In most cases, an experienced divorce attorney can tell you after a one hour consultation the range of what you can expect to happen if you go to court.  Good attorneys will give you reasonable expectations of how the court process can go and what it will cost, but even the best attorneys sometimes forget that "what a court can do" and "what a family should do" are not always the same thing. Unfortunately, many people end up feeling that the resolutions crafted by Judges are unfair, even when they "won" the case.  The reason court solutions often feel unfair is because they are limited to the statutes and case law.  Judge's don't have unlimited discretion (or time) to find the best solution for a family.   They have to find the solution that is least offensive within the boundaries of the law. When people choose an out-of-court settlement option, like mediation or collaborative negotiation , one of the advantages is that they don't have to...

The Massachusetts Appeals Court released a decision on December 30, 2014,   Vedensky v. Vedensky  (13-P-1392), deciding numerous issues related to the determination of alimony on a modification.  The Appeals Court upheld most of the lower court's decision except on one issue, including the payor's second job income, which caused the award to be remanded to the lower court.  This continues a trend in recent alimony cases for the Appeals Court and SJC to look very closely at awards of alimony under the still relatively new Alimony Reform Act . In Vedensky, the wife and husband entered into a Separation Agreement in 2007 that included the husband paying child support to the wife and no present alimony, but the issue of future alimony was left modifiable.  After suffering from psychological disabilities that affected his ability to work, the husband sought a reduction of his child support in 2009 on a Complaint for Modification, which obligation was terminated i...

This past summer we posted a full blog series on issues facing Unmarried Parents in Massachusetts .  While many issues that unmarried parents face may be different than those faced by married parents, most of the issues will be the same.  Parenting a child still comes with may of the same worries, financial obligations, affections, and lessons, regardless of the parents' relationship with each other.  However, when legal realities collide with economic or practical realities, there may be significant differences in how unmarried parents are treated. Removal cases are one example of this disparity in Massachusetts.  Removal is a legal term of art for the simple concept of when one parent wants to move their residence out of state and take their child with them.  In Massachusetts, M.G.L. c. 208 Section 30 covers the removal of minor children in a divorce case, and prohibits removal without consent of both parents or order of the court.  We explore in what ...

The new Massachusetts Child Support Guidelines effective on August 1, 2013 provide more specificity for the court on how to calculate child support when the combined household income exceeds $250,000. Under the new guidelines, the Court is still given significant discretion as to child support orders in these households but the language of the new guidelines clarifies a few key issues that had previously led to confusion over the court's presumptions and authority in these cases. Under the old guidelines, the language read: These guidelines are not meant to apply where the combined annual gross income of the parties exceeds $250,000. In cases where income exceeds this limit, the Court should consider the award of support at the $250,000 level as the minimum presumptive order. Additional amounts of child support may be awarded in the Court’s discretion. Under the new guidelines, this section reads: These guidelines are calculated up to a maximum combined available annual ...