Charlotte Divorce Lawyer Blog

Fourteen of our fifty states currently approve the use of marijuana for medical purposes in some form. However, because the use of marijuana is still illegal under federal law, its role in child custody disputes has become a subject of great debate in recent years. Although medical marijuana laws can protect patients from criminal charges, they typically do not prevent judges and guardians ad litem from considering a parent's use of marijuana as a factor in custody decisions.

Most often, the judicial system will side with parents who seek to keep their children away from marijuana. With some other painkiller medications, judges can require tests to establish how much of a drug a patient has in his system at any given time; however, because treatment providers cannot prescribe specific dosages of marijuana without violating federal law, it is currently unclear what constitutes an "appropriate" level of marijuana in a patient's system.

Medical marijuana activists in several states, including Washington, California, and Colorado, state that they have been getting more inquiries recently from patients involved in custody disputes, as the number of patients using marijuana for medical purposes increases. According to the Marijuana Policy Project, based in Washington, D.C., only two states with medical marijuana laws specify that patients will not lose custody or visitation rights, unless the patient's use of marijuana endangers the child or is contrary to the child's best interests.

This year, Father's Day marked a new milestone for fathers across the country: they are becoming just as stressed as mothers. Last week, Boston College released a study called "The New Dad," which suggested that new fathers are facing a subtle bias in the workplace that fails to recognize their new family responsibilities and obligations. This workplace bias assumes that mothers, rather than fathers, will be most affected by the addition of children to the family.

However, this research highlights the new challenges facing fathers: they must navigate a workplace that is typically reluctant to give them time off for family reasons. Several studies show that men, compared with their female colleagues, are less likely to take advantage of benefits like flexible schedules and family leave. The Boston College study found that when men needed to take their children to the doctor or pick them up from daycare, they tended to do so in a stealthy fashion rather than ask for a more flexible work arrangement.

Thus, fathers are now facing a social dilemma that is more often faced by mothers - finding the balance between being a good parent and a good worker. Fathers also seem more unhappy than mothers with the balancing act: In dual-income families, 59 percent of fathers report some level of "work-life conflict," compared with about 45 percent of women, according to a 2008 report from The Families and Work Institute in New York.

Although 40 percent of households today have one stay-at-home spouse to handle daily domestic demands, women remain "psychologically responsible" for the large majority of the household and childcare duties.

Recently, in the case of Shippen v. Shippen, the North Carolina Court of Appeals upheld a civil contempt finding against a husband who failed to pay child support and post-separation support to his ex-wife.

Shortly after the child support payments were ordered, John Lee Shippen joined the Twelve Tribes of Israel, a religious community that prohibits its members from earning outside income or owning personal assets. Instead, the sect's members farm and provide services to one another in exchange for food and housing.

The court found that Mr. Shippen's failure to make payments was "willful" for the purposes of the contempt order because he had the mental and physical ability to comply with the order. Mr. Shippen alleged that he acted in good faith based on his sincerely-held religious beliefs that prevented him from earning income. The court concluded that the fact that the defendant's religious beliefs may be sincerely held is irrelevant to his obligation to pay alimony and child support.

In Manhattan, the home of federal immigration headquarters, the future of many couples depends upon whether they can prove to the government that they did not marry solely to acquire a green card for one spouse. If a couple can successfully pass their interviews with the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services, the foreign spouse will become eligible for a green card; however, the actual receipt of a green card requires a separate application and security clearance.

According to an agency worksheet, red flags for immigration interviewers include: unusual cultural differences, a large age discrepancy between spouses, an unusual number of children, and a U.S. citizen spouse with little means. Interviewers also seek evidence of a legitimate marriage, such as the commingling of assets and other joint documentation, and a mental and emotional connection as the result of shared life experiences.

The actual number of green card petitions denied on the basis of fraud is quite small: only 506 of the 241,154 petitions filed by citizens last year were denied. The criminal penalties for perpetrating a marriage fraud are up to five years in prison and a $250,000 fine.

Could your marriage survive the interviews? Check out these sample questions compiled by immigration attorneys who often sit in on their clients' interviews.

A judge in Charlotte will soon have to decide the fate of two siblings who recently witnessed their father murder the rest of their family in their home. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police report that the father of the children, Kenny Chapman, suffocated his wife and their 1-year-old daughter, then stabbed his wife's daughter from a previous relationship. Chapman's surviving 11-year-old daughter claims that he spared her and her 2-year-old brother because they were his first-born of each sex, and therefore they were special. The surviving children lived in the home for two weeks after the murders, and the daughter did not contact any relatives or act distraught, in an effort to avoid the same fate at her father's hands.

The two children had the same father, but different mothers, which is complicating their case. The paternal grandparents want to be awarded custody of both children, but the maternal grandmother only wants custody of the boy, as she believes that she has a significant connection to him, and she is of no relation to the girl. Due to everything the children have endured together, the paternal grandparents believe that the children belong together. If the children are separated, the grandparents hope that arrangements can be made for them to see one another on a regular basis.

Before the age of the internet, divorce attorneys used subpoenas and private investigators to glean the truth from opposing parties. Now, with the advent of social networking sites, the first place many attorneys can find incriminating evidence is on Facebook. Social networking discovery skills have become critical for many divorce attorneys who seek to support certain aspects of their cases. Incriminating information gleaned from social networking sites can sway the outcome of alimony disputes and child custody battles, particularly if the information discredits the party in the eyes of the presiding judge.

Eighty percent of attorneys surveyed by the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers reported a rise in the number of cases litigated that relied on social media over the past five years. Because Facebook boasts over 400 million users, most parties to litigation are bound to have created social networking accounts at some point in time. However, last week Facebook announced a tightening of users' privacy settings in response to many user complaints.

National Digital Forensics, Inc., a North Carolina company that mines online media sites for information, reports that requests for social media searches from divorce lawyers have surged recently. The company's senior investigator estimates that about half the social media cases they investigate expose some form of adultery.

Although the recent announcement by Al and Tipper Gore that they are separating after 40 years of marriage has shocked the country, a recent CNN article indicates that more long-term relationships in this decade are heading toward divorce than ever before. Break-ups between long-term married couples are still far rarer than between newlyweds, but factors such as longer lifespans and a growing acceptance of divorce are accelerating the divorce rate among older couples.

According to the 2004 U.S. Census Bureau data, most first-time divorces occur around the 8th year of marriage. Experts say there are three "divorce-prone" points in time that will either make or break a marriage. The first is after the initial two years of marriage, when the couple has passed the "honeymoon period." The second is around the five to seven year mark, when children are typically born. The final point is when the children leave home for college and the couple becomes empty-nesters with fewer ties to one another.

Couples like the Gores who have successfully navigated their marriage past all of these divorce-prone points often cause the greatest shockwaves when announcing a separation or divorce.

As we have discussed here (The Legal Hurdles of Obtaining a Same-Sex Divorce) legal issues related to same sex divorce are, naturally, becoming more important as same sex marriage increases. According to a new research team from Stockholm University's Department of Sociology and Demography, who studied legal partnerships in Norway and Sweden, same-sex marriages are much more likely to end in divorce than opposite-sex marriages. This study found that male same-sex marriages are 50 percent more likely to end in divorce than heterosexual marriages, while female same-sex marriages are 167 percent more likely.