Orange County Divorce Lawyer Blog

This is a strange story. What mother in her right mind would sell her child? Apparently, Kenia Quiala Bosque, age 30, tried to sell one of her 4 children to an aquaintance for $7,000. Bosque stipulated that she put her kids in danger by trying to sell one of them. She did this to avoid a dependency trial. As a result, the children will now remain in the care of their father.

The case is not over for Bosque though. She still faces criminal charges that she tried to sell her youngest son to an acquaintance for $7,000 in December.

Judge Mari Sampedro-Iglesia accepted a plea deal worked out in the juvenile justice building hallways among attorneys for both parents and the Department of Children and Families. In the deal, Bosque agreed that "under severe emotional distress [she] made an empty threat to exchange her child for a sum of money, that placed her children in imminent risk of harm."

The judge ordered a psychological evaluation, individual therapy and parenting classes for Bosque, who was arrested Dec. 4 at her Opa-locka apartment. She will continue having supervised visitations.

From an Orange County divorce lawyer's perspective, it is standard procedure for the case to proceed to a child custody evaluation to determine an appropriate parenting plan. Obviously, Bosque needs help if she ever wants to have a relationship with her children. In the meantime, she has been awarded supervised visits with the children.

If you are experiencing child custody and visitation issues, contact an Orange County divorce lawyer for more information.

Source: Mother accused of selling baby gives up custody to husband

Actress Mena Suvari is ending her marriage to concert producer, Simone Sestito. The pair were married for only 18 months. Suvari and Sestito married in June 2010 in Italy, holding a private church in the Vatican City in what the pair called a "romantic" wedding. The couple met at the Toronto Film Festival in 2007 and were engaged in 2008.

This will be the second divorce for Suvari. Further, the couple do not have any minor children together.

From an Orange County divorce lawyer's perspective, because the parties were only married for a short term, the recipient of spousal support will only be able to obtain same for one-half of the length of the marriage.

Since the couple do not have any children, there will not be any Los Angeles County or Orange County child custody, child visitation or child support issues to deal with.

Hopefully the pair can work out their differences and come to a expeditious resolution to dissolve their property issues. It is unknown if the couple have a prenuptual agreement. If so, it will make the finalization of their divorce a lot easier.

For more information in filing a Los Angeles County or Orange County divorce, contact an Orange County divorce lawyer for more information.

Sourcce: Mena Suvara files for divorce

So, its a new year and a new you! You may be going through a Los Angeles County or Orange County divorce or are contemplating getting a divorce. Going through a divorce is an emotional and stressful time not only for the parties involved but for the children, if there are any. Here are some stress release tips on coping during such a painful period.

1) Get a breathe of fresh air. Take a walk through a mall or a park. It will remind you that there is life after an Orange County or Los Angeles County divorce.

2) Get your yoga on! I turned to yoga about 5 years ago when I suffered severe lower back pain from lifting weights. I started practicing yoga heavily in April of 2009 about 5-6 times a week to help with the "mental" stress of being a lawyer. Now, I'm an addict! I love practicing yoga on a daily basis to clear the mind, strengthen the body, challenge the body and most importantly.... to just "be".

3) Pamper yourself. I rarely have time to pamper myself but when I do, it feels great. Take some time to enjoy a massage, manicure, pedicure or even just a simple hair cut. Taking an hour to do these things works wonders.

4) Venting. Call up a friend or family member and just let it out. Talking about your problems and issues always feels like a weight is lifted. You get the bad things off your chest and the person listening to you vent can offer constructive feedback to help you cope.

These are just a few tips that I find helpful when you find yourself in a stressful situation. If you need the assistance of an aggressive and experienced family law lawyer, contact an Orange County divorce lawyer for help.

Last week the internet was a buzz over Russell Brand's divorce filing from Katy Perry. Reports are stating that the couple did not have a prenuptual agreement. Pursuant to California law, since it is a community property state, all assets acquired by the couple duirng marriage will be divided 50/50.

Forbes magazine estimates that Perry's net worth is $44 million and that Brand's net worth is $15 million. From an Orange County divorce lawyer's standpoint, luckily the couple do not have any children. Otherwise, child custody and visitation issues would inevitably be raised.

Unless the parties agree to waive receipt of spousal support, Perry will likely have to pay Brand spousal support for one-half of the length of the marriage. Further, if there were assets that were acquired during the marriage, absent a prenuptual agreement, the parties will have to divide same equally.

Let this divorce be an example to all couples who intend to marry to get a prenuptual agreement to protect your assets. Otherwise, according to California community property law, in the event of a divorce, all assets and debts will be split between the parties.

Contact an Orange County divorce lawyer for more information.

Source: Russell Brand Might Get $20 Million in divorce from Katy Perry

As we all know (whether it was a publicity stunt or not), Kim Kardashian and Kris Humphries are ending their marriage. If you watched "Keeping up with the Kardashians", then you know that Kim was given a giant 20-something karat engagement ring by Kris. Now that the couple is splitting, does Kim have to return her giant engagement ring?

From an Orange County divorce attorney's perspective, the answer is yes and Kim should return it anyway because she broke off the marriage and will no longer be married to Kris. Pursuant to Civil Code Section 1590, it states as follows:

"Where either party to a contemplated marriage in this State makes a gift of money or property to the other on the basis or assumption that the marriage will take place, in the event that the donee refuses to enter into the marriage as contemplated or that it
is given up by mutual consent, the donor may recover such gift or such part of its value as may, under all of the circumstances of the case, be found by a court or jury to be just."

Although the code states "refuses to enter into the marriage", it would seem fair for Kim to return such an expensive ring even though they entered into the marriage and broke it off 72 days later.

Additionally, there are other civil causes of actions that Kris could file in an attempt to get the ring back. For instance, he could allege negligence, fraud (which he is doing through his Response for an annulment), deceit and intentional infliction of emotional distress, just to name a few.

If you are contemplating filing for a divorce in Los Angeles or Orange County, contact an Orange County divorce lawyer for more information.

Earlier this year, Troy Aikman and his now ex-wife, Rhonda, announced they had split after 10 years of marriage. TMZ reports that the couple's divorce was finalized on April 12, 2011. The couple have 2 minor children together.

Just a few months before the two separated, Troy and Rhonda were already dividing up their acquired assets. In fact, TMZ obtained official documents which show Rhonda gave up her stake in the family mansion in Dallas last November. I suspect that Troy probably bought out Rhonda's interest in said residence. Coincidentally, just a few months later, Rhonda purchased a home in Dallas for approximately $1.5 million.

From an Orange County divorce lawyer's perspective and if this case were litigated in Orange County, the couple would have to resolve issues pertaining to spousal support, child support, child custody, child visitation and property division issues.

It sounds like the couple had an amicable divorce considering there were no leaks to the media until 7 months later. The couple must have amicably agreed to the provisions set forth in their divorce judgment, which is a good thing.

For the sake of the children, its always nice when parties to a divorce can set their differences aside and amicably part ways. Divorce is always stressful so if you can work out your differences, all the better.

For more information on filing a divorce action in Orange County or Los Angeles County, contact an Orange County divorce lawyer for more information.

Source: Troy Aikman-- The Secret Divorce

After many, many months of intense divorce litigation, the McCourts have finally reached a settlement agreement.

This past Monday, the McCourts announced that they had reached a settlement agreement that calls for Jamie McCourt to support a media rights deal that could be worth up to $3 billion - something she once opposed.

The terms of the agreement, which was recently struck between the McCourts, won't be released, but a person familiar with it who requested anonymity because it's not meant to be public told The Associated Press that Jamie McCourt would receive about $130 million, a figure first reported by the Los Angeles Times.

The settlement now allows Frank McCourt to focus on his battle with MLB, which is seeking permission from a bankruptcy judge to file a reorganization plan that calls for McCourt to sell the Dodgers.

From an Orange County divorce perspective, divorce cases often take several years to wrap up. Luckily for the McCourts, they resolved their issues with a global settlement. Now each party can go their separate ways and move on with their lives.

If you are in need of an Orange County divorce lawyer to assist you in any divorce, child custody, child support, spousal support or property division issue, contact an Orange County divorce lawyer for more information.

Source: McCourt Divorce Settlement: They are a united front

Last week, Orange County was a buzz over the killing of 8 people in a hair salon.

Scott Evans Dekraai of Huntington Beach is the suspect in the worst mass killing in Orange County. He is currently being held without bail since his arrest Wednesday after the massacre at the Salon Meritage on Pacific Coast Highway. Dekraai was apparently targeting his ex-wife, Michelle Fournier, but as a result 7 other people were killed and 1 person is in critical condition.

Fournier and Dekraai were engaged in a bitter Orange County child custody battle over their 8-year-old son.

Fournier's attorney, John Cate Jr., told the Orange County Register that Dekraai and his Fournier were in court the day before the shooting. Dekraai had filed an Order to Show Cause seeking sole custody of his son, but a court-ordered report recommended against it.

"Scott Dekraai's demeanor throughout this case has been controlled, and he never gave any indication that he housed the potential for such destruction and carnage," Cate said in a statement.

From an Orange County divorce lawyers perspective, child custody disputes leading to killings is all too familiar. Murder is never the answer. One option of working out child custody disputes is through mediation. Going over the issues in conflict with a neutral third party can be helpful to your case.

Contact an Orange County divorce lawyer for more information on child custody disputes.

Source: Seal Beach Shooting: Murder charges expected against suspect

The question of who owns the Dodgers will soon be determined next year in the latest saga of the McCourt divorce. The divorce trial is expected to take place in the Spring or Summer of 2012 and last about 30 to 45 days.

To recap, Frank McCourt claims sole ownership of the Dodgers while soon to be ex-wife Jamie claims that she owns half. It is unclear when the Dodgers will emerge from federal bankruptcy protection. After the Dodgers took a $150-million bankruptcy loan from Major League Baseball, Frank McCourt's attorneys said the team had funding to operate until well into next season.

Although Superior Court Judge Scott Gordon could decide ownership of the team before the bankruptcy proceedings end, he emphasized Wednesday that "the ultimate question of the disposition of the Dodgers" would need to wait for a resolution in Bankruptcy Court. Until the issue gets out of bankruptcy court, the team cannot be sold through the family law court.

The 2012 trial would resolve all remaining Los Angeles county divorce issues, including team ownership, permanent support and division of assets. Frank McCourt hopes to show the Dodgers are his alone by tracing their ownership to a company he founded before marriage, an effort both sides said would require tracking funds for more than three decades.

Additionally, this past Wednesday, the parties agreed that Frank McCourt would continue to pay $225,000 per month in temporary spousal support. However, the court eliminated the $412,000 per month he has been paying to maintain the couple's residential properties -- pending a November hearing.

One of the couple's two Holmby Hills homes was sold last month. The proceeds from the sale of said home will fill the support gap. Two properties in Massachusetts and another in Montana are for sale, according to court documents.

The McCourts are scheduled to return to court Nov. 17 and 18, when Judge Gordon is expected to hear arguments on spousal support and attorney fees and set a trial date.

From an Orange County divorce lawyer's perspective, its never easy going through such a heated and contested divorce, especially when millions of dollars are at stake.

Contact an Orange County divorce lawyer for more information.

Source: Final Frank and Jamie McCourt divorce trial? Wait till next year

From another Orange County (the one in Florida) comes a child custody case that is nothing short of shocking. Citing local sheriff's deputies, television station WFTV reports that an Orange County father was stripped of his custody rights after "his 18-month-old son... was found drinking from beer bottles alone in the front yard."

The television station reports that the child has been placed in foster care. It says the father - who was reportedly found passed-out drunk inside the family residence at the time of his arrest - told police and child welfare officials that the toddler's mother is hospitalized for mental illness and that "he has no other nearby relatives to care for the child."

Obviously this is an extreme case. It does, however, highlight one of the many crucial roles an Orange County family law attorney can play for clients here in California. Children in situations like this tend to be moved into foster care as an emergency measure. Relatives wishing to get them out, claim Los Angeles or Orange County child custody and provide a safe and loving home will generally need careful, detail-oriented legal assistance to find their way through the sometimes intimidating world of the California family courts.

Similarly, an Orange County custody and visitation lawyer can help you defend yourself and your family in situations where you believe the state has over-reached, or when relatives find themselves at odds over where a child's best interests lie. The important thing is to find a compassionate legal professional with whom you feel comfortable.

WFTV.com:

Posted In: Custody & Visitation, Family Law

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If you watched the Real Housewives of Beverly Hills last season, you may have seen the trials and tribulations involving Taylor Armstrong and her husband Russell. You may have thought that divorce was imminent during the season. Well, the time has now come as Taylor has just filed for a Los Angeles County divorce.

Taylor has told PEOPLE the following: "It was a difficult decision but I have decided to file for divorce from Russell. Although we have tried our best to work out our differences, I have come to the conclusion that it is in the best interest of our family that we separate."

The couple have a 5 year old daughter, Kennedy.

Unless the couple has a prenuptual agreement in place, the division of the parties' marital estate will be divided in accordance with California community property laws, where all property acquired during the marriage is divided 50/50.

In addition to the division of marital assets (and debts), the parties will also have to work towards a child custody and visitation plan, determine child support and spousal support, which are all factors that encompass the procedure for divorce.

It remains unknown if the parties' divorce will be covered on next season's Real Housewives of Beverly Hills. It'll definitely make for some good television. However, it seems like the curse of the Real Housewives show is making its way to Beverly Hills. I previously blogged about the Orange County divorces of Real Houswives Tamra Barney and Vicki Gunvalson in previous posts.

Let's hope Taylor and Russell can work through their differences and finalize their divorce as amicably as possible, especially for the sake of their young daughter.

If you are contemplating a divorce in either Los Angeles or Orange County, contact an Orange County divorce lawyer for more information.

Source: Real Housewife Taylor Armstrong files for divorce

A recent California appellate court ruling may have significant consequences for a small number of people facing unusual family and civil law cases here in Orange County and elsewhere throughout the state. According to Metropolitan News Service, the ruling by the state's Sixth District Court of Appeal establishes new criteria for what is known as the "putative spouse test," allowing courts to use subjective criteria in determining the outcome of a case.

A "putative spouse" is someone who, in good faith, believes themselves to be married even though the union is, in fact, void (for example, because a California divorce has not been obtained to dissolve an earlier marriage). In this particular case the court was addressing the question of whether "a woman who claims she did not know that the man she married was already married to someone else" could file a wrongful death suit related to the demise of her 'husband.'

According to Metropolitan, Nancy Ceja married her husband Robert in 2003 three months before his divorce from his first wife became official. Robert died in an on-the-job accident in 2007. Nancy claimed that she only discovered the couple's marriage had never been valid when she moved to file a wrongful death suit related to Robert's passing.

A lower court held that since Nancy had "used her husband's divorce papers to obtain beneficiary status in his union's insurance plan in 2004" she must "objectively" have noticed the discrepancy between the marriage and divorce dates. The appeals court overturned that ruling, accepting Nancy's claim that she was unaware that her marriage was invalid, and establishing the precedent that courts can side with a defendant based on subjective criteria (what she says she believed), rather than relying only on objective facts (what documents in her possession said).

The ruling is an important one for the (admittedly, small) number of people faced with similar problems. Allowing putative spouse claims to turn on a judge's view of a defendant's subjective beliefs means that California family law attorneys will have to be especially careful in preparing (or defending against) such claims in the future. Choosing an appropriate, and experienced, Orange County family law specialist can be the difference between success and failure in complex and unusual cases like this.

Metropolitan News Service: Appellate court adopts subjective putative spouse test

If you are considering getting married soon, perhaps implementing a prenuptual agreement may be something you should consider to protect your assets in the event of an Los Angeles County or Orange County divorce.

At any rate, here are 5 tips to assist you in planning a prenuputual agreement (which can also be found here):

Five tips for planning a prenuptual agreement:

1. Do it long before the wedding. Get the agreement as early as six months to a year before a wedding date to ensure that both parties have had time to review it. Last-minute contracts are harder to enforce.

2. Step out of your emotions. The emotional roller coaster of falling in love and wedding planning can distort reality. Getting objective feedback can help separate what is real and what imagined. "My husband likes to joke that we lose 100 IQ points when we are falling in love," says a therapist. "It's called emotional flooding and we can learn to manage those emotions."

3. Use your taxes as an excuse to talk about money. "Right now we are in tax season, so it's a great time to look at finances," "Look at each other's returns as a way into the conversation. It can feel threatening, but it is important to have the uncomfortable conversation now, rather than later in a time of crisis."

4. Make your agreement reasonable and enforceable. If you are preparing a prenuptial contract, establish your goals and don't include fault clauses (like "If you cheat on me, you owe me $1 million"), advises a family law attorney. The goal is to have a contract that is enforceable and provide each spouse with a sense of exactly what they are getting if the marriage ends.

5. Research your state's law regarding marriage and property. Marital property laws differ from State to State. For instance, California is a community property state.

Contact an Orange County divorce lawyer for more information on drafting a prenuptual agreement.

Source: 5 tips on planning a prenuptial agreement

A celebrity child custody and visitation case suddenly got a lot nastier last week when mixed martial arts star Chuck Liddell was publicly accused by his ex-wife of kidnapping the couple's son and taking him to California, according to the celebrity-tracking website TMZ. Liddell, in turn, appeared before a California family law court to accuse his ex of neglecting the child.

The case seems to have begun in late March when Liddell traveled to Colorado, where his ex-wife Lori Geyer lives with her current husband, for a visit with the couple's 12-year-old son. Four days later, TMZ reports, Geyer received a call from Liddell's attorney informing her that the boy was in California and would remain there until a custody hearing could take place.

A week later Liddell was in a California court seeking full custody of the boy, claiming his mother had neglected him by leaving a "severe toothache" untreated for "2 or 3 months," and also that "the boy was allegedly abused by being forced to perform physical labor - including snow removal."

It is easy to have sympathy with a father who feels his ex is not properly caring for a child and goes to court in an effort to put the situation right. From an Orange County family law attorney's perspective, however, it needs to be said that taking the child to a different state without notice or permission, regardless of the circumstances, can look a lot like kidnapping in the eyes of the law and is not likely to help one's case.

Grave steps, such as the reopening of a long-settled child custody and visitation agreement should always be preceded by careful consultation with an attorney, particularly when multiple states are involved. An Orange County father's rights lawyer can help clients devise a strategy most likely to succeed in court and, in the process, help guarantee you the deep and significant relationship with your child that every parent wants and deserves.

TMZ: Chuck Liddell's Ex - You Kidnapped Our Son!

TMZ: Chuck Liddell Asks Judge for Full Custody

Just how much power does a family law court have over a California divorce? It pretty much depends on what issues are before the court. For example, if a spouse is alleging they are not able to become self-supporting due to an alleged medical condition, that person's medical condition is at issue. Discovery of said medical issue becomes fair game.

In fact, a top divorce attorney was quoted as saying "[c]ourts have wide authority to order just about anything once physical or mental capability comes into question," The lawyer went on to state that "[c]ourts can test, and continue to test over time, for mental and emotional stability, drugs and alcohol abuse, even for communicable diseases. It all depends on what the other side brings into question and how the judge decides to weigh the accusation,"

What about power over child custody issues? If there is suspicion of abduction or a flight risk by a parent, then, of course, issues relating to out of State travel and what to do about a passport are raised. In fact, a family law court might limit vacation travel during the children's Summer or Winter break.

The court also has wide power over a person's failure to pay child support. Indeed, I've written about Contempt issues many times before. The court has power to put a hold on the payor's U.S. Passport and/or his/her driver's license if the payor fails to pay his or her child support obligation.

For more information on divorce and how an Orange County divorce attorney can assist you, contact the Law Offices of David Schwarz for more information.

Source: Family court can pull passports, order drug testing and more during custody proceedings