Category Archives: Divorce
The Details That Make Or Break Your Marital Settlement Agreement
Signing a marital settlement agreement (MSA) feels like a victory. It means that you are ready for the court to finalize your divorce, and that you were able to resolve matters of property division without going to trial. The MSA only deals with financial matters, so if you and your spouse have minor children,… Read More »
Christmas Card Etiquette For Recently Divorced People
The Christmas season is a beautiful time of joy and togetherness no matter where you live, but this is especially true in Alabama. Alabamans have a flair for over-the-top Christmas spirit matched by the inhabitants of few other places. From caroling at the tops of our voices to breaking out the Santa hats and… Read More »
Can You Get Divorced If You Never Made Your Marriage Official?
Some couples are married in all but name, and they freely acknowledge this. They live together and have children together, and perhaps they even wear rings on the appropriate fingers, but a Celtic handfasting ceremony, or perhaps only an unspoken commitment, takes the place of an official marriage. If these couples separate, both parties… Read More »
Covenant Marriage And Alabama Divorce
Like most other states, Alabama law allows for no fault divorce. This means that married couples in Alabama can request that the court dissolve their marriages simply because both spouses wish to dissolve the marriage. The parties must only acknowledge that the parties have irreconcilable differences and that the marriage is irretrievably broken. From… Read More »
Why Is High Net Worth Divorce So Much More Complicated?
You and your spouse took a vow to stay together for richer or for poorer, but if that doesn’t work out, then getting divorced when you are poor is noticeably easier than getting divorced when you are rich. All the comforts that you enjoyed during your marriage become an albatross around your neck when… Read More »
What Happens If You Change Your Mind About Divorce?
If you talk to any couple that has been together for decades, they will tell you that there were periods of conflict in their marriage and issues that were not easily resolved. Shortly after celebrating her 30th wedding anniversary, former First Lady Michelle Obama told an interviewer that 20 of her 30 years of… Read More »
Are Insurance Payouts Marital Property?
With only a few exceptions, all of the money that either spouse receives during the marriage is marital property, which means that it is subject to equitable distribution in divorce. If that were not the case, then divorce would leave stay-at-home mothers destitute and they would reenter the workforce after divorce starting from zero,… Read More »
Residency Requirements For Alabama Divorce
When an employer offers you an employment contract, you keep rereading the line that tells you how much your new job will pay, but you may ignore the most important sentence of the contract, namely the dispute resolution clause. It should say, “The courts of Alabama have jurisdiction to rule on disputes arising from… Read More »
Country Club Memberships And Alabama Divorce
Perhaps up north, country clubs are stuffy and stodgy places where men in tweed suits drink whiskey in dimly lit dining rooms with taxidermied deer heads mounted on the walls, but in Alabama, country clubs are much more fun. The weather is sunny enough for golf and tennis year-round. You can sip cocktails poolside… Read More »
How To Cope With The Chaos Of Divorce
When your divorce case is pending, it can feel like everything you have worked for since you took your first steps into adulthood is falling apart. From the time you graduated from college until the day you received your spouse’s divorce petition, you never wasted a minute or a penny. Your work ethic and… Read More »