A homeowner’s insurance company paid its limits of $2.5 million to settle claims that a former professional football player severely injured his physician girlfriend in a 2015 domestic assault, the victim’s lawyers reported. The civil settlement was hammered out as ...

Tagged with: Domestic Relations Insurance

Although the newlywed parties had not consummated their marriage and one spouse was pursuing gender transition, the other spouse – who hoped for children – was not entitled to an annulment under Virginia law, a Fairfax Circuit judge has ruled. ...

Tagged with: Domestic Relations Fairfax Circuit Court Judge David A. Oblon

A former Chesterfield County lawyer was sentenced to more than a year in prison for forging a public document after he admitted giving his client a phony divorce decree. The fake court order caused trouble and expense for both the ...

Tagged with: Domestic Relations Lawyer Discipline

Divorce cases often expose family secrets that both sides would prefer to keep out of the public eye. Allegations of infidelity, cruelty or neglect are just the most obvious. There are children’s names, friends’ names and sordid details about the ...

Tagged with: Domestic Relations Judge David A. Oblon

Although a circuit court retains jurisdiction to correct or clarify a pension distribution order after Rule 1:1’s 21-day period, the court lacks jurisdiction “to change the substance of the original division of property.” As a result, where the property distribution ...

Tagged with: Domestic Relations Justice William C. Mims Supreme Court of Virginia

Under the unusual facts of this case, where the trial court made a clear legal error in awarding husband 100 percent of the marital share of wife’s military pension, the rules pertaining to a bill of review provided the court ...

Tagged with: Domestic Relations Judge Wesley G. Russell Jr. Virginia Court of Appeals

Where the circuit court precluded mother from testifying in her case-in-chief at a custody hearing because, in response to father’s interrogatories, she did not identify herself as a potential witness and describe her anticipated testimony, her failure to provide the ...

Tagged with: Domestic Relations Judge Wesley G. Russell Jr. Virginia Court of Appeals

A divorced couple’s pension distribution order was final and unassailable after 21 days, according to a ruling last month from the Supreme Court of Virginia. Even though a statute expands the jurisdiction of a circuit court to modify a pension ...

Tagged with: Domestic Relations Justice William C. Mims Retirement Supreme Court of Virginia News

Appellee father was correctly awarded primary physical custody of the parties’ child based on, among other things, his ability to provide the child with a “stable living situation.” Further, the parties’ premarital agreement precludes an attorney’s fee award to appellant ...

Tagged with: Domestic Relations Judge Mary Grace O'Brien Virginia Court of Appeals

The circuit court did not abuse its discretion by awarding the parties joint legal custody of their minor child even though even though a protective order forbids contact between the parties. Further, the joint legal custody order was in the ...

Tagged with: Domestic Relations Judge Mary Grace O'Brien Virginia Court of Appeals