Family Law

What In The World Is A QDRO?

Family Law, InsightsMay 8, 2017

What In The World Is A QDRO? The courts divide and confirm qualified private retirement benefits in much the same way they do marital property or community liabilities. There’s a discovery process followed by detailed characterization and valuation of the benefit plan, which then allows the court to divide everything in a just and right…

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Community Liabilities: 2 Methods to Accomplish Just and Right Division

Child Custody, Divorce, Family Law, Insights, MarriageMay 2, 2017

Community Liabilities: 2 Methods to Accomplish Just and Right Division – We learned in our previous two blogs what liabilities are and how the court goes about identifying and placing a value on those debts. We also learned each spouses’ role in the process and the factors could influence how a court assigns debt to…

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4 Factors Affecting The Division of Community Liabilities

Divorce, Family Law, Insights, MarriageApril 21, 2017

4 Factors Affecting The Division of Community Liabilities – When two people are getting divorced, the process of dividing community debts is treated the same as the court’s overall just and right division of the entire community estate. How that is accomplished, however, can depend on four key factors. First thing’s first: If you didn’t…

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Dividing and Confirming Liabilities

Divorce, Family Law, Insights, MarriageApril 18, 2017

Dividing and Confirming Liabilities – Just as a court has the authority to divide and confirm marital property, whether real or personal, it also has the say so in how spouses’ liabilities are divided and disposed of. This article will describe that process. But first, what are liabilities? Liabilities are debts that you owe to…

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Securing Liens on Personal Property – Part II

Divorce, Family Law, Insights, MarriageApril 8, 2017

Securing Liens on Personal Property – Part II If you remember from our previous blog, a judge who has ordered you to pay your spouse a large amount of money that you cannot immediately pay can require that you put some of the personal property you still own on the line to collateralize the judgement.…

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Summary of Common Family Law Terms (Vol. VI)

Child Custody, Divorce, Family Law, Insights, MarriageMarch 25, 2017

Summary of Common Family Law Terms (Vol. VI) – We have discussed a great deal of family law terms over the last year or so. Now it is time to take a brief timeout to look back on a some of the more noteworthy concepts. I do this periodically because it’s not like this is…

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Transferring Securities – Personal Property Between Spouses

Divorce, Family Law, Insights, MarriageMarch 21, 2017

Transferring Securities – We have reached the end of our five-part blog conversation on the many rules divorcing spouses need to keep in mind when transferring ownership of differing types of property. If you’ve been following along, you know by now this process is not as simple as handing a vehicle, life insurance or a…

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Transferring Personal Property Between Spouses – Livestock

Divorce, Family Law, Insights, MarriageMarch 10, 2017

Transferring Personal Property Between Spouses – Livestock- In a continuation of our five-part blog conversation on the transfer of personal property between divorcing spouses, we are going to dive into what it takes to transfer ownership of livestock. But before we do that, let’s set the stage for those of you who are playing a…

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Transferring Personal Property Between Spouses – Life Insurance

Divorce, Family Law, Insights, MarriageMarch 4, 2017

Transferring Personal Property Between Spouses – Life Insurance Transferring Life Insurance – This is the third installment of a five-part blog series on transferring personal property between divorcing spouses. The first blog discussed the steps involved in transferring ownership of financial instruments (i.e. bank accounts, etc.) while last week’s blog dove into transferring ownership of…

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Transferring Personal Property Between Spouses – vehicles

Divorce, Family Law, Insights, MarriageFebruary 27, 2017

As we discussed in last week’s blog, transferring personal property between divorcing spouses is not as simple as handing that property over to your spouse and walking away. Perhaps the property in question is in your name only, or in the name of both spouses. Maybe the property has a lien against it. Whatever the…

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