I’m Kathi Sandweiss. I’m the Chair of the appellate practice section at Jaburg and Wilk.
You can appeal basically any final judgement, and that means you can appeal a dissolution, but it’s not as if you’re no longer divorced. You’re not appealing the fact of the divorce. What you’re appealing typically is about money. It can be about something else, but typically somebody will appeal a distribution of property, for example. And a lot of times that will go back to what the lower court determined was the value, for example, of a business. And the value of that business will then impact how your property is distributed.
One of the basic errors that someone alleges in the divorce decree, in the dissolution decree is that a business was not valued properly. So, that goes back to a dueling expert standard. My expert witness, say, valued my art practice at $300,000. Your expert witness valued my business at $500,000, and that’ll determine a lot of how much money is distributed to each party. The problem with it is you’re looking at credibility of witnesses, and you don’t want to be in the position of asking the higher court to determine that there was a factual error because that’s a much tougher standard on appeal.
By: Kathi Sandweiss
I’m Kathi Sandweiss. I’m the Chair of the appellate practice section at Jaburg and Wilk.
You can appeal basically any final judgement, and that means you can appeal a dissolution, but it’s not as if you’re no longer divorced. You’re not appealing the fact of the divorce. What you’re appealing typically is about money. It can be about something else, but typically somebody will appeal a distribution of property, for example. And a lot of times that will go back to what the lower court determined was the value, for example, of a business. And the value of that business will then impact how your property is distributed.
One of the basic errors that someone alleges in the divorce decree, in the dissolution decree is that a business was not valued properly. So, that goes back to a dueling expert standard. My expert witness, say, valued my art practice at $300,000. Your expert witness valued my business at $500,000, and that’ll determine a lot of how much money is distributed to each party. The problem with it is you’re looking at credibility of witnesses, and you don’t want to be in the position of asking the higher court to determine that there was a factual error because that’s a much tougher standard on appeal.
By: Kathi Sandweiss
Legal separation can take a number of months. It can actually take longer than that, but the minimum time in Arizona is sixty days, which is the exact same as a divorce. So, if you were hoping for a quicker disposition of your legal separation, unfortunately you are not able to do that any faster than you would a divorce. But, that’s not the only reason to consider a legal separation. Each case is different. Each case is unique and we’d love the opportunity to talk about that with you. If you’d like more information, contact me.
Legal separation can take a number of months. It can actually take longer than that, but the minimum time in Arizona is sixty days, which is the exact same as a divorce. So, if you were hoping for a quicker disposition of your legal separation, unfortunately you are not able to do that any faster than you would a divorce. But, that’s not the only reason to consider a legal separation. Each case is different. Each case is unique and we’d love the opportunity to talk about that with you. If you’d like more information, contact me.
Hi. My name is Mitchell Reichman. I’m a board certified specialist in family law and chair of the family law department at Jaburg & Wilk. Opting out is choosing to resolve a family law dispute outside the traditional judicial system. One of the ways parties can choose to opt out is by choosing to arbitrate.
Arbitration is a voluntary process. It’s beyond the jurisdiction of a judge to order parties to arbitrate. However, once parties do decide to arbitrate, a court order will be entered that appoints the arbitrator and governs the process. Generally in Arizona, arbitrations are governed by a set of statutes known as Arizona’s Arbitration Act. One of the advantages of arbitration is that the parties can choose the neutral that serves as the arbitrator based on the parties’ circumstances, particularly where the issues are specialized such as with the valuation of a business or professional practice. The parties can chose an arbitrator who has a greater amount of education, training, and experience than the judge randomly assigned to their case. This gives the parties the opportunity to obtain a more predictable outcome because the arbitrator is familiar with the issues that will be presented in a valuation analysis, and the judge might not be. An important difference between choosing to arbitrate a dispute as compared to a trial concerns the right to appeal.
Under Arizona’s Arbitration Act, people who choose to arbitrate have very limited rights to appeal the decision of the arbitrator. This is very dissimilar from their rights to appeal should a judge make the decision after a trial on the merits. Overall, however, in many cases we find that by choosing to opt out through a process of arbitration, we’re able to reach our goal of helping our clients obtain a more favorable result in their family law proceeding.
Hi. My name is Mitchell Reichman. I’m a board certified specialist in family law and chair of the family law department at Jaburg & Wilk. Opting out is choosing to resolve a family law dispute outside the traditional judicial system. One of the ways parties can choose to opt out is by choosing to arbitrate.
Arbitration is a voluntary process. It’s beyond the jurisdiction of a judge to order parties to arbitrate. However, once parties do decide to arbitrate, a court order will be entered that appoints the arbitrator and governs the process. Generally in Arizona, arbitrations are governed by a set of statutes known as Arizona’s Arbitration Act. One of the advantages of arbitration is that the parties can choose the neutral that serves as the arbitrator based on the parties’ circumstances, particularly where the issues are specialized such as with the valuation of a business or professional practice. The parties can chose an arbitrator who has a greater amount of education, training, and experience than the judge randomly assigned to their case. This gives the parties the opportunity to obtain a more predictable outcome because the arbitrator is familiar with the issues that will be presented in a valuation analysis, and the judge might not be. An important difference between choosing to arbitrate a dispute as compared to a trial concerns the right to appeal.
Under Arizona’s Arbitration Act, people who choose to arbitrate have very limited rights to appeal the decision of the arbitrator. This is very dissimilar from their rights to appeal should a judge make the decision after a trial on the merits. Overall, however, in many cases we find that by choosing to opt out through a process of arbitration, we’re able to reach our goal of helping our clients obtain a more favorable result in their family law proceeding.
Hi, I’m Kathi Sandweiss. I’m an appellate lawyer here at Jaburg and Wilk.
You can appeal really any of your issues that you disputed in your divorce decree, assuming obviously that you didn’t stipulate to your divorce decree. But assuming that there’s been a decree entered after some sort of a conflict – an adversarial proceeding – there’s no reason you can’t appeal. The time for appeal is the same – 30 days – just as in a civil case. And the kinds of things that we see people appealing in a divorce are: child custody arrangements, valuation of businesses, amount of spousal maintenance, amount of child support. Any of the things that you might be disputing in your divorce, if you’re unhappy with the result, certainly they can be appealed. A trial lawyer will be looking for the facts, will be helping you through your case, and trying the case. An appeal is based on the record already made in the trial court.
We like to work with the trial lawyers, including the divorce lawyers and certainly, we have no intention of stealing back your case after the case is decided on appeal. The hope for you, if we’re representing you as the appellant, is to have the matter remanded to the trial court, and at that point, then your divorce will proceed in the trial court. Not only that, but we really like to have your trial lawyer’s input and have him or her review our briefs before they’re filed.
By: Kathi Sandweiss
Hi, I’m Kathi Sandweiss. I’m an appellate lawyer here at Jaburg and Wilk.
You can appeal really any of your issues that you disputed in your divorce decree, assuming obviously that you didn’t stipulate to your divorce decree. But assuming that there’s been a decree entered after some sort of a conflict – an adversarial proceeding – there’s no reason you can’t appeal. The time for appeal is the same – 30 days – just as in a civil case. And the kinds of things that we see people appealing in a divorce are: child custody arrangements, valuation of businesses, amount of spousal maintenance, amount of child support. Any of the things that you might be disputing in your divorce, if you’re unhappy with the result, certainly they can be appealed. A trial lawyer will be looking for the facts, will be helping you through your case, and trying the case. An appeal is based on the record already made in the trial court.
We like to work with the trial lawyers, including the divorce lawyers and certainly, we have no intention of stealing back your case after the case is decided on appeal. The hope for you, if we’re representing you as the appellant, is to have the matter remanded to the trial court, and at that point, then your divorce will proceed in the trial court. Not only that, but we really like to have your trial lawyer’s input and have him or her review our briefs before they’re filed.
By: Kathi Sandweiss
A very common question we receive is, how long will it take to finalize my divorce case. In Arizona, the short answer is that it has to take at least (61) days. By statute, the court cannot grant a divorce until 60 days after the case has been filed, and the other person has been served, or notified of the case, and so especially in simple cases where the parties can reach an agreement, we can often finalize those cases in (60) to (90) days.
With more complicated cases, especially those cases where we have to gather documents, and we have to gather evidence, and we have to prepare witnesses, and we have to prepare for trial, those cases can take (4) to (6) months and even in certain cases, up to a year. Now, if you’d like more information about your divorce case, please contact us (480) 733-6800, or you can visit us online.
If you are looking to finalize a divorce case in Arizona, please visit a profile and complete a contact form.
A very common question we receive is, how long will it take to finalize my divorce case. In Arizona, the short answer is that it has to take at least (61) days. By statute, the court cannot grant a divorce until 60 days after the case has been filed, and the other person has been served, or notified of the case, and so especially in simple cases where the parties can reach an agreement, we can often finalize those cases in (60) to (90) days.
With more complicated cases, especially those cases where we have to gather documents, and we have to gather evidence, and we have to prepare witnesses, and we have to prepare for trial, those cases can take (4) to (6) months and even in certain cases, up to a year. Now, if you’d like more information about your divorce case, please contact us (480) 733-6800, or you can visit us online.
If you are looking to finalize a divorce case in Arizona, please visit a profile and complete a contact form.
Hi. My name is Larry Hirsch, and I practise exclusively in the domestic relations group at Jaburg & Wilk. First and foremost, the court doesn’t care about the affair that your spouse had. Our courts are not in the business of making moral judgments, i.e. who slept with who, when they slept with who. More often than not, an affair during the marriage does not come into play during your divorce proceeding.
There are two occasions where an affair can actually have an impact on your case. The first one is when there was waste, that’s also called dissipation. For example, let’s just call it “Husband” for the time being, and Husband was having an affair for the better part of two years during the marriage, and during that affair, Husband was buying his paramour, or his girlfriend, fur coats, diamond rings, taking her on lavish vacations, maybe he helped pay a car. Well, in this situation, where the community income or the earnings of Husband was community, that would be considered community waste, so we’re going to want to take a look at all the bank statements, all the credit card statements, and we are going to take a detailed review as to all of the money that the spouse who is having the affair spent on that other individual. Now, the spouse who is not having the affair is entitled to one half reimbursement of those funds that was spent by the spouse who is having an affair. So, to make it really simplistic, if during the marriage Husband had a paramour, and he bought her a diamond ring valued at $10,000, and we can prove and show the receipt – and possibly even the ring – then the spouse who did not spend that money is entitled to reimbursement of $5000 in that situation.
The other situation where an affair may come into play is if the two parties are unfortunately fighting for custody of the minor children or the minor child. And it doesn’t really come into play that mom or dad was having an affair, but the issue really becomes the judgement of that parent when they were having the affair, so if mom or dad was simply dating somebody else, the court’s not really going to view it as that big of a deal. On the other hand, if, let’s say, mom was going out seven nights a week when she should have been at home doing the children’s homework, if dad was out spending thousands of dollars on vacations for his girlfriend while his children couldn’t afford books at school, the court’s going to look at those types of judgement calls, and it may come into play during a custodial fight in a divorce.
Hi. My name is Larry Hirsch, and I practise exclusively in the domestic relations group at Jaburg & Wilk. First and foremost, the court doesn’t care about the affair that your spouse had. Our courts are not in the business of making moral judgments, i.e. who slept with who, when they slept with who. More often than not, an affair during the marriage does not come into play during your divorce proceeding.
There are two occasions where an affair can actually have an impact on your case. The first one is when there was waste, that’s also called dissipation. For example, let’s just call it “Husband” for the time being, and Husband was having an affair for the better part of two years during the marriage, and during that affair, Husband was buying his paramour, or his girlfriend, fur coats, diamond rings, taking her on lavish vacations, maybe he helped pay a car. Well, in this situation, where the community income or the earnings of Husband was community, that would be considered community waste, so we’re going to want to take a look at all the bank statements, all the credit card statements, and we are going to take a detailed review as to all of the money that the spouse who is having the affair spent on that other individual. Now, the spouse who is not having the affair is entitled to one half reimbursement of those funds that was spent by the spouse who is having an affair. So, to make it really simplistic, if during the marriage Husband had a paramour, and he bought her a diamond ring valued at $10,000, and we can prove and show the receipt – and possibly even the ring – then the spouse who did not spend that money is entitled to reimbursement of $5000 in that situation.
The other situation where an affair may come into play is if the two parties are unfortunately fighting for custody of the minor children or the minor child. And it doesn’t really come into play that mom or dad was having an affair, but the issue really becomes the judgement of that parent when they were having the affair, so if mom or dad was simply dating somebody else, the court’s not really going to view it as that big of a deal. On the other hand, if, let’s say, mom was going out seven nights a week when she should have been at home doing the children’s homework, if dad was out spending thousands of dollars on vacations for his girlfriend while his children couldn’t afford books at school, the court’s going to look at those types of judgement calls, and it may come into play during a custodial fight in a divorce.
Hi, I’m Mitch Reichman. I’m a board certified family law specialist and I practice at Jaburg and Wilk.
The way a client can make the most of their first meeting with me is to be organized and to bring me basic general information. So I want a simple statement of their assets and their liabilities. I’d like to see the most recent three years of tax returns. And I recommend the client bring notes. At least bullet points of the topics the client would like to cover in that first meeting.
I don’t ask them to bring a lot of documents to the first meeting. We’re going to follow up and gather a lot of documents during the process. Certainly I would not want the to bring a box of records to the meeting. It would be very inefficient, very expensive for the client for me to be thumbing through a box of records in that first meeting.
We’re looking for broad strokes of information. We want to identify in that first meeting what the assets are and what the liabilities are. To find out about their children. To know about income and expenses. To see if someone is going to be needing spousal maintenance for example. So just broadly identify the topics we’re going to need to address. We’re going to gather a lot of details along the way, but that wouldn’t be a useful way to spend our time the first meeting.
Hi, I’m Mitch Reichman. I’m a board certified family law specialist and I practice at Jaburg and Wilk.
The way a client can make the most of their first meeting with me is to be organized and to bring me basic general information. So I want a simple statement of their assets and their liabilities. I’d like to see the most recent three years of tax returns. And I recommend the client bring notes. At least bullet points of the topics the client would like to cover in that first meeting.
I don’t ask them to bring a lot of documents to the first meeting. We’re going to follow up and gather a lot of documents during the process. Certainly I would not want the to bring a box of records to the meeting. It would be very inefficient, very expensive for the client for me to be thumbing through a box of records in that first meeting.
We’re looking for broad strokes of information. We want to identify in that first meeting what the assets are and what the liabilities are. To find out about their children. To know about income and expenses. To see if someone is going to be needing spousal maintenance for example. So just broadly identify the topics we’re going to need to address. We’re going to gather a lot of details along the way, but that wouldn’t be a useful way to spend our time the first meeting.
Prenuptial agreements are generally enforceable in Arizona courts. There are some pre-requisites though that are required before a prenuptial agreement can be enforced by a court. Number one, the court has to find that it was in writing and made in contemplation of marriage. Secondly, it can’t be unconscionable. If it’s unconscionable, that means it’s not fair, certain requirements weren’t made for financial disclosure or the waiver of financial disclosures, or that the provisions of the agreement were repugnant to the sense of justice. Each case is uniquely different and we’d be happy to look at your case individually. If you’d like to talk to us more about that, feel free to email me.
Prenuptial agreements are generally enforceable in Arizona courts. There are some pre-requisites though that are required before a prenuptial agreement can be enforced by a court. Number one, the court has to find that it was in writing and made in contemplation of marriage. Secondly, it can’t be unconscionable. If it’s unconscionable, that means it’s not fair, certain requirements weren’t made for financial disclosure or the waiver of financial disclosures, or that the provisions of the agreement were repugnant to the sense of justice. Each case is uniquely different and we’d be happy to look at your case individually. If you’d like to talk to us more about that, feel free to email me.
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