Law Blog

Even the thought of some of our colleagues, cornering the little children of their clients in a conference room in order to elicit a parental preference, causes recurring nightmares.

A case that caught our attention from the Michigan Court of Appeals last month deserves mention in this blog. The case comes from the St. Clair County’s Family Court; the family court judge that ruled in Mother’s favor to allow a significant modification of the parenting schedule was reversed by the Court of Appeals.

Over the past few months, Paul Walker and Philip Seymour Hoffman both died in sudden and unexpected ways. The latter, from an apparent overdose of heroin in January after decades of straight living; the former, ironically, in a flaming high-speed car crash last November.

About one year ago, the Michigan Court of Appeals recently gave us one more reason to care about legal custody when negotiating a divorce with minor children. During the divorce process it is often difficult for those involved to consider the future and a possible remarriage down the road.

Were here at the electronic divorce attorney are not big fans of digitizing personal therapy in an app. Or the divorce process for that matter.

Among some of the more enlightened Hollywood luminaries, it’s not a divorce; it is a “conscious uncoupling”. This is the term veteran actress Gwyneth Paltrow used on her website this week to announce the split with Chris Martin, her rocker-husband of more than ten years.

Over the five years since Michigan’s Medical Marijuana Act was passed through voter initiative in November 2008, we’ve had many cases in family court where a parent’s medical marijuana use was raised as an issue in the case. Generally, family court judges do not shine to pot smoking parents.

As a Public Administrator, a professional fiduciary serving Waterford & Clarkston, the issue of executing a DNR order [Do Not Resuscitate] continually arises in my law practice. The issue has been politically charged for years. DNRs have been governed until this week by the “Do-Not-Resuscitate” Procedure Act.

It is Tuesday at 9.30am and I am in the booth. The booth is a tiny box where I have the honor of talking to my client through an inch of bullet-proof glass.

Later this week, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo is scheduled to announce, in his State-of-the-State address, an executive initiative allowing the limited use of medical marijuana under a set of narrow circumstances.