The VLW Blog

If a divorce lawyer suspects he screwed up a settlement agreement, should he quick call his carrier? Or should he try to make amends and just hope he won’t be served?
It depends. What did the lawyer know, when did he know it, and what did he do about it? Decisions about notice of claim come [...]

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“Cohabitation clauses” commonly show up in divorcing couples’ PSAs. Nobody wants to keep paying support to a spouse who has moved on and moved in with somebody else.
But such cohabitation clauses are not necessarily “self-executing,” as the Court of Appeals reminds us today in Stroud v. Stroud.
The property settlement agreement between Joseph and Debra Stroud [...]

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A press conference outside a California divorce courtroom turns into a shouting match.
When one of the clients is Hulk Hogan, perhaps it’s not surprising.  The video is on TMZ, natch.

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What does it take for a dissatisfied divorce client to sue his lawyer? His own opinion may be enough.
A husband unhappy with the outcome of his case responded to his lawyer’s bill with a claim for legal malpractice. The lawyer said that without an expert witness, the client had no case.
The defendant, James Cottrell, raised [...]

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That’s what the Virginia Court of Appeals said this week to a Fairfax couple who divorced in 2006 but still managed to accumulate a 6,000-page, 19-volume joint appendix in their 2008 appeal.
Jeffrey and Lynette Fadness married in 1980 and reared three children to adulthood.
Jeffrey appealed last year, then appealed again, complaining that the Fairfax [...]

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The nexus between debt and divorce has occupied the Virginia Court of Appeals this week.
In a published opinion out of Hanover County, the appellate court said in Marvin v. Marvin that a husband’s debt of attorney’s fees to wife in her proceeding charging violations of a court visitation order could not be discharged [...]

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Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: Really, really rich older guy marries a much younger woman. His relatives don’t like the situation so they take legal action. Acrimony ensues.
Okay, the late Anna Nicole Smith isn’t starring in this particular movie. It’s a just-completed case in South Florida. A lawyer friend of mine [...]

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It’s tough to prove adultery as a ground for divorce in Virginia.
It helps to catch the wayward spouse emerging from his girlfriend’s home in his underwear.
In Toth v. Toth (VLW 008-8-071), a Fairfax Circuit Court said a wife proved adultery with evidence from a private investigator who observed the husband grocery shopping with his alleged [...]

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So you got one of those EZ-Pass things that you stick on your windshield, allowing you to zip through a toll plaza and avoid a long line.
Better stay on the marital straight and narrow.
The Associated Press has a story that may strike fear among philanderers: Divorce lawyers have discovered that records for E-ZPass, originally [...]

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It hasn’t been a good month so far for the image of lawyers.
First there was the judge in DC who filed the $67 million lawsuit over a lost pair of pants. Amazingly, his claim is going forward, with a June trial date. The latest on that story: Supporters have rallied around the Korean couple that [...]

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