August 21, 2012
Sometime around 2007 I encountered a situation involving a marital home I not previously dealt with: negative equity. Prior to 2007 unhappily married folks often
Successfully representing the uncredible family court client
August 8, 2012
Credibility is a major issue in most family court trials. See e.g., Lewis v. Lewis, 392 S.C. 381 709 S.E.2d 650, 654 (2011) (“The highly fact-intensive nature
July 19, 2012
The past few years I have, on numerous occasions, met with a family court litigant who has made obvious attempts to alter his or her
July 19, 2012
I reviewed two files yesterday in which one party to a custody dispute was refusing to answer questions by invoking her 5th Amendment privilege against
Inter-spousal legal claims that survive the marital dissolution action
June 7, 2012
Except when explicitly reserved, most inter-spousal claims do not survive a divorce or final order of separate maintenance. If one spouse owes the other money
Visitation cases have a different focus than custody cases
June 7, 2012
Typically parents retain me to handle visitation cases, rather than seeking custody, when they have not had much recent contact with their child. Often such
The perils of witness-drafted affidavits
June 1, 2012
Having witnesses draft their own affidavits is a time and money saving method of preparing for family court hearings. Further having witnesses rather than the
The limits of South Carolina Family Court Rule 7
June 1, 2012
South Carolina Family Court Rule 7 creates various evidentiary exceptions to the general rules of hearsay. Some family law attorneys read this rule to allow
