Under Georgia law, there are 13 different reasons for a divorce and reason number 13 says the marriage is irretrievably broken and there’s no chance to patch it up. That’s all you need to do. You need to allege that the marriage is irretrievably broken and you can’t patch it up. Now your spouse can actually contest even that issue, but it’s not done very often. In the end, you really don’t need a reason other than you guys can’t get along anymore.
But if you have a reason, there are 12 other reasons as well such as adultery, cruelty, drug abuse, and many other factors that are sometimes relevant to a divorce. Quite often, we take this issue for granted because it’s just a routine issue and no one is going to contest the need for the divorce, but in the right case, the grounds for divorce can be very critical.
By: Scott Shaw
Under Georgia law, there are 13 different reasons for a divorce and reason number 13 says the marriage is irretrievably broken and there’s no chance to patch it up. That’s all you need to do. You need to allege that the marriage is irretrievably broken and you can’t patch it up. Now your spouse can actually contest even that issue, but it’s not done very often. In the end, you really don’t need a reason other than you guys can’t get along anymore.
But if you have a reason, there are 12 other reasons as well such as adultery, cruelty, drug abuse, and many other factors that are sometimes relevant to a divorce. Quite often, we take this issue for granted because it’s just a routine issue and no one is going to contest the need for the divorce, but in the right case, the grounds for divorce can be very critical.
By: Scott Shaw
An equitable division of property in a divorce in the state of Georgia, one of the most important complicated issues is often if there is a family business. Can you keep the business running? How do you divide the value of the business? And rest assured, a family business is a marital asset that can be divided, and it’s one of the most contested issues you will come into. Sometimes it’s as simple as just getting an appraiser and putting a value on it. Of course how you value the business, that’s another issue. And sometimes you can be creative.
For example, we had a case where my client inherited the business when they got married. It was a 20-year marriage, so 20 years ago. It was her family’s business. And her husband actually was president of the business for 20 years, and he demanded a certain amount of money to be paid for his share of the business that would have bankrupted the family business that she inherited from her parents, that her parents inherited from their parents.
So we got creative, and we had the business appraised going back from 20 years ago, the value at the time she inherited it and was married, and we adjusted it for the rate of inflation. And sure enough he still mismanaged the business, that over 20 years the business adjusted for inflation only increased by $25,000.
So that’s what we offered him, and the judge agreed with us. So on the right case you can be creative, and you can save the family business. But in general, if you have the family business to deal with, you have a lot of complicated issues that have to be addressed, and you need someone who knows what they’re doing to address them. And at Shaw Law Firm we are happy to take your telephone calls or inquiries. Thank you.
By: Scott Shaw
An equitable division of property in a divorce in the state of Georgia, one of the most important complicated issues is often if there is a family business. Can you keep the business running? How do you divide the value of the business? And rest assured, a family business is a marital asset that can be divided, and it’s one of the most contested issues you will come into. Sometimes it’s as simple as just getting an appraiser and putting a value on it. Of course how you value the business, that’s another issue. And sometimes you can be creative.
For example, we had a case where my client inherited the business when they got married. It was a 20-year marriage, so 20 years ago. It was her family’s business. And her husband actually was president of the business for 20 years, and he demanded a certain amount of money to be paid for his share of the business that would have bankrupted the family business that she inherited from her parents, that her parents inherited from their parents.
So we got creative, and we had the business appraised going back from 20 years ago, the value at the time she inherited it and was married, and we adjusted it for the rate of inflation. And sure enough he still mismanaged the business, that over 20 years the business adjusted for inflation only increased by $25,000.
So that’s what we offered him, and the judge agreed with us. So on the right case you can be creative, and you can save the family business. But in general, if you have the family business to deal with, you have a lot of complicated issues that have to be addressed, and you need someone who knows what they’re doing to address them. And at Shaw Law Firm we are happy to take your telephone calls or inquiries. Thank you.
By: Scott Shaw
Maybe the most common is what to do with the marital home and it’s not such an simple issue as one might think. Issues run the gamut. For example, what if one party wants to stay in the house, but the other party is the person whose name is on the mortgage? You don’t want to let that party stay in the house when they have no skin of the game. What if they don’t pay the mortgage? The other guy’s the one who’s going to be collected on and have their credit rating hurt. So, you need to address issues like that.
There’s also issues, how do you value the home? What if you want to sell the home? What’s the procedure to do it? You don’t want to happen what happened on one of the cases I had where previous counsel before me had agreed they’ll just average up the husband and wife’s selling price and sell it as an average. The home stayed in the market for 720 days. It deteriorated to practically nothing because the wife wanted to stay in there free. So, it was worth $2,000,000. The husband thought it was worth nothing, so it was worth $400,000. You average it together, it wasn’t worth anywhere near what the average was. So, you have to take into consideration things even as minute as the process to sell the home.
By: Scott Shaw
Maybe the most common is what to do with the marital home and it’s not such an simple issue as one might think. Issues run the gamut. For example, what if one party wants to stay in the house, but the other party is the person whose name is on the mortgage? You don’t want to let that party stay in the house when they have no skin of the game. What if they don’t pay the mortgage? The other guy’s the one who’s going to be collected on and have their credit rating hurt. So, you need to address issues like that.
There’s also issues, how do you value the home? What if you want to sell the home? What’s the procedure to do it? You don’t want to happen what happened on one of the cases I had where previous counsel before me had agreed they’ll just average up the husband and wife’s selling price and sell it as an average. The home stayed in the market for 720 days. It deteriorated to practically nothing because the wife wanted to stay in there free. So, it was worth $2,000,000. The husband thought it was worth nothing, so it was worth $400,000. You average it together, it wasn’t worth anywhere near what the average was. So, you have to take into consideration things even as minute as the process to sell the home.
By: Scott Shaw
Temporary orders take effect during a divorce at the time the judge signs them and enters them with the clerk of court. It’s that simple. Once the order is signed, it gets entered with the clerk of court, there’s a file stamp date on it, the order is good and valid until either the divorce is dismissed, or a new order takes its place.
By: Scott Shaw
Temporary orders take effect during a divorce at the time the judge signs them and enters them with the clerk of court. It’s that simple. Once the order is signed, it gets entered with the clerk of court, there’s a file stamp date on it, the order is good and valid until either the divorce is dismissed, or a new order takes its place.
By: Scott Shaw
That can vary quite a bit. Divorces vary from uncontested divorces where all the issues are agreed to, to outright wars. An uncontested divorce, usually you can get it done – if there’s an agreement on all issues – within 60 to 90 days.
As for the most outrageous divorces, the ones that carry on the longest, 18 months to 2 years. At Shaw Law Firm, we strive to push our cases forward. We like to solve problems. We get to the nitty gritty of the issues, so we try to move things forward quicker, so our cases generally 6 to 18 months is probably the longest case we’ll have, but there are some divorces that can stretch out even longer.
By: Scott Shaw
That can vary quite a bit. Divorces vary from uncontested divorces where all the issues are agreed to, to outright wars. An uncontested divorce, usually you can get it done – if there’s an agreement on all issues – within 60 to 90 days.
As for the most outrageous divorces, the ones that carry on the longest, 18 months to 2 years. At Shaw Law Firm, we strive to push our cases forward. We like to solve problems. We get to the nitty gritty of the issues, so we try to move things forward quicker, so our cases generally 6 to 18 months is probably the longest case we’ll have, but there are some divorces that can stretch out even longer.
By: Scott Shaw
Hello. My name is Scott Shaw, founder and principal of Shaw Law Firm, LLC. A law firm I founded in 1995. Child custody along with divorce and other areas of family law are our only area of legal practice. We don’t accept any other types of cases. In this video I will be discussing the topic of Lump Sum Alimony. When most people think of alimony, they think of a monthly payment to the other spouse.
Lump Sum Alimony is different though. It is different because it is a one time award of assets to the other spouse, and it’s a very dangerous thing to play around with. Lump Sum Alimony is so dangerous, because it is a way for a court or a jury to punish the other party, or to otherwise do equity. Because in a divorce, what usually happens is that each party is awarded their non-marital or premarital assets, and then the parties divide up the marital assets.
But what happens when most of the assets are one party’s non-marital assets, leaving very little to divide to the other party? In such a case, the court has the power to invade your non-marital estate even if you inherited it, owned it before marriage or whatever, and award some or all of it to your spouse. And a court can do so just because, in the right case it is a huge weapon and it should be scary to you.
One case where this came into great effect for me involved a jury trial in which the opposing party, which is the husband in that case, brought a few million dollars into marriage. And he married my client, where the time of marriage was a six figure per year consultant, while he is having an affair with another woman. A few years into the marriage, my client gave up her career in order to have a baby. The opposing party was still having this affair with this other woman, and in fact had another baby with this woman unbeknownst to my client.
Five years past, and by the time my client figured all this out, her job skills had antiquated. Yet most of the assets in the case were still the husband’s non-marital assets that he brought into the marriage to begin with. He thought he was looking pretty, and my client had no ability to be awarded those assets. Since most of the assets in this case were non-marital, there wasn’t a whole lot to claim as marital property. We could ask for monthly traditional alimony, but instead of doing that we in addition demanded a Lump Sum award of alimony from his non-marital estate. And we demanded the jury award it to us. Long and short, this case ended up settling because the husband’s attorney saw the very large liability he had for the jury awarding a portion of his client’s non-marital assets to my client.
This could have been millions of dollars and possible liability for him, because we had a great case for an award of Lump Sum Alimony under these circumstances. This is one of the nuance factors of family law and divorce law that most people aren’t even aware of. And at Shaw Law Firm this is all we do, and we welcome your inquiries and questions. Thank you.
By: Scott Shaw
Hello. My name is Scott Shaw, founder and principal of Shaw Law Firm, LLC. A law firm I founded in 1995. Child custody along with divorce and other areas of family law are our only area of legal practice. We don’t accept any other types of cases. In this video I will be discussing the topic of Lump Sum Alimony. When most people think of alimony, they think of a monthly payment to the other spouse.
Lump Sum Alimony is different though. It is different because it is a one time award of assets to the other spouse, and it’s a very dangerous thing to play around with. Lump Sum Alimony is so dangerous, because it is a way for a court or a jury to punish the other party, or to otherwise do equity. Because in a divorce, what usually happens is that each party is awarded their non-marital or premarital assets, and then the parties divide up the marital assets.
But what happens when most of the assets are one party’s non-marital assets, leaving very little to divide to the other party? In such a case, the court has the power to invade your non-marital estate even if you inherited it, owned it before marriage or whatever, and award some or all of it to your spouse. And a court can do so just because, in the right case it is a huge weapon and it should be scary to you.
One case where this came into great effect for me involved a jury trial in which the opposing party, which is the husband in that case, brought a few million dollars into marriage. And he married my client, where the time of marriage was a six figure per year consultant, while he is having an affair with another woman. A few years into the marriage, my client gave up her career in order to have a baby. The opposing party was still having this affair with this other woman, and in fact had another baby with this woman unbeknownst to my client.
Five years past, and by the time my client figured all this out, her job skills had antiquated. Yet most of the assets in the case were still the husband’s non-marital assets that he brought into the marriage to begin with. He thought he was looking pretty, and my client had no ability to be awarded those assets. Since most of the assets in this case were non-marital, there wasn’t a whole lot to claim as marital property. We could ask for monthly traditional alimony, but instead of doing that we in addition demanded a Lump Sum award of alimony from his non-marital estate. And we demanded the jury award it to us. Long and short, this case ended up settling because the husband’s attorney saw the very large liability he had for the jury awarding a portion of his client’s non-marital assets to my client.
This could have been millions of dollars and possible liability for him, because we had a great case for an award of Lump Sum Alimony under these circumstances. This is one of the nuance factors of family law and divorce law that most people aren’t even aware of. And at Shaw Law Firm this is all we do, and we welcome your inquiries and questions. Thank you.
By: Scott Shaw
The process for filing a divorce is, at least with our firm, we issue a divorce questionnaire to you which is about 26 pages. But don’t worry about it, it’s not as hard as it seems. What we try to do is get an idea of what the marital state and now marital state is. And we also get personal information.
From there we draft up a divorce complaint. The divorce complaint is drafted, and we usually email it to you, because there is a page at the end of the divorce complaint called the verification page, that the client needs to execute and then return the original to us.
Once we have that back, then we file with a clerk at court. The case will be filed in one of two places, either in the county where the other party lives, or if the other party lived in a marital home within the past six months, the county where the marital home is. So the case will be filed in one of those two counties. Then the case will either be put off for sheriff service, service per by the process server, or we will ask the other party to voluntarily acknowledge service, which is the friendly way to do it. But that doesn’t work in every case.
By: Scott Shaw
The process for filing a divorce is, at least with our firm, we issue a divorce questionnaire to you which is about 26 pages. But don’t worry about it, it’s not as hard as it seems. What we try to do is get an idea of what the marital state and now marital state is. And we also get personal information.
From there we draft up a divorce complaint. The divorce complaint is drafted, and we usually email it to you, because there is a page at the end of the divorce complaint called the verification page, that the client needs to execute and then return the original to us.
Once we have that back, then we file with a clerk at court. The case will be filed in one of two places, either in the county where the other party lives, or if the other party lived in a marital home within the past six months, the county where the marital home is. So the case will be filed in one of those two counties. Then the case will either be put off for sheriff service, service per by the process server, or we will ask the other party to voluntarily acknowledge service, which is the friendly way to do it. But that doesn’t work in every case.
By: Scott Shaw
In a divorce proceeding, debt is often a very big issue – who’s responsible for what debt. It’s often one of the most difficult issues to deal with, because first you have to figure out what the debt was, who incurred the debt, what the debt was incurred for? Was it incurred for a girlfriend? Was it incurred to raise the family? Who should actively be responsible for the debt?
Once you’ve determined who should be responsible for what debt, it’s very important to remember that although the court can order one party to pay your debt, the court cannot order the party who owns that debt to not hold you responsible for liable. For example, if the court orders your husband to pay off your credit card, but your husband files for bankruptcy, you’re suddenly liable for that debt. It’s issues like that that we have to address in order to protect our clients, and make sure that the issue of debt is properly taken care of in divorce.
By: Scott Shaw
In a divorce proceeding, debt is often a very big issue – who’s responsible for what debt. It’s often one of the most difficult issues to deal with, because first you have to figure out what the debt was, who incurred the debt, what the debt was incurred for? Was it incurred for a girlfriend? Was it incurred to raise the family? Who should actively be responsible for the debt?
Once you’ve determined who should be responsible for what debt, it’s very important to remember that although the court can order one party to pay your debt, the court cannot order the party who owns that debt to not hold you responsible for liable. For example, if the court orders your husband to pay off your credit card, but your husband files for bankruptcy, you’re suddenly liable for that debt. It’s issues like that that we have to address in order to protect our clients, and make sure that the issue of debt is properly taken care of in divorce.
By: Scott Shaw
In this video, I will be discussing the topic of international divorce, child custody, and passport issues. Family law issues frequently cross state and even international boundaries. We have handled cases involving the following countries: South Africa, Indonesia, India, Pakistan, Germany, Great Britain, Egypt, Saudia Arabia, Canada, China, Mexico, Peru, Russia, France, and probably a few other countries that I do not even recall. These cases create some very complex jurisdictional and international procedural questions.
Are foreign international divorces and custody orders enforceable in the United States even if there is no treaty with the country? To answer your question, in general, no matter which country you are from, as long as you reside in the state of Georgia for six months you can get a divorce in the state of Georgia. Your spouse does not have to consent to the divorce. Your spouse does not even have to come to the state of Georgia. With or without his or her cooperation you can get the divorce. And in most countries in the world the divorce will be legally binding on both of you.
There are sometimes special issues dealing with Muslim divorces being recognized in certain parts of the Middle East that we can discuss with you, but, in general, a divorce in the United States will be recognized abroad. Likewise, if your children have lived in the United States for at least six months and call Georgia home we can probably get a custody order in the state of Georgia that would be legally enforceable in most countries in the rest of the world. One common issue is whether or not a child may travel internationally after the case. The issue is twofold.
Will I be able to travel internationally with my child even if the other parent does not consent? Or two: Will I be able to prevent the other parent from taking the child out of the country without my consent?The court may not have the power to force a parent to cooperate with obtaining a passport, but the court does have the power to issue an order that allows one parent – without the consent of the other parent – to obtain a passport.
What this means from a practical perspective is you need to resolve any passport issues that may exist in your case with an appropriate court order. You cannot wait and rely on the other parent to cooperate with you after a child’s passport expires. International Family Law issues are becoming more and more common and it should not be so difficult to find a good lawyer to deal with these.
By: Scott Shaw
In this video, I will be discussing the topic of international divorce, child custody, and passport issues. Family law issues frequently cross state and even international boundaries. We have handled cases involving the following countries: South Africa, Indonesia, India, Pakistan, Germany, Great Britain, Egypt, Saudia Arabia, Canada, China, Mexico, Peru, Russia, France, and probably a few other countries that I do not even recall. These cases create some very complex jurisdictional and international procedural questions.
Are foreign international divorces and custody orders enforceable in the United States even if there is no treaty with the country? To answer your question, in general, no matter which country you are from, as long as you reside in the state of Georgia for six months you can get a divorce in the state of Georgia. Your spouse does not have to consent to the divorce. Your spouse does not even have to come to the state of Georgia. With or without his or her cooperation you can get the divorce. And in most countries in the world the divorce will be legally binding on both of you.
There are sometimes special issues dealing with Muslim divorces being recognized in certain parts of the Middle East that we can discuss with you, but, in general, a divorce in the United States will be recognized abroad. Likewise, if your children have lived in the United States for at least six months and call Georgia home we can probably get a custody order in the state of Georgia that would be legally enforceable in most countries in the rest of the world. One common issue is whether or not a child may travel internationally after the case. The issue is twofold.
Will I be able to travel internationally with my child even if the other parent does not consent? Or two: Will I be able to prevent the other parent from taking the child out of the country without my consent?The court may not have the power to force a parent to cooperate with obtaining a passport, but the court does have the power to issue an order that allows one parent – without the consent of the other parent – to obtain a passport.
What this means from a practical perspective is you need to resolve any passport issues that may exist in your case with an appropriate court order. You cannot wait and rely on the other parent to cooperate with you after a child’s passport expires. International Family Law issues are becoming more and more common and it should not be so difficult to find a good lawyer to deal with these.
By: Scott Shaw
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