Family Law Research Guide

This compendium of practical advice is gathered from family law professionals, including lawyers, judges, CPAs, and psychologists, who share their real-world experience in a concise chapter. Even better, a bonus CD-ROM contains forms, agreements, charts, and checklists. Other time-saving tools include financial charts and hypotheses, questions to ask, and interview forms and checklists. Topics include fees, custody, discovery, trial techniques, support, avoiding malpractice, discovery, premarital agreements, valuation, settlement, and evidence.

Adoption is a process that can require both time and patience. In handling an adoption case, the family lawyer guides the client through the different types of adoptions available. At the same time, the attorney must identify and determine the applicable laws for a particular adoption to ensure they can legally finalize the adoption in their jurisdiction. Now updated and expanded, The Adoption Law Handbook: Practice, Resource, and Forms for Adoption Professionals is a concise and accessible resource that explains all aspects of handling an adoption case. Jennifer Fairfax, an experienced family lawyer whose practice is focused on adoption and reproduction law, provides a logical framework to the fundamentals of the process, as well as supplying in-depth information on specific topics, advice on client intake and consultations, practice tips for each step in the legal process, and an array of sample forms. For ease of reference, each chapter concludes with valuable summary points. The book covers primary types of adoption and explains issues on handling each one: domestic private/independent adoptions, domestic agency adoptions, and international adoptions. This hands-on resource spans the full range of legal issues impacting an adoption, including Hague, ICPC, ICWA, special needs adoptions and how to get the client from intake to finalization. Other topics examine the cost and financing for adoption; co-parent, stepparent, and adult adoptions; relinquishment and termination of parental rights; post-adoption contact agreements, disruption; and failure of disclosure and tort of wrongful adoption, and more. The book also provides extensive resources, including over 200 pages of appendices that include forms, charts, and documents, plus lists of adoption resources for both attorneys and their clients.

Focusing on the legal issues of validity and construction of marital agreements, this carefully researched book offers an in-depth consideration of what happens after the agreement is signed by the two parties. The authors provide guidance to the family lawyer faced with making and evaluating arguments on the validity and construction of marital agreements, supported by their extensive case law research. Noting the types of provisions that tend to cause problems in court, they also include a mini-encyclopedia of ambiguous marital agreement provisions and discovery materials on the validity of marital and antenuptial agreements.

Bankruptcy and Domestic Relations Manual focuses on domestic relations issues in bankruptcy and how the law affects domestic relations. This publication examines: How the automatic stay triggered by a bankruptcy filing affects pending divorce and other domestic relations proceedings in state courts; Whether debts related to marital dissolution are dischargeable; How professional fees in divorce proceedings are affected by bankruptcy; and, Jurisdictional questions between state and bankruptcy courts.

In many US courts and internationally, family law cases constitute almost half of the trial caseload. These matters include child abuse and neglect and juvenile delinquency, as well as divorce, custody, paternity, and other traditional family law issues. In this book, the authors argue that reforms to the family justice system are necessary to enable it to assist families and children effectively. The authors propose an approach that envisions the family court as a "care center," by blending existing theories surrounding court reform in family law with an ethic of care and narrative practice. Building on conceptual, procedural, and structural reforms of the past several decades, the authors define the concept of a unified family court created along interdisciplinary lines -- a paradigm that is particularly well suited to inform the work of family courts. These prior reforms have contributed to enhancing the family justice system, as courts now can shape comprehensive outcomes designed to improve the lives of families and children by taking into account both their legal and non-legal needs. In doing so, courts can utilize each family's story as a foundation to fashion a resolution of their unique issues. In the book, the authors aim to strengthen a court's problem-solving capabilities by discussing how incorporating an ethic of care and appreciating the family narrative can add to the court's effectiveness in responding to families and children. Creating the court as a care center, the authors conclude, should lie at the heart of how a family justice system operates. The authors are well-known figures in the area and have been involved in family court reform on both a US national and an international scale for many years.

These practice-tested forms, letters, and checklists educate and inform family law clients about the divorce process they are embarking upon. Informative handouts in plain English clearly explain various legal issues while offering the family lawyer a convenient and logical way to obtain and manage critical client information. Many are written in question-and-answer format easy for clients to understand and can be modified to fit a practice or jurisdiction. Topics include office procedures, discovery and trial, state-specific issues, and general or federal law.

Whether you're just starting out or want to build up your document library, this proven system is a winning strategy for your family law practice. This complete divorce practice system can easily be customized to fit your jurisdiction and the way you handle cases, providing over 500 documents to efficiently take clients through every step of the divorce practice. This book is easy to use. It is arranged in the natural order of the divorce experience. Starting with clients, it follows through the interview, proceeds through discovery, negotiations, mediation, trial and ends with prenuptial agreements. Content includes forms, checklists, worksheets, formal motions, orders, pleadings, agreements, and letters in the following areas: -Law Office Management -Clients -Client Interview -Complaints -Discovery -Marital Dissolution Agreement -Alternative Dispute Resolution -Trial -Final Decree -Motions -Petitions -Consent Orders -Orders -Miscellaneous Pleadings -Letters -Pre and Post-Marital Agreements

This almanac explores the many facets of the law of child custody, and provides a brief history of child custody decision-making in the United States. The modern-day standards by which courts award custody is discussed, including the factors a court considers in making a custody determination. The various types of custody arrangements presently available are also examined. Other topics covered here include the custodial rights of unmarried parents and step-parents, recent rulings concerning the parental status of same-sex partners, impact of reproductive technology in custody cases, interstate and international custody litigation, and parental abduction, as well as the custody-related topics of visitation, paternity, child support, and child abuse.

Determining Child and Spousal Support offers a unique opportunity to learn fundamental economic principles as they apply to support determination in divorce cases - and to use those principles in successfully representing your clients. In minutes, you can produce monthly support figures based upon what it really costs to raise children of various ages throughout the United States and/or for adults to live in separate households.

Also Available in Lexis. Divorce, Separation and the Distribution of Property has, as its primary focus, the difference between those states that allow divorce courts to divide all property owned by either party at divorce and those that permit the division only of property accumulated during marriage by spousal effort. The book discusses existing rules in the various states relating to the enforcement of premarital or postnuptial agreements regarding the parties rights if they divorce, including the generally accepted requirements that such agreements be voluntarily signed after sufficient financial information has been exchanged.

Being a trial lawyer requires a working knowledge of the rules of evidence. Based upon the author's years of family law practice, this practical handbook is useful for all family law trial lawyers, regardless of whether they practice in a state that uses a variation on the Federal Rules or a common law body of rules on evidence. Topics range from hearsay, authentication of writings, and examination of witnesses to tendering exhibits, procedures for streamlining admission of evidence, and requests to admit facts and genuineness of documents.

Contains information for: Client intake, Initial stages of representation, Client and Case management, Settlement, Mediation, Discovery, Litigation, Trial, File closing, and Post-closing issues.

Tips, strategies, tactics, forms, and real-word advice for starting - or building - a family law practice. Written by a successful and happy family lawyer, this book explains the skills and knowledge necessary to thrive in a challenging area of the law. It takes a no-nonsense approach in explaining the most critical issues for developing a successful career. Examples and practice tips show how to gain experience, understand the business aspects of a practice, develop and maintain the ideal client mix, and manage staff and finances. CD-ROM with forms and related materials.

Take a lawyer's approach -- What's your story? -- Your key question -- Your legal sandbox -- The PLAN (PsychologyLaw ANalysis) model -- Step one : determine the expert's qualifications to testify -- Step two: determine whether the expert's methods conform to relevant professional standards-methods reliability -- Step three: evaluate the empirical and logical connections between the data arising from the expert's methods and the expert's social science-based conclusions-reasoning reliability -- Step four: gauge the connection between the expert's conclusions and opinions -- Issues when examining experts : step-by-step -- How qualified is qualified? -- When experts rely on experts -- Consulting versus testifying experts : is there a problem? -- Retained experts and their testimony : hired guns or credible?

International family law has emerged as an important subject and has become part of the everyday work of family court judges and family law practitioners across the country. International family law presents many puzzles to practitioners, especially in the United States. The International Family Law Deskbook, Second Edition takes a broad approach to this topic and brings together the law applicable to a wide range of cross-border family issues. This new edition serves as a compact and useful resource and reference guide; the chapters within address topics on marriage, divorce, the financial aspects of divorce, parentage and parental rights, custody and child abduction litigation, child support, and intercountry adoption. The new edition also includes a new section on child protection proceedings, dealing with terminating parental rights and children's immigration issues. This book includes extensive discussion of the international treaties that have come to form the basis for reciprocal relationships between the United States and more than 85 other nations; and it focuses on the law applied to these transnational family issues in the United States.

Handling divorce and family law cases involving service members and the unique factors involved in representing these cases will affect nearly all family and general practice lawyers. This practical resource covers all aspects of representing service members and their spouses in divorce in an accessible, easy-to-use format, and includes numerous Practice Tips, forms and appendices. Topics include the Service members Civil Relief Act, custody, domestic violence, tax issues, and the division of military retirement benefits. Includes forms CD-ROM.

The author offers an alternative to the mad-dash scramble model of trial preparation, with a simple message: start early with the end in mind, develop a plan, and maintain self-discipline to work the plan on a regular basis. The book is broken into segments based upon arbitrary time periods. The reader need not precisely follow the schedules suggested; they are simply guidelines to consider.

Also available on Westlaw. This title offers: Step-by-step strategies for valuing complicated assets; Explanation of accounting and financial principles and terminology; Discussion of the effective use of experts; State-by-state summaries of appellate court decisions; Tax implications of property transfers upon dissolution; and, The effects of bankruptcy laws.