The U.S. Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage in all 50 states on Friday, June 26, 2015 in Obergefell v. Hodges , a 103 page decision which we read so you don't have to.  You should, but seriously, most of you probably won't.  Many people will just read that headline and know that there has been an important change in the status of legal relationships in the U.S.  Both the majority and dissents agree on one thing, this is a significant and far-reaching decision. For full coverage of the decision itself and the legal impact, visit SCOTUS blog . For now we're posting the tl;dr version of the majority and dissenting opinions: Here is what each opinion seems to say about the author's view of marriage: Robert's Dissent:    Marriage is an institution. Scalia's Dissent:     Marriage limits your expression. Thomas's Dissent:  Marriage has nothing to do with liberty. Alito's Dissent:       Marriage is for procreation. Kenn...

The Appeals Court ruled, in Pisano v. Pisano , on numerous issues involving a bifurcated trial, a prenuptial agreement, temporary alimony and family loans.  The primary issues in the case all could have been prevented by inclusion of clear provisions in the Prenuptial Agreement.  This is not a criticism of the drafters, because in many instances the soon to be married couple don't want to deal with these types of specifics.  However, this case demonstrates the importance of clear and thoughtful decision-making and drafting when creating a Prenuptial Agreement. 1. Trial Judge's determination that the Prenuptial Agreement excludes income derived from separate assets from consideration of alimony - UPHELD. While the prenup did not explicitly say "income from separate assets is excluded from the calculation of alimony" as clearly as it could have, the appeals court upheld this decision finding that the language of the prenup clearly intended to exclude income from s...

Guest Post by Beth Aarons , a Mediator and Collaboratively trained attorney who is of counsel to Skylark Law & Mediation, PC and who also has her own practice in Newtonville .  Beth is available for consultation on adoptions , like the one discussed below: In a recent slip opinion Adoption of a Minor, SJC-11797 , the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court (SJC) determined that a known sperm donor of a child born to a married same-sex couple is not a legal parent of the child who would be entitled to notice of the child’s adoption. J.S. and V.K., two women legally married to each other, conceived a child through artificial insemination with a known sperm donor.  The child’s birth certificate names J.S. and V.K. as the legal parents and to protect their rights they sought to jointly adopt their son to ensure equal recognition of their parentage outside of Massachusetts.  The Probate and Family Court declined to allow the adoption to proceed absent legal notice to t...

There is a design principle in engineering that was made popular by the U.S. Navy in the sixties called "Keep It Simple, Stupid"  or KISS for short.  The KISS principle is about valuing simplicity in design in order to make things less likely to break and easier to fix when they do break.  As a fan of this principle, I was very impressed with Rackham Karlsson's recent blog post:  Collaborative Divorce in the Simplest Terms Possible  in which he does just that, explains Collaborative Divorce as simply as possible. Rackham's post has inspired me to try and explain the work I do in the simplest terms possible using the KISS principle and the Up-Goer Five Text Editor , a site that forces you to explain an idea using only the 1000 most used words in the English language. Here is a typical explanation of what I do: In my work I encourage clients to settle disputes outside of court, whether through collaborative law, mediation, or other other out-of-court pr...

In Reed v. Reed , a recent unpublished (Rule 1:28) decision, the Appeals Court provided a summary of the current definition of need in Massachusetts.  Alimony is defined in  the Alimony Reform Act  as "the payment of support from a spouse, who has the ability to pay, to a spouse in need of support for a reasonable length of time, under a court order."  This means that need is one of the three main components of alimony and when it comes to calculating alimony: Need "is not based on the minimum life necessities of the spouse, but rather is measured by 'the amount necessary to support a spouse in a manner consistent with the marital life-style.'" Reed   quoting Zaleski v. Zaleski For general term alimony, the most typically awarded type of alimony, the statute also limits the amount of alimony to "generally not exceed the recipient's need or 30 to 35 per cent of the difference between the parties' gross incomes established at the time of the o...

Robin shoots with sir Guy by Louis Rhead 1912 Mediation, as a service option, has grown significantly over the last 30 years.  This is one of the topics of an upcoming article in the ABA's Dispute Resolution Magazine for which I was interviewed.  We discussed how it is easier for practitioners to be trained and for clients to find mediators today than it used to be.  However, there is still one place where mediation continues to lag behind resolution of disputes through court litigation: the price. Lower cost is often a motivating factor for people seeking to resolve disputes through mediation.  Because less time (and therefore money) is spent on court dates, discovery and positional negotiation, the financial cost of mediation is often less than litigation.  For practitioners this means that we make less on a mediation case than a litigation case, and in order to succeed, mediators often have to be better at the practice of business and marketing than li...

Kelsey & Trask, P.C. was formed in 2008 by Justin Kelsey and Matthew Trask, and since that time we have grown and changed in many ways.  With Matt's recent opportunity to join Remington Arms , we've re-evaluated what Kelsey & Trask, P.C. means to us and to our clients.  Our new name, Skylark Law & Mediation, P.C., reflects who we are today and what qualities we want to continue to bring to our clients.  Skylark represents the future of our firm, while not forgetting where we came from.  Symbolizing that ongoing connection to our past, the letters from Skylark are all contained within our original name, Kelsey & Trask. What is a skylark?  A skylark is a modest but agile song-bird that typically travels in small flocks, and sings at dawn.  While these changes represent a new day at Skylark Law and Mediation, we shall remain a small firm that doesn't apologize for being small. Our close-knit team has a variety of experience and expertise,...