What Is “Family Law”?
I find quite regularly that people are confused by the term "Family Law". That is why I often prefer to tell people we practice Divorce Law, as it seems clearer. However, even that is not completely accurate....
Can I Afford To Divorce In This Housing Market?
Over the last couple years, Seattle has seen an extreme rate of growth in housing prices. Right now we are leading the nation in housing price growth. While this may be good for sellers and landlords, it is making it harder and harder for buyers and renters. One impact is that some people in the ar...
Non-Traditional Families
Families come in many shapes and sizes. There is the traditional American nuclear family with a husband, wife, and 2.5 children. There are extended families living under one roof. There are blended families, families with spouses of the same gender, families with unmarried adults, families with mor...
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...
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...
Split – Divorce From the Child’s Perspective
Split Trailer - splitfilm.org from ellen bruno on Vimeo. On October 2013, the movie Split (www.splitfilm.org) was premiered at the annual IACP Forum. This documentary looks at divorce from the perspective of the children involved. As they point out on their website, in the US almost half of all chi...
Post-Divorce Parenting Mediation
A friend of ours recently pointed out an interesting article by Silvana D. Raso titled Using Mediation to Keep Your Cool During Divorce and Beyond. In the article, Ms. Raso makes the very good point that post-divorce parenting is often prone to disputes after their divorce is over, and that working...
Jack and Jill get Divorced
I had a client a while back - we’ll call her Jill. Jill was married to Jack and they had a young son, Junior. Jack ran a successful business while Jill was working on developing her own career. However, a primary focus of both parties’ lives was their son. As parents do, they loved Junior very mu...
How to Tell the Children You’re Getting a Divorce
Once you and your spouse have made the tough decision to divorce, it can be even more terrifying (and heartbreaking) to figure out how best to tell your children that their parents will no longer be married. There's no one right or wrong way to break the news, and different children will respond in...