Going through a divorce can feel overwhelming at times. However, you may find some peace of mind knowing that your divorce lawyer serving Spring, TX, will handle the legal matters for you, while you focus on moving forward with your life. To help you stay organized, it’s always wise to jot down a list of questions and concerns you have for your divorce lawyer . Some common family law issues are child custody, visitation, support, and property division.

Child Custody
If the marriage produced a child, the child’s best interests should be the top priority for both parties. Even if your divorce is contentious, it’s important to realize that your child doesn’t share your feelings toward your soon-to-be ex-spouse and that your child needs both parents in his or her life. Your divorce lawyer can help you negotiate a child custody arrangement that preserves both parents’ relationships with the child.

Visitation
Even when parents share joint custody, the child will generally reside with one parent more than the other, solely for practical purposes. When you meet with your family lawyer, discuss what you expect from the visitation schedule. Consider who might have the child for holidays, school vacations, and weekends. Additionally, consider whether the visitation schedule allows the child sufficient time for school projects, extracurricular activities, and social events.

Child Support
Non-custodial parents will be required to pay child support. Generally, in Texas, a non-custodial parent of one child must pay 20 percent of his or her net monthly income. The percentage of net income set aside for child support increases when there are multiple children to support. Consider asking your child custody lawyer how to obtain and enforce a child support order if you are the custodial parent.

Property Division
The division of assets and liabilities is another significant issue for divorcing couples. When you meet with your divorce lawyer, bring along a list of your marital assets and debts. Let your lawyer know which assets are most important to you and which you might be willing to let go to the other party. In Texas, community property is not necessarily divided on a 50/50 basis. Fault for the breakdown of the marriage and differences in earning potential of the spouses are factors that a judge might consider when dividing property and liability.

With more than half of marriages each year ending in divorce, it’s no surprise that there are a long list of reasons couples split. Most of the actual reasons couples divorce are emotional ones, including trust issues, jealousy, and disagreements over religious and cultural issues. However, when you go to a divorce lawyer to file your case, one of the first things he or she will do is try to match your reason for splitting with one of the seven legal grounds for divorce in Texas. That is just one of the reasons why it is so important to let a divorce lawyer handle your split as you negotiate family law issues like spousal and child support. Learn more about why couples divorce in this infographic from Andrew J. Bolton, Esq. , a divorce lawyer serving The Woodlands. Choose our practice when you need a divorce or family lawyer, and please share this information to help others facing this difficult situation understand their rights.

The Supreme Court’s recent Obergefell ruling stated that two individuals of the same sex have a constitutional right to marry, and that ruling calls forth some interesting questions. For example, in law school we learned that, when the Supreme Court decides for the first time that a person has a constitutional right to engage in some activity, that right is a right which has always existed, and the Court is only then annoucing its intention to safeguard it.

If this is indeed so, then there are many states, including Texas, which have not previously recognized same sex marriage. This is important because, in those states, when a partner in a same sex relationship dies, the surviving partner, absent a will, does not inherit anything of the estate of his or her deceased partner. In such cases, it is the children of the deceased partner who generally inherit the estate.

Now, however, we find out that those individuals who did not have the ability to get married because such was not recognized by their state (or previously were married in a foreign state that did recognize same sex marriage), they should have been allowed to inherit the estate as a surviving spouse.

I wonder how many cases will need to be reopened to redirect inheritances towards spouses of gay decedents from that decedent’s children to the unconstitutionally-denied spouse? Litigation aplenty is in store.