http://www.tmc-law.net Sun, 15 Aug 2010 14:50:54 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en An aunt comes to visit her 3 year-old niece and finds her wandering through her father’s apartment with dad and friends passed out amid liquor bottles and drug paraphernalia. It’s not the first time. Grandparents discover that their son, who has a warrant out for his arrest, has fled their home, taking ... http://www.tmc-law.net/how-ohio-courts-can-help-children-in-danger/ What do you have to do to get a divorce or a dissolution of marriage in Ohio? You need to meet two simple requirements: You must live in Ohio for six months and You must live in one Ohio county for 90 days. That’s it. Never mind where you  were married or whether ... http://www.tmc-law.net/geography-of-divorce-what-court-has-jurisdiction-over-assets/ The last post on this topic was about the best way to get a Qualified Domestic Relations Order (QDRO). In short, you have to get the language just right. Now and then, however, it happens that a perfectly written DRO, qualified by the plan administrator and thus turned into a QDRO… is ... http://www.tmc-law.net/adventures-in-divorce-private-pensions-and-the-dro-episode-3/ Now that the difference between DROs and QDROs is clear, we can look at a common problem that comes up with Domestic Relations Orders: getting them qualified. I’ll start with the moral of this episode: make sure the DRO is pre-qualified. Now the story. Many people think that when a court issues ... http://www.tmc-law.net/adventures-in-divorce-private-pensions-and-the-dro-episode-2/ When it comes to pensions and divorce, there’s a lot of confusion about how a private pension is divided through the Domestic Relations Order and the Qualified Domestic Relations Order. Once upon a time, it was virtually impossible for a court to divide the interest in a private pension between two ... http://www.tmc-law.net/divorce-private-pensions-and-the-dro-episode-1/ In 2000, the United States Supreme Court decided that parents’ interest in ‘the care, custody, and control of their children… is perhaps the oldest of the fundamental liberty interests.’ (Here is a short summary of the case, Troxel v Granville.) This decision stands on a presumption that all parents are fit parents ... http://www.tmc-law.net/when-do-courts-set-aside-parental-rights/ Part 1 covered the basics of pension division in divorce. Now let’s talk about the orders courts write to direct the divsion of the marital portion of a pension. The actual time at which the pension benefit is divided and how that benefit is valued depend on what kind of pension you ... http://www.tmc-law.net/how-courts-treat-pensions-in-divorce-part-2/ If you have earned pension credits in a public or private pension plan, those benefits are  probably one of your two most valuable assets—the other being your house. When you’re ending your marriage, the court is always going to pay particular attention to these assets. When does a spouse get a ... http://www.tmc-law.net/how-courts-treat-pensions-in-divorce-part-1/ Are disability benefits considered marital assets? Many people assume that they are and will thus be counted in the division of marital property. It’s not quite that simple. There are two basic facts about disability benefits in the context of divorce: Disability benefits paid out on a regular basis (like workers comp, ... http://www.tmc-law.net/divorce-disability-benefits-pensions-assets-or-income/ Many single fathers think that they have an automatic right to spend as much time with their child as the mother does. As a rule, Ohio courts disagree. That makes many unmarried fathers think the courts are biased in favor of mothers. Not so. When children begin life without two parents ... http://www.tmc-law.net/legal-rights-of-unmarried-fathers/