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.
Hi. I’m Mitch Reichman. I’m a board certified family law specialist, and I practice at Jaburg & Wilk.
Community property in Arizona is- it creates a presumption that everything that’s acquired during the marriage by either spouse is owned by the community. It means it’s owned by them jointly. They each have an undivided 100% interest in all of the community property.
If you put money into a business and started the business before marriage, the character of your assets doesn’t change by virtue of you getting married. So if you come into the marriage with a business that’s a growing concern, that business is your separate property. The difficulty is if you are working in the business and the business increases in value during the marriage. How to apportion the increase in value between what the business was in terms of it’s value and earning potential at the time of the marriage, at which time it was your separate property, and how it’s changed during the course of the marriage. Those are very difficult questions to answer, and require typically experts to do that kind of evaluation.
There is a relatively easy way to protect your business or any other separate property before you get married. And that is to have a premarital agreement. Premarital agreements are presumptively enforceable in the state of Arizona. We have adopted something called the Uniform Premarital Agreement Act. And under the Act, as long as you follow certain guidelines, there is a very strong probability that the court will enforce that agreement.
They need to be prepared for a forensic evaluation of their business. Someone is going to be looking at all of the personal benefits they get from the business, and attempting to quantify them. They’re going to be looking for any unusual transactions, they’re going to be looking for any unusual activity in the business that suggest that somebody might be divorce planning. And so what you want to do, is you want to operate as you always have to the extent that you can, and if there is some event or occurrence that causes you to need to do something special, you want to document it as best you can.
Hi. I’m Mitch Reichman. I’m a board certified family law specialist, and I practice at Jaburg & Wilk.
Community property in Arizona is- it creates a presumption that everything that’s acquired during the marriage by either spouse is owned by the community. It means it’s owned by them jointly. They each have an undivided 100% interest in all of the community property.
If you put money into a business and started the business before marriage, the character of your assets doesn’t change by virtue of you getting married. So if you come into the marriage with a business that’s a growing concern, that business is your separate property. The difficulty is if you are working in the business and the business increases in value during the marriage. How to apportion the increase in value between what the business was in terms of it’s value and earning potential at the time of the marriage, at which time it was your separate property, and how it’s changed during the course of the marriage. Those are very difficult questions to answer, and require typically experts to do that kind of evaluation.
There is a relatively easy way to protect your business or any other separate property before you get married. And that is to have a premarital agreement. Premarital agreements are presumptively enforceable in the state of Arizona. We have adopted something called the Uniform Premarital Agreement Act. And under the Act, as long as you follow certain guidelines, there is a very strong probability that the court will enforce that agreement.
They need to be prepared for a forensic evaluation of their business. Someone is going to be looking at all of the personal benefits they get from the business, and attempting to quantify them. They’re going to be looking for any unusual transactions, they’re going to be looking for any unusual activity in the business that suggest that somebody might be divorce planning. And so what you want to do, is you want to operate as you always have to the extent that you can, and if there is some event or occurrence that causes you to need to do something special, you want to document it as best you can.
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
In a divorce without minor children, you will file a petition for dissolution of your marriage and request a division of community assets and debts, an affirmation of your sole and separate property, an award of spousal maintenance if applicable, and perhaps, reimbursement for your attorney’s fees and costs.
If your divorce involves minor children, then your petition will ask the court to additionally determine child custody, which is now called legal decision making, parenting time and child support. You file your petition with the superior court in the county where you reside and serve a copy on your spouse.
The soonest you can get divorced in Arizona is (60) sixty days from the date your spouse is served. If your spouse does not file a response in the proper time frame, you can request that your spouse be defaulted and proceed to a default hearing before the court. If your spouse files a response, your case can be resolved by two options; agreement or trial.
If you reach an agreement, a consent decree can be prepared and signed by both parties and then submitted to the court for the judge’s signature and there is no need to appear in court for a trial. If you cannot reach an agreement, the court will set the unresolved issues for trial. If you want me to explain in detail the divorce process, please call me at Warner Angle, (602) 264-7101 to schedule a complimentary consultation. I look forward to meeting with you.
In a divorce without minor children, you will file a petition for dissolution of your marriage and request a division of community assets and debts, an affirmation of your sole and separate property, an award of spousal maintenance if applicable, and perhaps, reimbursement for your attorney’s fees and costs.
If your divorce involves minor children, then your petition will ask the court to additionally determine child custody, which is now called legal decision making, parenting time and child support. You file your petition with the superior court in the county where you reside and serve a copy on your spouse.
The soonest you can get divorced in Arizona is (60) sixty days from the date your spouse is served. If your spouse does not file a response in the proper time frame, you can request that your spouse be defaulted and proceed to a default hearing before the court. If your spouse files a response, your case can be resolved by two options; agreement or trial.
If you reach an agreement, a consent decree can be prepared and signed by both parties and then submitted to the court for the judge’s signature and there is no need to appear in court for a trial. If you cannot reach an agreement, the court will set the unresolved issues for trial. If you want me to explain in detail the divorce process, please call me at Warner Angle, (602) 264-7101 to schedule a complimentary consultation. I look forward to meeting with you.
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.
Everybody of course insists upon having prompt and immediate decisions on child support, custody, spousal maintenance and all of the things that are necessary to maintain stability in the family during the pendency of a divorce and the court’s set hearings promptly and as quickly as possible often within a matter of two or three weeks, where ordinarily to get a hearing in a court would take two or three months.
But, everybody recognizes that the wife or mother may be home with kids with no employment of her own and depending on the father for support and so the court sets early dates, gets people in and covers all bases right up front and people are always interested in those factors. We try to be available to answer their questions up front.
By: CD Owens
Everybody of course insists upon having prompt and immediate decisions on child support, custody, spousal maintenance and all of the things that are necessary to maintain stability in the family during the pendency of a divorce and the court’s set hearings promptly and as quickly as possible often within a matter of two or three weeks, where ordinarily to get a hearing in a court would take two or three months.
But, everybody recognizes that the wife or mother may be home with kids with no employment of her own and depending on the father for support and so the court sets early dates, gets people in and covers all bases right up front and people are always interested in those factors. We try to be available to answer their questions up front.
By: CD Owens
Parenting time is perhaps the largest factor affecting the amount of child support a non-custodial parent will pay. The more parenting time days one spends with the children, the bigger the discount off the presumptive child support amount. For more information, call me, Greg Davis at Davis Limited, (602) 279-1900.
By: Greg Davis
Parenting time is perhaps the largest factor affecting the amount of child support a non-custodial parent will pay. The more parenting time days one spends with the children, the bigger the discount off the presumptive child support amount. For more information, call me, Greg Davis at Davis Limited, (602) 279-1900.
By: Greg Davis
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