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Updates in Michigan Family Law

Updates in Michigan Family Law is a blawg written by Traverse City, Michigan family lawyer Jeanne M. Hannah. Jeanne explores developing Michigan law, and also the following topics of interest: divorce, custody, child support, paternity, domestic abuse, and adoption issues.\r\n\r\n

Post Frequency: 4.5/day

Last Entry: March 31, 2011 at 12:07:04

Domestic violence | It's not just physical abuse

Posted on April 25, 2008
Yesterday, John P. Tassinari shot his wife, Barbara, multiple times with two 45-caliber handguns in the driveway of their Quincy, Massachusetts home. She died at the scene. She left two children, one son who is 10, and a 1-year-old from...

Postnuptial agreement that encouraged separation declared void

Posted on April 23, 2008
Postnuptial and prenuptial agreements are becoming ever more popular. Guidance was provided from the Michigan Court of Appeals today for practitioners and laypersons contemplating entering into a postnuptial agreement. In Wright v Wright, Docket No 281918 decided on April 22,...

Children diagnosed with ADHD

Posted on April 22, 2008
Occasionally I write about social issues such as the drugging of America's children and the dangers and prevalence of HPV. Thus an article about adverse effects of Ritalin and other stimulants prescribed to children diagnosed with ADHD caught my attention...

Unaccompanied minor rules: Children traveling alone

Posted on April 20, 2008
Elizabeth Sadowski posted the following helpful information on the State Bar's listserv on Friday. Summer is coming and many children will be traveling from the home of the custodial parent to the non-custodial parent's home for parenting time. Liz says...

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Divorce Wars | Internet public airing of private facts

Posted on April 17, 2008
The Internet gives people a new forum for publicly airing their dirty linen. Amazing! Tricia Walsh Smith, not your usual British housewife, is publishing personal and embarrassing facts about her marriage and divorce. She's angry that her husband won't offer...

Domestic violence & Address confidentiality programs

Posted on April 13, 2008
Domestic violence is a pattern of behaviors involving physical, sexual, economic and emotional abuse of an intimate partner for the purpose of establishing and maintaining power and control over the other partner. When batterers fear that they are losing control...

Judgment amended to correct error or omission

Posted on April 12, 2008
Michigan?s court of appeals decided in an unpublished opinion that the trial court committed error by not permitting Husband to amend a consent judgment of divorce to add language that the payments would terminate upon Wife?s death and would therefore...

International parental kidnapping | Can parent avoid return of child?

Posted on April 11, 2008
As many of my readers know, parental kidnapping is a topic of great interest to me. Thus when James Ryan of Plymouth Michigan sent me the decision handed down by the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals in Simcox v Simcox,...

Divorce & Civility | Part III

Posted on April 09, 2008
The April 2008 issue of the American Bar Association Journal has an interesting article about civility, and citations to four recent decisions in which a trial court sanctioned opposing counsel for incivility. In one case, the infraction cited was the...

Divorce and Military Families

Posted on April 06, 2008
The stress faced by military families, frequent moves and deployments can spell disaster for military families. For you, as for most families, divorce can be a life tragedy. You and your spouse entered into marriage with plans for a happy...

Depositions | Helpful tool in some divorces cases

Posted on April 06, 2008
James J. Harrington, III, an outstanding family lawyer from Novi, Michigan offers this valuable advice about discovery depositions in family law cases: Depositions are certainly not required in every case or even most cases or even 70% of cases? however...

Civility & Divorce | Part II

Posted on April 06, 2008
Attorneys Michael V. Kattelman and Robert Cerceo wrote an excellent article on civility that was published in the November 2006 State Bar of Nevada Bar Association's journal "Nevada Lawyer." Recently, the article was quoted on the ABA Family Law Listserv...

Divorce: Bullying vs. civility

Posted on April 04, 2008
I often tell my clients that if opposing counsel and I can get along . . . if there is civility in the process . . . that it will save them money. This much I can say is true:...

Connection between domestic violence and ill health

Posted on April 04, 2008
Violence against women by intimate partners results in similar health effects worldwide ? regardless of culture, class, or race ? Lancet reports. World Health Organization researchers interviewed some 20,000 women from South America, Asia, and Africa, first about their current...

High rate of divorce among females in military?

Posted on April 02, 2008
Don Moore reports on the blog Divorce360 that women soldiers in the United States military are more than twice as likely to become divorced as their male counterparts, according to figures released by the Department of Defense. And no one...

What if father opposes adoption of child born out-of-wedlock?

Posted on April 02, 2008
I am sometimes asked whether a biological father must automatically lose his rights to a child conceived out of wedlock if the mother places the child for adoption and he hasn?t been involved up to that point in time (i.e,...

More about using the Internet safely

Posted on March 31, 2008
Recently, a Michigan family lawyer wrote to ask some very good questions. Her questions and my answers are below. Please note that my answers are generalized, and do not cite to specific laws. The Stored Communications Act referenced below is...

LINK TO GR

Posted on March 31, 2008
The Grand Rapids Press ran an article on this topic. You can read it here. Do Dogs Belong in Divorce Court? http://www.mlive.com/news/grpress/index.ssf?/base/news-40/1200122154152460.xml&coll=6"

'Til death do we part?

Posted on March 20, 2008
This is the week of bizarre divorce news, I guess. Yesterday, it was the $48.6 million award to Heather Mills [plus $70,000/year in child support, school tuition, and about $50,000/year for a nanny] in her divorce from Sir Paul McCartney....

Cohabitation - Finally a test for trial courts to apply

Posted on March 19, 2008
In Smith v Smith, decided on March 18, 2008 (For Publication), the Michigan court of appeals adopted the test from an Ohio decision to determine what constitutes ?cohabitation? in order to invoke terms of a judgment of divorce that mandates...

McCartney - Mills divorce decision released

Posted on March 19, 2008
Heather Mills asked for $250 million from Sir Paul McCartney in the recent divorce trial in London, England. The judge awarded her about $48.6 million. Not bad for a 4-year marriage. Mills tried to make the relationship seem longer, claiming...

Electronic evidence used more frequently

Posted on March 16, 2008
Steve Worrall, author of the outstanding Georgia Family Law Blog, has written many posts recently about the increasing frequency with which electronic evidence is being sought and used in court proceedings. A recent blog article entitled Law evolving as divorces...

When a party asserts the Fifth Amendment in a divorce proceeding

Posted on March 15, 2008
A very interesting article on remedies available when a party asserts the Fifth Amendment and refuses to answer questions in a divorce proceeding was posted today in Diana Skagg's Blog, Divorce Law Journal. See Remedies Available Following Claim of Fifth...

Internet safety | Some comments

Posted on March 12, 2008
Some good comments have come from fellow family law practitioners to my post on safe Internet use. One, from P. Rowland Graff of St. George, Utah says, and the emphasis is mine: I am sure that we will see more...

Alimony | Imputing income & impeachment

Posted on March 12, 2008
In Andrews v Andrews, decided by the Michigan court of appeals on March 11, 2008, Husband claimed that the trial court erred in not enforcing a prenuptial agreement that limited alimony to his net income as reflected by his federal...

STDs | One in 4 teenage girls has one

Posted on March 12, 2008
One-fourth of American girls aged 14 to 19 have a sexually transmitted disease, CDC researchers reported yesterday at the 2008 National STD Prevention Conference in Chicago. As part of the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, some 800 teenage girls...

Safe Internet use | For those divorcing

Posted on March 11, 2008
Whether you are researching the Internet while doing pre-divorce planning, whether you are in a relationship with an abuser, or whether you are discussing divorce strategy with your lawyer or a friend, if you do not take precautions, you may...

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