DeTreville Law & Mediation, LLC
Unfortunately, not everyone is faithful to his or her spouse. A husband could cheat on his wife, or vice versa. Sometimes, when the wife is the one who has an adulterous affair, the wife can become pregnant with the other man’s child. It can present a difficult situation for a Charleston custody lawyer, but an experienced attorney can help walk a client through this potential minefield.
In South Carolina, when the child is conceived during a lawful marriage, the child is [Read more…]
A Motion for Temporary Relief, commonly called a “Temporary Hearing,” is the first hearing in most cases filed in Family Court. The hearing itself is scheduled in response to a written motion filed by either side. The various clerk’s offices will schedule the date and time of the hearing. They are under a directive that this first hearing must be held within 30 days of filing the request; most often the hearing will come much sooner than the 30 day-deadline.
Judges take this opportunity to solve immediate, pressing problems, such as those that sim [Read more…]
Most people who are in the early stages of searching for a divorce lawyer in Charleston, SC do some internet research before they start actually reaching out to attorneys. If those people are also parents, one of the first topics they are likely to do internet research on is the issue of child support.
Unlike with some other divorce-related topics, there is a fair amount of credible information on the web regarding South Carolina child support (we have discussed the topic on this website on a number of occasions, [Read more…]
Charleston Family Court lawyers are frequently asked about the possibility of extending child support obligations beyond the age of emancipation, which, in South Carolina, is 18 or upon graduation from high school, whichever is latest, but never past age 19.
Frequently, the context of this question concerns the payment of college-related expenses, which is actually a separate issue altogether from the issue of child su [Read more…]
Prenuptial agreements are an under-utilized tool for reducing the conflict and cost associated with divorce. The reasons that prenups are so rare are easy to discern: they take the “romance” out of divorce, they can be expensive and time-consuming to obtain, they are “only for the rich,” etc. Without dwelling on those issues (all of which can be debunked by experienced Charleston divorce attorneys), let’s examine the things one can do, cannot do, and must do with a prenuptial agreement.
If you really, really want to lose in Family Court (and yes, there is a very broad definition of “losing” in Family Court, but for our purposes here, it means “fail to obtain your objectives”) it is really not that hard. Do the things I have outlined here, and you can lose big time. To the contrary, help yourself by AVOIDING these items:
Nothing makes professionals – including Family Court judges – [Read more…]
As a divorce lawyer in Charleston, one of my primary responsibilities toward my clients is to help them decide what battles to fight and what issues to let go. Every case is different, so every client’s priorities will be different, but there are some guiding principles that can apply to everybody equally.
As long as you have your children’s best interests at heart, there are few child-related issues that are not worth battling over. [Read more…]
Every day we see custodial parents who are pushed to the brink by unpaid child support obligations. The child support system in South Carolina can be slow, and it certainly is imperfect, so it can seem to a parent struggling because of unpaid support that the system doesn’t work, or even worse, doesn’t care.
These feelings lead often to lead to thoughts of self-help; “if the system can’t make him pay child support maybe I can.” And what is the only “bargaining chip” a custodial parent may have in their relationship with the non-paying parent [Read more…]
Not surprisingly, we field questions about the cost of divorce in our office every day. Frequently, these queries come in the form of cold calls — an unidentified caller, without providing the most basic of information about himself or herself, expects our office support staff to provide an exact price for a divorce, as if he or she were shopping for some tangible commodity, like toothpaste. Perhaps even less surprisingly, none of these “price-shoppers” have ever become a client of the firm.
The process of providing a potential client with detailed information as to the [Read more…]
Charleston Child Support Lawyer: Late Child Support
One of the most common assumptions, heard everywhere and often, is that there is a “5-day grace period” for the payment of child support or alimony. Perhaps this mis-understanding evolves from mortgage payments, where statements for your payments usually do show a “due date” and a “late after” date, with an added late charge if you miss that “late after” date. In Family Court, however, any such assumption is incorrect, and could easily land you in trouble.
If you have any sort of a Family Court Order which [Read more…]
