In Minnesota, divorce is formally referred to as “dissolution of marriage,” and the terms are used interchangeably. There are documents required to start a Minnesota divorce and to conclude it, and other documents that may need to be filed in bet…
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Anyone who has ever been divorced can tell you that even the most straightforward divorce is not easy for the people going through it. Every marriage, and every divorce, is unique, and there are any number of issues that can complicate a divorce. Goi…
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Even the most thoughtful, well-crafted estate plan can become a disaster without proper maintenance. The reason is simple: life is change. Some of that change stems from our own choices. Some of it does not. In the estate planning context, HIPAA waiv…
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LGBTQ clients are just like any other clients who walk into a divorce attorney’s office—and LGBTQ clients may also have very different experiences and needs. Those two statements might seem like polar opposites, but they are both true. Any person…
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“It’s always darkest just before the dawn.” It’s a saying you’ve heard hundreds of times, and it’s usually said by someone standing in a different “time zone,” where they are already in the light. Meanwhile, you may be stuck in a plac…
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The Minnesota Court of Appeals recently decided a case that could have implications for future cases involving spousal support in the state—not to mention existing spousal support cases. Let’s take a look at what In re: Marriage of Madden has to…
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When is divorce the best choice? Nobody plans to get divorced. Almost everyone who gets married hopes and believes it is the start of “happily ever after,” despite statistics that suggest almost half of all marriages end in divorce. When it turns…
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Let’s talk about contracts, especially contracts and divorce. A contract has three elements to it. There is an offer, an acceptance and something lawyers call “consideration.” So when you want to buy a car, the offer is for the car dealer to se…
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Before you file for divorce, you are simply married; After your divorce is granted, you are simply divorced, and your divorce decree becomes the “private law” of your divorce. In between, while you are still technically married, your relationship…
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We live in a society that has normalized drinking, even drinking to excess. T-shirts that say “It’s beer o’clock.” Insulated travel coffee mugs emblazoned with “This might be wine.” Most adults engage in this perfectly legal activity, and…
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Marriage is a partnership, which means each spouse has his or her own role in making things work. When divorce happens, you need to figure out how to make everything work on your own. A spouse who never shopped or cooked needs to figure out how to ge…
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In recent years, you may have noticed, some of the language around divorced parents and children has changed. What used to be called “visitation,” for instance, is now called “parenting time.” It’s an important distincti…
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If you have never been through a divorce, where did you learn what you know about divorce? Some people form their ideas about divorce from the experiences related by family and friends, or even from television shows and movies. While some of that inf…
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Alcoholism never affects just the person with the disease. The entire family, whether they realize it or not, is involved. From children trying extra hard to “be good” to avoid making Dad angry, to a husband calling his wife in “sic…
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We are all products, in one way or another, of our experiences. Sometimes those experiences shape our worlds to such an extent that we don’t realize that they’ve affected us; it’s just “the way things were.” In the past…
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