Gender Inequity in the 21st Century

For about two and a half years I represented men exclusively.  Why did I do that?  Because I really like men.  What does this have to do with divorce?  Well, plenty.  Courts are slowly catching up to the fact that special treatment of any kind is unfair, but there are still many challenges for men --- spousal support, sole custody of children and double-standards in joint custody.  For example, I can't tell you how many times I've heard judges and children's attorneys ask fathers who have joint custody whether they called the school, or the doctor, or so on.  But nobody asks that question of moms, even when they don't do it but have primary residential custody.  It's as if men have to do twice as much to get the same consideration women do.  Sound familiar?  Sure it does.  It's what women were saying in the early 1970s.  The tables have turned.

I suppose there are many "feminists" out there who might sue me for such a "radical" statement.  Because you aren't really feminist if you hate men.  You aren't really feminist if you whine about getting special treatment because of all the years of being a downtrodden class.  In fact,  if you do that, you are just perpetuating the myth that women need some kind of special treatment to survive and succeed in this world.  We real women don't need you and we don't need to live our lives like you do to be considered a feminist.

You fall into two classes, the very young women who have been indoctrinated in women's studies courses and majors all over the country into believing that men are bad and women are good and that is that.  Or those of you who are in the second half of adulthood and teach those courses.  Maybe you've forgotten what we stood for back then in the early 70s.  Maybe you've forgotten that the watchword was "equality" not "superiority."   The good news is that many young (30s to 40s) women are enjoying being women.  Proud to be wives and mothers, if they choose.  Proud to have husbands and fathers who are equal partners in parenting.  Proud to like men.

Either way, it's tough being a "real" feminist if you don't ascribe to the party line propounded by both groups.  It's tough to like men.  To say many are wonderful.  Indeed, to prefer their company to that of women.  Heaven forbid!  (Hey, most of them don't stab you in the back, gossip about you because they can't feel good about themselves without making you small, or act with passive-aggressive politeness).

But I am a real feminist.  I was there.  To add to those famous words, "Ain't I a woman?" I'd say, "too."

Discovery and Document Production in Divorce Litigation

Any kind of legal matter involving money or property of any kind in any jurisdiction, is going to have paper --- a lot of paper --- associated with it.  Getting copies of these documents before a couple separates can be critically important.  It saves the cost of paying a lawyer to get it later!  And the better organized the documents collected, the easier (and less costly) it is for the lawyer to operate once hired.

In fact, finding out the full scope of the income sources and assets of a divorcing couple is one of the most important (and expensive) parts of divorce litigation.  The entire process of getting information that is "likely to lead to the discovery of admissible evidence," (Md. Rule 2-402(a)) is critical whether you are engaged in mediation or litigation.

So what do we need to know?  What paper do we look for?  And how far back do we want to go?  Well, last question first:  as far back as the beginning of the marriage or even before if there was premarital property ownership.  As for what we look for, here is a short list of some of the major items of information we need:

• Any and all bank accounts of both parties;
• Documents showing ownership and activity of assets (real property; retirement and investment accounts; personal property) of the parties together and individually;
• Tax returns (personal and business);
• Debts (mortgages, liens, consumer credit records, bank loans, personal loans, anything evidencing debt) of the parties together and  individually;
• Documents that show all the information available on insurance plans, retirement plans and similar plans --- this means what is called "policy documents."  These are usually available from human resources personnel.  What is needed are the long, fine-print documents, not just the summaries that give a general overview.

Obtaining this information (or, if a couple is able to be civil and courteous at separation, by making sure both parties have the information) at the beginning of a separation can, in many cases, go a long way toward getting a faster, cheaper and more complete resolution of your marital dissolution.

Joint Custody Calculator That WORKS!!

It isn't often that I find a product out there that has the potential to help the public, the courts and lawyers, but the makers of those child support calculators we all know and love, SASI-CALC, have developed a new product known as SASI-TIME.   Here is a link to their website:
SASI-TIME.


As more and more states move away from the old, tired model of children of divorce and separation being with dad every other weekend, and toward the model of equal time for the kids with each parent, it has gotten more and more complicated to try to measure the number of days a child is with each parent.  This is what it used to look like:

We'd haul out a yearly calendar and try to manually count the number of overnights the kids had with mom and the number with dad  Why?  Because at least in Maryland, and also in other states, the number of days a child has with each parent affects other areas of law, like child support.  It got even more complicated when there was more than one child, and the parents had what is known as "split" custody (that's what happens when one parent has most of the time with one child and the other has most of the time with the other child.

Add in holidays, school breaks and all the rest and you needed a computer to figure out the number of days and the percentage of time each child in a single family spent with each parent.  Wait!  That's what SASI-TIME does!  

Trust me, I've tried it and as far as I can tell, it is the only product out there that does this, with so many variations. I liked it.  And it's internet-based so my Mac office can use it with ease.  I can't tell you it's perfect, but so far, it's all I can find out there that does so much in one place and I was impressed.