Bifurcation is an often underutilized procedure in civil cases (including family law cases) that, if used correctly, can significantly reduce the attorney fees and costs necessary to bring a case to a conclusion and can significantly increase the prospect of settlement. So what is bifurcation exactly? In the process of…
Some family law litigants (and even some attorneys) may think an appeal is just a “do-over” of what happened at the trial level. However, trials and appeals are two very different proceedings. In this post, we will address one of the most fundamental differences between proceedings at the trial level…
The California Family Code allows courts to issue orders removing a spouse from a home. These are commonly referred to as “kick out” orders or “exclusive use and possession” orders. Certain circumstances compel a court to make these kinds of orders. This blog post will discuss these circumstances. It turns…
We have written several blogs about the date of separation and its importance to a dissolution action. In some cases, the date of separation can be the most critical issue in a case. The reason is the date of separation can be a significant factor in determining how long spousal…
The question of a party’s income available for support has been the scourge of many attorneys and forensic accountants for a long time. It is a difficult and evolving issue, with new cases coming out honing and refining the interpretation of Family Code section 4058. Below, we take a look…
Steve Levitan, the creator of the hugely successful sitcom ‘Modern Family,” is in the middle of a rather nasty divorce from his estranged wife Krista. Krista has filed two unsuccessful requests for a Domestic Violence Restraining Order and the divorce has been anything but inconspicuous. The most recent incident was…
You’ve just had a hearing at the trial level and you lost. You think the judge really botched the law and you want a chance to let a three justice appellate panel review the order. In this case, you would definitely file an appeal, right? Not always! In many instances,…
The first in a series of presidential debates will have just taken place when the blog posts. We do not know how each party fared in the first debate, but there is one thing we can be sure of; the last several weeks were spent preparing the candidates for the…
The conventional wisdom is that once a child turns 18, child support ends. While this is certainly true in many, if not most, cases, there are actually many instances in which child support is ordered after a child reaches the age of 18. In this post, we will discuss three…
Family Code section 2122 allows a party to set aside a judgment because of fraud, perjury, and simple failure to disclose. An example of fraud would be telling a party they don’t have to participate in the proceedings while promising to be fair, but then proceeding to railroad them at…