My name is Jason Castle. I’m an attorney at Jaburg Wilk, and my practice areas are family law and criminal defense.
A resolution management conference – often called an RMC – is one of the first times the parties will end up going to court. Most of my clients when they come in are scared of court and don’t want to go. So the RMC ends up being their first opportunity to be a party in a lawsuit, and to go to court. The RMC sounds scary as well. It is not. It is primarily just a scheduling conference.
However, it is an important step in the process towards litigation. It typically is scheduled somewhere between 45 and 60 days after the Respondent files his or her response, and the order setting the RMC will require the parties to have a settlement meeting prior to the RMC.
During the settlement meeting, depending on where the parties are in the litigation process, some people come in already having an idea of what they want to do in order to resolve their divorce. Others do not. That’s a good time to set what are called temporary orders.
Temporary orders are the rules or the orders that will apply between that point in time and the final decree. During the RMC, you will then go to be in the court. They’ll tell the court, These are our issues. This is how long we need for trial. The court will look at its calendar, talk to the parties to find out when it’s good for them, and schedule the trial.
By: Jason Castle
My name is Jason Castle. I’m an attorney at Jaburg Wilk, and my practice areas are family law and criminal defense.
A resolution management conference – often called an RMC – is one of the first times the parties will end up going to court. Most of my clients when they come in are scared of court and don’t want to go. So the RMC ends up being their first opportunity to be a party in a lawsuit, and to go to court. The RMC sounds scary as well. It is not. It is primarily just a scheduling conference.
However, it is an important step in the process towards litigation. It typically is scheduled somewhere between 45 and 60 days after the Respondent files his or her response, and the order setting the RMC will require the parties to have a settlement meeting prior to the RMC.
During the settlement meeting, depending on where the parties are in the litigation process, some people come in already having an idea of what they want to do in order to resolve their divorce. Others do not. That’s a good time to set what are called temporary orders.
Temporary orders are the rules or the orders that will apply between that point in time and the final decree. During the RMC, you will then go to be in the court. They’ll tell the court, These are our issues. This is how long we need for trial. The court will look at its calendar, talk to the parties to find out when it’s good for them, and schedule the trial.
By: Jason Castle
Hello, I want to speak to you today about whether you need a reason for obtaining a divorce in the state of Arizona. Arizona is a no fault divorce state, which means that other than alleging the marriage is irretrievably broken, you do not have to state a reason or prove a reason to obtain a divorce in Arizona. If you have any other questions regarding the need to file for divorce or questions regarding divorce or legal separation, please feel free to contact me.
By: Chris Hildebrand
Hello, I want to speak to you today about whether you need a reason for obtaining a divorce in the state of Arizona. Arizona is a no fault divorce state, which means that other than alleging the marriage is irretrievably broken, you do not have to state a reason or prove a reason to obtain a divorce in Arizona. If you have any other questions regarding the need to file for divorce or questions regarding divorce or legal separation, please feel free to contact me.
By: Chris Hildebrand
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. 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.
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.
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
A person can get a legal separation the way he or she can get a divorce. All they have to do is file a petition for legal separation. And the only difference between a legal separation and a divorce in the final analysis is that in a legal separation, obviously you don’t get a divorce. Now, when people come to us we actually advise against it, except in very special cases.
For example, I had a case once where a 55-year old couple were splitting the blanket and were in complete agreement that they should have a legal separation because the wife had cancer and the husband was a top executive for Motorola.
Motorola has an outstanding medical plan and so she couldn’t get that kind of coverage if they were to get a divorce because insurance companies are not going to ensure anybody after the divorce. She couldn’t continue to carry his insurance. She could have what we call COBRA, it’s an expensive temporary application for a short period of time, but that’s one reason why obviously you’d decide to have a legal separation. Could be religious. Catholics, they often don’t want a divorce.
Only in special situations do we advise it because they don’t work out, unless it’s something serious like that. They’re going to come back in less than a year probably and tell the judge they want to change it to a divorce. But, it’s one of the things people can always come talk to us about and have up front information before they start trying to make decisions.
By: CD Owens
A person can get a legal separation the way he or she can get a divorce. All they have to do is file a petition for legal separation. And the only difference between a legal separation and a divorce in the final analysis is that in a legal separation, obviously you don’t get a divorce. Now, when people come to us we actually advise against it, except in very special cases.
For example, I had a case once where a 55-year old couple were splitting the blanket and were in complete agreement that they should have a legal separation because the wife had cancer and the husband was a top executive for Motorola.
Motorola has an outstanding medical plan and so she couldn’t get that kind of coverage if they were to get a divorce because insurance companies are not going to ensure anybody after the divorce. She couldn’t continue to carry his insurance. She could have what we call COBRA, it’s an expensive temporary application for a short period of time, but that’s one reason why obviously you’d decide to have a legal separation. Could be religious. Catholics, they often don’t want a divorce.
Only in special situations do we advise it because they don’t work out, unless it’s something serious like that. They’re going to come back in less than a year probably and tell the judge they want to change it to a divorce. But, it’s one of the things people can always come talk to us about and have up front information before they start trying to make decisions.
By: CD Owens
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