How To Change Your Name After Divorce
While no one taking marriage vows expects their marriage to end in divorce, sadly, a significant number of walks down the aisle end at divorce court later. When closing one chapter of your life and opening a new one, it’s common to want a fresh start. For many newly divorced individuals, that fresh start includes moving on from a spouse’s last name and reclaiming the name they had before their…
Read MoreWhere to File for Divorce in Los Angeles, CA
The decision to file for divorce may feel like the end of a rough road, but once the decision is made, it’s actually the beginning of another journey—a legal one, that starts with learning where to file for divorce. If you live in Los Angeles County and you’ve made the decision that a divorce from your spouse is inevitable, you might wish to be the petitioner rather than the respondent…
Read MoreWhat Is Discovery in Divorce?
Divorce is a difficult process both emotionally and throughout each of the necessary steps required by law to end a marriage in California. California’s no-fault divorce state means either spouse may file for divorce simply under the grounds of irreconcilable differences, so filing is a relatively simple matter; however, it’s also a 50/50 divorce state for separation of marital property, including all debts and assets accumulated during the marriage. This…
Read More[Study] The State of Divorce in the U.S.
At Fernandez & Karney, we help families with the divorce process every day. Therefore we wanted to find out just how much divorce rates have changed across the country and in which states people are divorced the most and least often. To this end, we compared U.S. Census American Community Survey results from 2010- 2021 (the latest year available) to examine the issue. Below is the “State of Divorce”…
Read MoreHow To Keep Your Pension in a Divorce
Whether retirement is around the corner or decades away, one of the highest valued assets to negotiate during a divorce settlement is a pension or retirement plan from your 401K, IRA, or FERS (Federal Employees Retirement System) package. Pensions are also among the most complex assets to divide during the divorce process in California, where the state’s equal distribution of marital assets law applies to employee pensions. It can be…
Read MoreCan a Divorce Be Reversed?
Almost no one walks down the marriage aisle expecting it to be a pathway to divorce, but when people change, goals change, or life gets in the way, California courts offer a dissolution of marriage agreement (divorce) as a remedy. By the time the multi-step procedure becomes final, most spouses are relieved to see the ink dry on the paperwork so they can move forward from the distressing process. However,…
Read MoreSpying on a Spouse During a Divorce
According to California’s no-fault divorce law, neither spouse in a marriage needs to show the court that the other did anything wrong in order to achieve a decree of divorce. Unlike decades past, when spouses had to prove that the other committed deep wrongs against the marriage like adultery or abandonment, today’s divorcing spouses only require one party to claim that they have irreconcilable differences and that the marriage is…
Read MoreChild Custody for a Child with Special Needs
Matters of child custody are both legally complex and fraught with emotion, but when a child in a custody dispute has special needs, decisions on custody become an even more demanding challenge to resolve. Deciding on child custody and finding common ground on a parenting schedule for a child who may have a complicated weekly routine for therapies or medical appointments, or who may require a great deal of equipment,…
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