Family Law

Supreme Court ruling in Baby Veronica case didn’t end the adoption dispute

Corrected: A Supreme Court ruling in June for the adoptive parents of the child known as Baby Veronica hasn’t ended the legal dispute over her custody. Baby Veronica just turned 4, and she is living with her father despite the Supreme Court’s ruling, the Washington Post reports. According to the…

Sep 16, 2013 4:43 PM CDT

Pa. court orders county clerk to stop issuing same-sex marriage licences

A Pennsylvania court has ordered a county clerk to stop issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples. Commonwealth Court President Judge Dan Pellegrini ruled Thursday that Montgomery County Register of Wills D. Bruce Hanes lacked the authority to ignore state law, which defines marriage as a contract between one man and…

Sep 13, 2013 4:02 PM CDT

Best Buy CEO sells 20 percent of his stocks, reportedly to cover divorce costs

Hubert Joly, who was hired as Best Buy’s chief executive last year, recently sold $17 million of his stock in the company, reportedly to cover divorce costs. For some of the stock, Best Buy gave him a waiver on the two-year holding period, the Wall Street Journal (sub. req.) reports.…

Sep 11, 2013 5:29 PM CDT

Is jailed former portfolio manager a poster child for alimony reform?

A former portfolio manager on Wall Street who says he simply doesn’t have the money to pay alimony of nearly $78,000 annually after job losses and using up his savings will be spending his nights and weekends in jail for the foreseeable future. Noting that Ari Schochet owes $233,000 to…

Sep 10, 2013 4:40 PM CDT

Want to work at home and make thousands, lawyer’s ad asks? Have a baby, dump dad

“Do you like to work at home? Would you like to make thousands a month?” asks an ad placed by El Paso, Texas, lawyer Mark T. Davis. Have a baby, get rid of the father and “get the money,” then spend the funds on “drinking, expensive restaurants and clubs,” reads…

Sep 10, 2013 4:15 PM CDT

Decade-long visitation battle rages on between alleged insider trader and whistle-blowing ex-wife

More than 10 years and 600 court motions later, David Zilkha and his ex-wife, Karen Kaiser, are still fighting over the visitation plan for their two children, a set of twins now 12 years old. The divorce was filed in 2003, and granted in 2005. Zilkha, a former investment advisor,…

Sep 9, 2013 10:24 PM CDT

‘Routine’ wrongful-death lawsuit turns into 11-year ‘unholy mess’

In 2002, lawyers filed what should have been a routine wrongful death suit on behalf of a 7-year-old Romanian girl who had watched in horror as her mother was crushed under the wheels of a Greyhound bus. But 11 years later, as the Chicago Tribune (sub. req.) reports, that suit…

Sep 9, 2013 9:30 PM CDT

When a foreign adoption doesn’t work out, the Internet offers a dubious option

Adopting a child requires, at minimum, court approval and legal paperwork. Abandoning a child, biological or adopted, can result in civil liability or even criminal charges. Traditionally, a child who proves too much for a family to handle might be sent to live with relatives or placed in a boarding…

Sep 9, 2013 12:30 PM CDT

Ex-client’s ex-husband gets probation in law firm threat case

A former client’s ex-husband got probation after making angry threats over the phone to an attorney at his wife’s Minnesota law firm a couple of months after their divorce was granted in March 2012. Fred William Messig, 44, could have gotten as much as five years in the Washington County…

Sep 3, 2013 5:45 PM CDT

Ginsburg to officiate at same-sex marriage ceremony

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg will conduct a same-sex marriage ceremony Saturday when Ginsburg’s close friend, Kennedy Center President Michael M. Kaiser, marries economist John Roberts. She’ll be the first U.S. Supreme Court justice to officiate a same-sex ceremony. The Washington Post notes that the gala wedding at the Kennedy Center…

Aug 30, 2013 10:38 PM CDT

9th Circuit upholds California ban on ‘conversion therapy’ for gay youths

A federal appeals court has upheld a California law that bars therapists from providing “conversion therapy”—which seeks to change sexual orientation from gay to heterosexual—for patients under age 18. The San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said the ban does not violate the free speech or associational rights…

Aug 30, 2013 5:26 PM CDT

Gay couples, like 12-year-olds, can’t marry, Pennsylvania brief says

Lawyers for Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Corbett are seeking to block same-sex marriages in a brief that equates gay and lesbian couples with 12-year-olds who can’t marry. The suit by the state Health Department is seeking to stop a suburban Philadelphia official from issuing marriage licenses to gay couples, report the…

Aug 29, 2013 1:32 PM CDT

Lawyer’s request that client meet him at her home naked results in license suspension

An Ohio lawyer has had his license suspended for a year, with six months stayed, after admittedly asking a client to meet him at the door of her home naked. Even after the woman rejected his suggestion that she could make “other arrangements” concerning his legal fees in a child…

Aug 28, 2013 4:15 PM CDT

Lawyer says his divorce coupon ad is working

A Georgia lawyer who advertises his “cheap divorces” says this unusual offer is working: Buy one divorce, get the next for half off. “End the misery today!” the ad says. Lawyer Sean Simmons tells the Huffington Post the ad has gotten noticed, though some dislike it. Jay Leno showed it…

Aug 27, 2013 1:08 PM CDT

Texas Supreme Court to consider same-sex divorce

The Texas Supreme Court has agreed to decide whether two gay couples who married in Massachusetts can obtain a divorce in Texas. The court agreed to consider the issue on Friday, report the Austin American-Statesman and the Associated Press. Texas voters nixed same-sex marriage in a 2005 state constitutional amendment.…

Aug 27, 2013 11:20 AM CDT