Category: Divorce

Child support debt is a major issue for divorced parents. Getting your life on track after a divorce can be a challenging task. Adjusting to meeting all your expenses on a single paycheck and adjusting to single life again is not easy, and adding child support payments often feels overwhelming. A 2015 NPR report found that there is more than $113 billion in unpaid child support in the United States. Non-custodial parents who fall behind on child support payments might be in a panic about what those delinquent payments might be doing to their credit report.

How does delinquent child support show up on my credit report?

When you owe more than $1,000 in delinquent child support, the Maryland Child Support Enforcement Administration (CSEA) can report your debt to the credit reporting agencies, who can list it as a tradeline or delinquent account on your credit report. Having delinquent child support on your credit can have a negative effect on your credit score. In some cases, being behind on child support payments can be as bad a hit to your credit as if you had missed a mortgage payment.

This can make it difficult to get new lines of credit. It could keep you from qualifying for a mortgage and it could even tarnish promising job prospects if a potential employer runs a credit inquiry while performing a background investigation on you.

If you are behind on child support payments and you receive a delinquency letter from the CSEA, it is a smart idea to contact them quickly and find a way to resolve the debt as soon as possible before your delinquency gets reported to the credit bureaus.

Child support enforcement

If you are owed child support, there are ways in which you can encourage your co-parent to pay. As the amount of delinquent child support and the number of days since the last payment increases, the consequences for non-payment grow increasingly intense. Your Annapolis family law attorney can send your former spouse a letter requesting payment; and they can petition the court for a court order demanding that they bring their child support arrears current or face penalties such as wage garnishment. The Maryland Child Support Enforcement Administration has additional tools such as federal and state income tax refund offset, passport denial, suspension of a driver’s license and professional licenses and other enforcement tools to encourage payment of child support.

With more than 30 years of combined legal experience, the family law attorneys at Cynthia H. Clark & Associates, LLC, are here to help families like yours end their child support disputes throughout Maryland. You are welcome to contact us or call 410.921.2422 to reserve a consultation today at our Annapolis-based office.

Regardless of how amicable or acrimonious the divorce was, once the divorce is final your role as a divorced co-parent begins. Co-parenting gracefully is something that takes time to grow into, but you will know when you get there. You will be interacting with your former spouse on a regular basis when you pick up the kids or when they drop them off, at birthday parties and other family events into the future, and you would be smart to find a way to make those interactions as smooth and drama-free as possible. When you model successful co-parenting, it will do wonders for your child.

Joint custody requires team work, and for both parents to place the highest priority on providing the best care for the child. It is up to each of you to make sure that your divorce does as little damage to your child as possible. Making the commitment to be all-in, to keep your promises to your child, to make them a priority, and to be at least cordial to your former spouse is the first important step on the road to successful co-parenting.

Here are a few tips to guide you through the initial, sometimes rocky first stage of co-parenting and managing joint custody after divorce:

Agree to make decisions with the child’s best interests in mind. What is convenient for you and what makes you feel comfortable does not matter now. What is important is that the decision-making process and the outcome best serves the child’s best interests. Get comfortable with the concept of compromise for your child’s greater good.

Stick to the custody agreement. In Maryland, joint custody is also called shared custody, and it means that both parents share physical custody of the child in a way that makes sure that the child has consistent contact with both parents. The parenting plan which includes the custody agreement has the force of law, so violating it has legal consequences. If you both agree to follow the visitation schedule, and the duties and responsibilities assigned to each parent it would make life go smoother for everyone.

Keep the past in the past. Resist the urge to keep trying to seek revenge or re-visit old hurts and disagreements. Now the only purpose of your relationship is to raise a child together.

Develop a new relationship with your former spouse. If the divorce was ugly, adopt a new kind of relationship. If it helps, consider your spouse as a business partner and make sure that all your interactions and communications are limited to the topic of your child.

Take a co-parenting class together. Co-parenting is hard. Learning how to manage it from parenting professionals will help ease some of the stress you might be feeling.

Communicate clearly and openly with your co-parent. Come to an agreement on how you will communicate about the child. If you must change a pick-up or drop-off time, communicate that as soon as you know about it to your co-parent. Do not send messages back and forth between the two of you through your child.

The transition from being a family in one household to being shuttled back and forth between the households of divorced parents is disruptive to the child’s foundation in life. The more you can work together to create a new kind of stability, the better your child will adjust to life after divorce.

At Cynthia H. Clark & Associates, LLC, we guide you through the challenging process of deciding child custody and getting on with your life after divorce. We encourage you to contact us or call us at 410.921.2422 to schedule a consultation in our Annapolis office to discuss your case with an experienced Maryland divorce attorney today.

Going through a divorce is perhaps the most stressful thing you will deal with (except, perhaps, for the death of a loved one). The stress of the loss of the marriage, and the end of a life in which you had invested your hopes and dreams can be devastating. Taking good care of yourself is the best way to guard against the pressure and the chaos of separation and divorce.

What we hear you asking as you read this is, “Who has time for self-care? I barely have time to tie my shoes these days!” But making time for yourself is important. While taking the time for self-care will not dial down the level of conflict in the divorce, you will at least feel better equipped to handle it.

These 10 self-care tips might be something you want to try. You may end up adopting a new practice for yourself that stays with you even after the divorce is final and brings you contentment and peace.

1.    Eat healthy food

Indulging in comfort foods may soothe your jangled nerves in the moment, but making healthy food choices will give you more energy and keep your immune system strong enough to handle the stress of divorce.

2.    Exercise

Moving your body creates natural endorphins which are nature’s feel-good hormones that can break you out of an emotional rut. Maintaining a daily exercise regimen will help you sleep better, maintain a healthy weight and contribute to your overall physical and mental health and stamina.

3.    Get good sleep

Ah, sleep! Getting good sleep is often easier said than done, but getting adequate sleep is vital to your ability to handle the normal stresses of life, let alone the additional stress and anxiety that comes with divorce. If you are having problems getting enough sleep, talk to your doctor about what you can do to improve the quantity and quality of your sleep.

4.    Gather your supporters

It takes a village. In the same way that you gather all your friends and loved ones to celebrate the good times, when you are going through a difficult time you want to gather your true friends and close family to help support you emotionally as well as in practical ways.

5.    Care for your emotional health, too

Going through a divorce can make you feel like an emotional train wreck. Give yourself the opportunity to express the powerful emotions that divorce can bring out. Trying to repress feelings usually backfires at inconvenient times, so feel what you are feeling and remind yourself that life will get better.

6.    Try stress-relief practices such as meditation, yoga, tai chi, or journaling

These stress-relieving practices can have countless mental and physical health benefits; they can make you feel more relaxed and better prepared to face what is happening in your life.

7.    Find a creative outlet

It might sound trite to hear that you should get a hobby, but finding a creative activity is a great diversion from the stress and angst of divorce. This might be the time to join that art or cooking class you’ve been eyeing, or to take up knitting or painting.

8.    Work with the best divorce lawyer for you

An experienced, aggressive Annapolis divorce attorney can make all the difference in the outcome of your divorce. You want someone who knows what they are doing, who will stand up for you when you feel vulnerable, and make sure that you walk away from your divorce feeling like you got the best results possible.

9.    Take the lessons from this experience as you move on with your life

When the divorce is final, look at the whole experience, at how you might have contributed to the end of your marriage and take whatever wisdom you can into your new life. People make mistakes because that is part of being human. How you bounce back from your mistakes will define your life.

10. Ask for help

Never be afraid to ask for help. You might not feel strong enough to handle what is happening. There is no shame in asking for the help you need to get through your divorce.

Taking care of yourself and allowing yourself to be cared for by loved ones is a vital part of healing and gathering your strength to take on the challenges of your life. It is also a strong reminder that you possess everything you need to take on whatever life throws at you. Carrying these self-care practices forward into your daily or weekly routines after the divorce is over can help increase the amount of joy you can squeeze out of life. If you have children, taking excellent care of yourself gives you the opportunity to model for them what it can look like to move through a stressful situation and emerge with your strength and sanity intact.

Our experienced team of Annapolis divorce lawyers at Cynthia H. Clark & Associates, LLC, can protect your rights and make sure that your interests are represented. You are invited to give us a call at 410.921.2422 or fill out our contact form and schedule a consultation, where you can discuss your divorce case, ask questions and receive legal guidance from an attorney you can trust.

Despite other NY judges allowing process service via Facebook for divorce papers, Brooklyn Supreme Court Justice Jeffrey Sunshine refused to allow a woman to serve her estranged husband with divorce papers on Facebook. A Wall Street Journal story reports that the wife says her husband has moved to Saudi Arabia, but she has communicated with him recently through Facebook. She says that her husband abandoned her three months after they were married when she was six months pregnant.

Justice Sunshine said that since the Facebook profile had not been updated since 2014, he needed to see more proof that it was his account.

Accurate process serving is critical

A story in The American Genius says that the important point of service of process is to make sure that the person who is named on the account is using the account for service of process, in order for it to be accurate and timely. According to their research, Utah is at the leading edge of providing alternative ways for its citizens to interact with the court system. They included electronic format, including email and “other possible electronic means” (back in 2001 before the advent of social media), and then in 2010, the rules were amended and the courts created a specific affidavit for service of process using electronic formats: Facebook, Twitter, text message and phone.

In the case in the Brooklyn Supreme Court, the problem seems to be that there was no way to verify that the errant husband was the owner of the Facebook account, and that it was an account that he checked often enough to be able to receive the documents.

The Wall Street Journal story claims that judges are not opposed to the idea of allowing a social network to substitute for a mailman or an in-person process server in general. However, some courts are still reluctant to rely on Facebook and other social networks exclusively as a way of being in communication with an opposing party.

Given the increasingly ubiquitous nature of social media and electronic communication in our lives, more states will likely adapt methods for making use of electronic service of process. There needs to be a way to make sure that the person being served receives the notification in a timely manner.

Maryland law requires that the defendant be served properly or the case will be dismissed: MD Rules 2-101, 3-101; Courts and Judicial Proceedings 6-301. You can serve legal documents by a sheriff or constable, a private process server, or through certified mail, but you are forbidden from serving the papers yourself.

If you know that it is time to start planning for divorce, you will need the services of an experienced Annapolis divorce attorney on your side as you move through the tumultuous process of divorce. We urge you to give us a call at 410.921.2422 or fill out our contact form and schedule a consultation where you can discuss your case with our knowledgeable team of Maryland divorce lawyers at Cynthia H. Clark & Associates, LLC, who will protect your interests.

When parents divorce and the family is divided, there could be some amount of animosity between one of the parents and the child, especially in cases of infidelity or abuse. Normal levels of acrimony can be overcome with time and maybe some family counseling. However, parental alienation is another scenario entirely. Parental alienation is the deliberate attempt on the part of one parent to undermine and degrade the child’s relationship with the other parent, rather than a child’s natural emotional reaction to the emotional trauma of the divorce. The American Professional Society on the Abuse of Children (APSAC) has referred to parental alienation syndrome as emotional abuse of children. The criteria that APSAC uses to describe parental alienation disorder includes some or all of the following behaviors: The child strongly allies him or herself with one parent, rejects a relationship with the other, alienated parent without legitimate justification and refuses parenting time with the alienated parent. This usually occurs during a high conflict divorce.

What does parental alienation syndrome look like?

Here are some examples of the types of behaviors that might be going on in a parental alienation situation:

• Making baseless complaints to Child Protective Services against the alienated parent.
• One parent makes derogatory comments to the child about the other parent.
• Constant excuses about why the child is unable to see the other parent for their visitation time.
• One parent coerces the child to choose themselves over the other parent.
• The alienating parent sets themselves up as the victim and the other parent as the villain and shares unflattering details about the other parent’s life.

Possible solutions for resolving parental alienation

What do you do when you feel as if your child’s other parent is trying to alienate your child from you?

• You can work with a child psychologist who understands parental alienation and can support you and your child as you work through resolving the situation.
• Join a divorced parents support group.
• Enlist the help of your family law attorney in enforcing the existing custody order.

One parent using their power of manipulation to influence the child’s affections is harmful to the child’s healthy emotional development, and it is cruel to the other parent who deserves to be involved in their child’s life without interference. Maryland family law sees both parents as the natural custodians of their children, and therefore does not favor one parent over the other; the best interest of the child is the legal standard that the courts use when making decisions about child custody cases.

If you are involved in a child custody dispute in which it is becoming clear that your former spouse is trying to alienate your child, it is time to contact your attorney. If the court discovers that one parent has been deliberately trying to alienate the affections of the child for their own benefit, it will reflect poorly on the alienating parent.

The trusted Annapolis-based family lawyers at Cynthia H. Clark & Associates, LLC can help you resolve family conflict. If you are struggling with child custody challenges in your Maryland divorce, you are welcome to call 410.921.2422 or fill out our contact form to learn more about how we can help.

You have survived your divorce, and the judge has issued the divorce decree. You are dissatisfied. Can you ask the court to reconsider the judge’s decision?

Yes, you can appeal a divorce decision, but that does not mean that you should. There are strict rules and timelines when it comes to filing an appeal. It is also important to understand that an appeal is not an opportunity to retry the case. A divorce appeal is not the same thing as a divorce modification. A modification is a request to change just one portion of the divorce decree, as might happen if the party responsible to pay child support suddenly loses his or her job, or if circumstances have led you and your former spouse to revise your current custody plans.

Grounds on which to base a divorce appeal

A divorce appeal involves taking the original judge’s ruling to a higher court. A divorce appeal should be based an error on the part of the judge in applying the law, the uncovering of fraud committed by the other side with regard to the divorce proceedings, the presence of new facts that could not have been discovered during the original trial or some other extenuating circumstance that merits an appeal.

A divorce appeal can cost as much as the original trial, and the appellant (the party filing the appeal) might be required to pay the legal expenses of the respondent. The appellant may have to hire a new attorney to represent them in the appeal. This means that they must be prepared to pay a new attorney who has appellate experience to prepare for the appeal. The entire process can also be very time-consuming. It is critical that you discuss this option with an experienced Annapolis divorce attorney first, because you may find this is not your best option.

Filing a divorce appeal in Maryland

If you want to appeal the judge’s decision in your divorce, you have thirty days to file your appeal.

The litigation in a divorce appeal takes place within the written briefs as opposed to the witness testimony that took place in the original trial. An attorney specializing in appeals can discuss your options and help you decide if it makes sense to file an appeal.

At Cynthia H. Clark & Associates, LLC, we provide strong advocacy for clients as they end their marriage and create their new lives. Please contact us or call us at 410.921.2422 to receive a referral for an attorney, who specializes in appeals, with whom you can discuss your matter.

Couples who never had children together might find it easier to simply make a clean break after the divorce is final and agree to live separate lives. However, couples who have a child together will be linked for at least a few more decades – if not for the rest of their lives. It can be easier and far more rewarding to co-parent your children if you can be on civil (if not friendly) terms with your former spouse.

To that end, we have a few tips to share about how you might try to reinvent your relationship with your ex. The ultimate goal is for you both to be better co-parents, and to set a healthy example for your children to follow.

• Have a candid conversation about the boundaries of the new version of your relationship. You will know whether or not you want to pursue any kind of contact with your spouse outside of what is necessary for dealing with the children and their needs. If you both decide that it is time to leave the past behind you, then you can come to an agreement on how you will relate to one another.
• An apology can be a powerful catalyst for the healing process. Saying that you are sorry and hearing your ex-spouse apologize might be what you need to hear in order to hit the reset button and move on to a new stage of your relationship as co-parents.
• Make sure that you find the emotional support you need outside of this relationship, so that you are not looking to your former spouse to fill that role.
• It can be helpful to view yourselves as partners working towards the common goal of co-parenting your child.
• Never communicate through the children. Come to a mutual agreement about how you will communicate, whether by phone, email or text message.
• Find a solution for sharing your calendars to make scheduling activities and visitation times easy and avoid confusion.
• It is not always a great idea to try to be friends with your ex-spouse. When it is clear that the other party has not moved on and is looking for the slightest indication that you are interested in rekindling the romance, or if the other party has been abusive to you in any way, pursuing a friendship should be out of bounds.

Going through a divorce can change people. It can make them appreciate those things that they might have taken for granted in their partner, but it can also inspire introspection and personal growth. Also, the time apart and the space between you as you each move into your new lives and new routines gives you a whole new perspective on life. If the two of you can keep the needs of your child at the forefront of your minds, it gives your new relationship a new point of focus.

If you find that you cannot be friends with your ex-spouse, aim for civility. You and your children will be better off for it.

At Cynthia H. Clark & Associates, LLC, we help clients navigate the often troubling process of divorce, deciding child custody and rebuilding their lives after divorce. We invite you to contact us or call us at 410.921.2422 to schedule a consultation in our Annapolis office to discuss your case with a knowledgeable Maryland divorce attorney today.

If you live in Maryland and you wish to divorce your spouse, there are two different ways you can go about it: you can choose either fault or no fault grounds for your divorce. There used to be a 12 month waiting period in Maryland if you wanted to file for a no fault divorce, but that law was recently overturned. If your spouse is incarcerated, however, you have grounds for a fault-based divorce. If the person is already in prison serving a term of 12 months or longer, this will not be difficult to prove.

If you and your spouse are in agreement about all aspects of the divorce with regard to the custody of any minor children, the division of assets and debts and spousal support (if that applies in your case), your Annapolis divorce attorney can file the petition for divorce and then arrange to have your spouse served with the paperwork. In order to arrange to serve your incarcerated spouse, you must get his or her inmate number and use a private process server and a sheriff, who will accompany the process server to the prison and inform the inmate that he or she is being served. The process server will then complete an Affidavit of Service of Process. You will then file this affidavit with the court.

After your spouse has signed the petition, your attorney will draw up the settlement agreement, which you can deliver to your spouse to review and sign. After he or she has signed the settlement agreement, your attorney will file it with the court along with any other necessary documents and schedule a court appearance. You will appear before the judge and answer questions while you are under oath about your marriage and the divorce agreement that you and your spouse have come to. At the end of the hearing if all goes as planned, the judge will bang the gavel and grant your divorce.

What if your incarcerated spouse refuses to cooperate?

If all of that sounded too easy, you have probably guessed that divorces seldom transpire so smoothly. However, regardless of how much they contest it and how uncooperative they try to be, once you have filed the petition for divorce, your spouse cannot prevent you from obtaining a divorce even if it ends up being by default. They can stall and delay and make the process difficult, but in the end, if someone wants a divorce, the other partner cannot remain married to that person.

Your best advice whether your spouse is incarcerated or not is to hire an experienced Annapolis divorce attorney who will be an aggressive advocate for your best interests; follow their guidance and be patient with the process, and you can reach your goals.

Dealing with divorce is never easy, but working with the right divorce attorney can make the process more manageable for you. Our skilled divorce lawyers at Cynthia H. Clark & Associates, LLC will represent your interests and fight for the best outcome possible. We take the time to listen to your concerns and then we present you with legal options that fit your unique circumstances. You are welcome to contact our firm or call 410-990-0090 to reserve a consultation time in our Annapolis office.