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Child-Inclusive Mediation
As an attorney, I have been involved in countless parenting disputes, mediations and evaluations in which the issue of a child’s preference is considered, or ruled out, as a factor. The Minnesota...
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Divorce Corp. Review
The point of going to see a documentary at a movie theatre is to blend entertainment with getting some insight into the documentary’s topic, right? Divorce Corp. is neither entertaining nor...
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Same Sex Marriage and the Residence Requirement
In order to have standing to proceed with a marriage dissolution in Minnesota, the petitioning party must have resided (or been domiciled) in Minnesota for at least 180 days. When gay marriage was...
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Divorce Using Paralegal Service Lacks Cost-Benefit
When someone (or some couple) is getting divorced, and has no disputes, the case often is suited for being drafted up by a paralegal service. Divorce paralegal services tend to be low-cost, but are...
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Family Courts Are Not Fulfilling ICMC Timing Goals
When a marriage dissolution case is first filed with the court, most metro area Minnesota courts schedule the case for an Initial Case Management Conference (ICMC). This is a non-contested,...
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Moving the Children Within the State
Previous posts have addressed the issue of moving minor children outside of Minnesota, which requires either the consent of the other parent or permission of the family court. That rule suggests that...
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Possible Legislative Change to Statutory Income Expectation
The current child support statute authorizes the family court to impose upon parents an income threshold. That is, if the parent is able to work, the court may impute income to that parent in the...
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Irretrievable Breakdown of the Marriage
When petitioning for a divorce in Minnesota, the requesting party must assert under oath that there has been an “irretrievable breakdown of the marriage.” That is to say, the marriage cannot be saved....
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Should Minnesota Change How Child Support is Calculated?
There is change in the air, as it pertains to calculating child support in Minnesota. Currently, child support is calculated based upon the combined income of two parents, and a computation of fixed...
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New Best Interest Factors Signed Into Law
The Minnesota legislature handed a bill to Governor Dayton, which he signed on May 15, 2015, which promulgates new best interest factors for family courts to consider in child custody proceedings. They...
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New Law Regarding Tax Dependency Exemptions
Minnesota Statute Section 518A.38 has a new subdivision; one pertaining to income tax dependency exemptions. “Income tax dependency exemptions. (a) The court may allocate income tax dependency...
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Where the Children Should Go to School – Part 2
Hard to believe it’s been seven years since I blogged about this last. Not much has changed on the subject in seven years, but there are trends that have become more common in practice over time. As...
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New Child Custody Factors Signals New Perspective
When the statutory factors to be considered in child custody cases were revised by the Minnesota Legislature earlier this year, the substance of the changes did not appear to be significant. It is...
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Early Neutral Evaluation – Is Joint Physical Custody More or Less Likely?
A colleague of mine recently expressed her belief that custody neutrals conducting Early Neutral Evaluations are almost uniformly recommending joint physical custody. Early Neutral Evaluation (ENE) is...
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New Legislation Has Revised Typical Expectation of Parental Income
The Minnesota legislature recently amended the statute that courts use when imputing income to parents. Minn. Stat. Section 518A.32, sub. 2(3) now provides for considering “the amount of income a...
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Possible Changes to Child Support Guidelines
There are two bills that have been introduced in the Minnesota Legislature. One would establish a permanent advisory committee on child support guidelines. The other one is a bigger substantive...
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In the Matter of Dakota County and Floding v. Gillespie
(Filed July 22, 2015) (Supreme Court) Appellant Mother, who was receiving child support from Respondent Father, began receiving Social Security dependent benefits upon Respondent’s retirement. The...
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In the Matter of Oberg v. Bradley
(Filed August 3, 2015) (Court of Appeals) Respondent Mother obtained an Order for Protection against Appellant Father from the district court on behalf of the parties’ minor son after the district...
View ArticleThe Uncontested Divorce – Part 1
When someone calls a lawyer to proceed with an uncontested divorce, unfortunately they are often not correct in identifying the case as uncontested. As in, an uncontested case, from start to finish....
View ArticleThe Uncontested Divorce – Part 2 (Children)
Children As mentioned in Part One, if the parties in a marriage dissolution are not childless (or child-free, as some people say), then either one of the parents has to have literally no demands to...
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