Archives: Divorce

Marry the right person, who will accept your changes and whose change you can accept.

The Court of Appeals decision in Tierney is just silly. That led to me thinking … what other family law rules are simply silly?

Yes, the law sometimes works in mysterious ways. Take, for example, a recent Wisconsin Court of Appeals opinion that reached the right conclusion, although for somewhat convoluted reasons. In the process, the court has, thankfully, cleared up one of the more silly aspects of family law in Wisconsin.

Lawyers, especially courts in a common law system, need to be careful of the words they choose.

First question I was asked at my dentist’s office yesterday: “How was the Tom Cruise case resolved so quickly?”

Smart Money Magazine recently published an article titled “10 Things Divorce Attorneys Won’t Say.” My response: If there are things divorce lawyers won’t tell their clients, it’s probably because they’re untrue.

The popular myth is that lawyer’s drag out cases to increase their fees. While I’m sure that this does happen on occasion, the myth is far over blown.

Smart Money’s divorce article (finally) has one correct.

We do say this to clients on occasion, but only in specific cases where there is more debts than assets – which, unfortunately, is all too common today.

Over the course of practicing family law for over 25 years (I started quite young, if you must know), the practice has been subject to various significant trends and changes. This is not your father’s practice.   Some of these trends have been positive, some neutral and some quite negative.  Let’s examine some of the main […]