by Andy Chen | Sep 12, 2017 | California, Individual, Law, in real life
In a divorce case, one of the big things that the courts in California will decide is custody and visitation of any minor children that the divorcing parties may have. I haven’t checked, but this is probably not unique to California. As always, check the laws of your particular state or country, but if you’re in the United States but outside of California, the court presiding over a divorce will likely determine child custody and visitation also. To be clear, custody and visitation are not interchangeable terms. As they are commonly used in California, “visitation” refers to the schedule by which the child will visit with the parent they do not regularly live with. For instance, if the child lives with Mom regularly, then visitation refers to the schedule under which the child visits with Dad. There could be a visitation schedule for regular or routine weeks and a different schedule for other times of the year, such as holidays and the child’s summer vacation from school. Custody — again, as used in California — refers to two kinds: (1) legal custody, and (2) physical custody. Legal custody refers to the right of a parent to decide things related to the child’s schooling, medical care, and religious education. As a rule of thumb, legal custody is at play whenever a parent has to sign a permission slip (e.g school field trip) of some kind for the child to do something. Physical custody refers to who the child lives with. A common custody arrangement might, therefore, be “shared legal custody and primary physical custody to Mom with Dad having visitation”....
by Andy Chen | Sep 10, 2017 | California, Law, in real life, New York, Statutes... and stuff
California is a community property state when it comes to divorces. The idea of community property is not difficult to understand in the abstract — colloquially, you might have heard it as the rule that in a divorce, you get (or lose) of the stuff. See California Family Code section 2550. Property is basically put in to one of three categories: (1) stuff owned by spouse #1 from before the marriage, (2) stuff owned by spouse #2 from before the marriage, and (3) stuff that the two spouses acquired while they were married. The property in category (3) is divided in half — again see California Family Code section 2550 — while the property in (1) and (2) goes to each spouse respectively. Applying the idea of community property in the real world is not so simple. First, the spouses will argue about which category (1, 2, or 3) a particular piece of property falls in to. Second, if each spouse acquires property after they separate, determining when that property was acquired relative to the separation date can also be argued about, sometimes extensively. Third, it can often be confusing, such as when property was purchased prior to the marriage and financed or paid for partly during the marriage. Houses often fall in to this category. If you’re dealing with a California divorce where a house was purchased by one spouse before the marriage, but the mortgage was paid for during the marriage, you may be interested in something called a Moore-Marsden computation. Community property in divorces is the exception rather than the rule in the United States. The...
