Family Law - What is Family Law?

Family law is not just about divorce. Family law covers a broad area of legal issues including divorce, custody, child support, spousal support, prenuptial agreements, annulments, mediation, adoption, elder care issues, estate planning such as wills, trusts, powers of attorney, and living wills, domestic violence, same-sex relationship issues, and more. A family lawyer must counsel his clients as to how the law will impact their daily lives, and how they can make the best legal and personal decisions for their family's future.

Child Custody

This is often the most important and personally difficult issue clients face. We represent clients in contested custody cases by helping them determine what is in the best interests of their children and what will be the likely legal outcome of their case. We can advocate in court, assist a client with mediation or negotiations, and counsel a client as to the day-to-day issues regarding scheduling, communicating with the other parent and helping their children adjust to custodial schedules. In Virginia, courts recognize legal and physical forms of custody. Legal custody involves a parent's right to make major decisions about the child(ren)'s health, education, religion, and well-being. Physical custody refers to the division of time between parents; it can be shared or one parent can be awarded primary physical custody subject to the other parent's visitation. Custody is always modifiable if there are changed circumstances.

Spousal Support

In Virginia, spousal support is based on several things, the most important of which are usually the length of a couples' marriage and the differences between their incomes. For long marriages with great income disparities, a party is likely to receive more support over a longer period of time. In longer marriages, or marriages where a spouse has a special need, support can be set so that it is not term-limited. If the court does not set a term-limit for the support, it will terminate upon the death of either party, upon the remarriage of the payee, or upon the payee cohabiting in a relationship analogous to marriage for more than one year. Spousal support is always modifiable if there are changed circumstances. Spousal support is taxable to the payee and tax deductible to the payor.

Property Division

Aside from all of the emotions surrounding the end of a marriage, the divorce process often comes down to three major issues: Child custody, support, and property division. Ultimately, divorce is just a dissolution of your legal relationship, your finances and your property. Property includes your house, your retirement benefits, all of your investments, your bank accounts, your personal property, and any other assets. In most amicable separations, spouses are able to agree whereby each spouse keeps all separate property he or she can trace to a separate source, and then the marital property is divided equally. In some situations, spouses are not able to resolve these disputes amicably. Areas of dispute can include determining whether or not an asset is separate or marital property or agreeing to what percentage of the marital property each spouse will receive.

In the current economy, another difficult decision can be deciding what to do with the house. Many couples are facing economic crises of varying degrees, including having a house with an "upside down" mortgage, or a mortgage with a balance greater than the estimated fair market value of the house. We work with our clients to come up with creative solutions to their problems.

Spouses who are going through a divorce and cannot come to an agreement with regards to the division of their property, must submit their dispute to a court for a decision. The court values the property, determines which property is marital, separate property and which property has the characteristics of both. The court then divides the marital property based on several factors.