Articles | Seattle Divorce Services

What If I Can’t Afford A Lawyer?

It is no secret that lawyers are not inexpensive, and divorces are not cheap. While certainly we believe you will be better off with a lawyer on your side, there are some options if you need to keep expenses down....

What is an Intimate Committed Relationship?

When an unmarried couple separates and needs legal help with dividing what they have acquired, one question that we need to determine is whether the relationship has amounted to an "Intimate Committed Relationship". To make this determination, the court will look for factors indicating whether the p...

Relationship Planning

Years ago when my spouse and I were planning to get married, we attended a workshop on pre-marriage planning. As part of the workshop we spent time discussing our values, personalities, and other things that go into making up who we each are. However, I think the most valuable thing we did was discu...

Welcome to Theresa Lorella and Nathan Cliber

We are very pleased to welcome two attorneys to our office. Theresa Lorella came to us from the law firm of Stella L. Pitts & Associates, while Nathan Cliber formerly worked at The Law Offices of Michael W. Bugni & Associates....

What are Temporary Orders?

When a divorce is filed, there is generally a need to determine what the various living arrangements are going to be until the case can get to trial (which in King county can be a year away, and more or less in other counties). In the mean time, the spouses may need answers to questions like: how ar...

Is Separate Property Off the Table?

In dividing property in a divorce, the Washington courts distinguish between separate property and community property. Community property refers to assets acquired by the couple during the marriage. Separate property refers to assets acquired by one of the parties outside of the marriage (prior to m...

What If I Don’t Know Where My Spouse Is?

Sometimes couples separate without taking any formal action to end their marriage. Then at some point (often years later), one spouse decides they want to be divorced, but no longer knows how to locate the other spouse....

Being Heard

As divorce attorneys, part of our job is helping your voice be heard. We need to make sure your concerns are heard by the court, by the other side, and by anyone else who may become involved in the case such as parenting evaluators, mediators, or expert witnesses. This doesn't mean just repeating wh...

The Problem is the Problem

My wife and I are planning on meeting to go out to lunch today. However, we have not agreed on where to go. She mentioned La Isla, but I'm thinking India Bistro. When we meet, there are several scenarios that could play out: One is that we could both insist on our own choice: we argue, we fight a...

Attachment Theory

At a conference last week there was an interesting workshop on attachment theory, presented by Yuval Berger and Lisa Alexander from Vancouver, BC. While I have heard talks on attachment theory before, I thought they presented it in a particularly helpful way (as a lawyer I can get lost in psychologi...