Year: 2021
A Michigan woman who gave birth to twins while in a same-sex relationship is considered the girls’ parent for custody purposes, even though she does not have any genetic ties to them, a federal appeals court recently ruled. Lanesha Matthews gave birth to the twins after her partner Kyresha LeFever’s eggs were fertilized by a […]
A new survey highlights some of the financial benefits that single mothers get from parenting time arrangements in which the schedule is split 50/50 with a child’s other parent. The study also shows that those arrangements remain relatively rare. Women with a 50/50 parenting time schedule are more than three times more likely (325%) to […]
New research shows that many parents are hesitant about getting their children vaccinated for COVID-19, a development that highlights some of the difficult questions that the pandemic has raised for divorced parents in Michigan and across the country. Less than one-third (29%) of parents of kids under the age of 18 who the Kaiser Family […]
Divorce can be a challenging, confusing, and emotionally draining experience for everyone involved, especially when the spouses going their own ways have kids. In addition to legally untangling the marriage, parents have to decide (or let a judge decide for them) how their children will be cared for and where the kids will live, among other […]
The federal government recently sent another round of stimulus checks to many families across the country to help ease some of the financial burdens of the coronavirus pandemic. Meanwhile, Tax Day (now pushed back a month) is looming. What does all of this mean for parents waiting on overdue child support payments and those who owe […]
When an attorney and the client discuss the client’s case, the conversation between the attorney and client is attorney-client privileged, which means it is confidential. Logically, this makes sense. An attorney needs his or her client to be honest about the situation so that the attorney can anticipate responses or prepare a defense when bad […]
Recently, I read a Facebook post of a mom whose child was alienated from her, and she was ready to give up. Dad had been alienating her daughter from her for years. The alienation had reached the point that her daughter had refused to visit her for nearly two years, and texting had been a […]
More than a year after COVID-19 began wreaking havoc on families in Michigan, across the country, and around the world, there is a light at the end of the tunnel. Vaccines are becoming more readily available, allowing people to start planning for an eventual return to “normal” life after the pandemic. Still, the inoculation effort can […]
Often divorcing parents spend a lot of attorney fees litigating their child custody and parenting time arrangements and a few months after the divorce is final, they wonder if they get to claim their children as a qualifying children on their tax return. Our Grand Rapids family law attorneys can help you with some answers. This situation can be […]
Marriages Slightly Up, Divorces on Decline in Michigan Fewer people are getting divorced in Michigan, according to new Census data. About 7.4 in every 1,000 women in Michigan got divorced in 2019, down from 9.3 a decade earlier, according to data from the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey. That is a similar downswing to the one seen […]