies upon children dragged through the courts.

Read more in this Marin [CA] Independent Journal article: Marin Voice: Audit unveils court problems.

An Australian gay male couple hire a surrogate mother in India to carry twin fetuses to term for them. The twins’ genetic materials comes from one of the two men and an egg donor.

The couple bring a case in family court to establish the parental rights of the partner who is not biologically related to the twins.

And the Australian family court awards the other partner, who did not contribute genetic material, full parental rights over the twins. The court also acknowledges that the children now have “two fathers”.

Use of foreign surrogate mothers is thriving in Australia.

Read more in this Earth Times article: Court rules gay couple can both be fathers and this Advocate article: Australian Couple Wins Parenting Case.

The UK’s Child Support Agency had accumulated roughly half a million UK pounds in child support over three years that was not flowing to custodial parents as intended.

The accumulation resulted from errors in child support orders and errors in implementation of them. Some accidental and some intentional.

But now the agency, working with UK banks, has corrected the errors and has reinstated the flow of child support money to approximately one thousand children.

It is unclear whether the retained monies earned interest and, if so, where that goes.

Read more in this UK Telegraph article: Missing Child Support Agency money reunited.

Domestic abusers often cut their teeth on abusing pets and other animals before they graduate on to people. Other abusers abuse animals parallel to abusing human victims.

The correlation between animal abuse and abuse of humans is so strong that Florida’s domestic violence statute expressly authorizes the court to consider injury or killing of a pet as a factor in entering a domestic violence restraining order of protection.

Victims of domestic violence often stay in abusive relationships out of concern for their pets. Fifty-four percent of domestic violence victims staying in shelters report that their abuser had hurt or killed their pet.

Three states extend the protection of a domestic violence restraining order to pets. Other states are expected to follow their lead.

As a first line of defense, helping professionals should always seek out information about pets in working with victims of domestic violence.

Read more in this RDH Magazine article: Discerning the truth about abuse.