Maryland Divorce Lawyer Blog

Maryland Court of Special Appeals Says that ‘De Facto’ Parents Are Eligible for Same Awards of Attorney’s Fees as Biological Parents

January 29, 2020 | by Anthony A. Fatemi, LLC

Going through a custody dispute can be a scary thing. You may recognize that you need capable legal representation, but you may fear that you lack the financial resources to hire a skilled Maryland child custody attorney. Never let that fear stop you. Always talk to counsel first. There may be various options available to you to address your financial resource-related concerns, including getting a court order that makes your ex-spouse or partner responsible for paying your attorney’s fees.

Biological parents have long understood that, in Maryland, they have the potential to persuade a judge that the other side should pay their attorney’s fees. The law says an award of attorney’s fees is available and the judge may award any amount of “fees that are just and proper under all the circumstances,” according to the statute. You simply have to give the court evidence of your financial status, your needs, your ex’s financial status and your ex’s needs, along with proof that you had a valid justification for bringing your case.

Of course, as we all know, parenthood is something much deeper than just DNA. There are lots of people who act as a child’s parent while sharing a lesser biological tie to that child… or none at all. This can include some families with stepparents and families with LGBT parents. Fortunately, Maryland recognizes these parents’ legal status under something called ‘de facto’ parenthood. This may lead you next to wonder… can these ‘de facto’ parents, if they need to pursue a custody case in court, receive an award of attorneys’ fees? The good news is that a case from last year made it clear that the answer to this question is “Yes!”

‘There is More to Parenting Than Being a Physical Presence’: Deciding Custody Time and Schedules in Maryland

January 16, 2020 | by Anthony A. Fatemi, LLC

You work hard to provide for your family. You also have a strong desire to be an active and involved parent in your child’s life. A recent case from Baltimore County looked at the conflict than can arise from these two things. Namely, the case looked at whether one parent should only have physical custody during periods of time when he wasn’t working. In order to foster your relationship with your child, it is important to have time with that child, including overnights. Sometimes, you may have to work during parts of those periods. That doesn’t mean that you should lose custody time. To achieve a custody arrangement that best promotes your relationship with your child, be sure to retain the services of an experienced Maryland child custody attorney.

As the court stated in this important victory for the father, the law doesn’t require that you either be off work or relinquish custody time. The law requires that a physical custody schedule promote the best interests of the child.

In the case, the dispute focused on the son of D.B. and N.W. The parents were never married and lived separately, but decided to raise the boy together. The father worked nights and the mother worked in the daytime. Eventually a dispute arose regarding the schedule and the parents ended up in court.

How the State of Maryland Distributes Your Alimony and Child Support if Your Wages Are Being Garnished

December 27, 2019 | by Anthony A. Fatemi, LLC

For many divorced parents who have children but whose children reside with their ex-spouse, paying both alimony and child support is part of life. If you’re one of those parents, you may struggle with meeting both of those financial obligations. If you have found that you no longer have the monetary means to pay both types of support at the amounts ordered by the court, make sure that you reach out to an experienced Maryland divorce attorney and investigate which options are available to you to keep you current on your obligations.

P.N. was one of those parents dealing with an arrearage in his court case. When his divorce was finalized in 2005, a Maryland trial court ordered him to pay “non-modifiable” alimony of $3,250 per month and $1,422 per month in child support. At the wife’s request, the husband’s alimony and child support sums were paid through wage garnishment.

The husband eventually fell behind on both alimony and child support, since he did not make enough to pay both obligations. Eventually, he went back to court to ask that, going forward, all the money that he paid be credited toward his child support obligation, and, only after that was satisfied, would anything be paid toward alimony. Maryland’s state agency responsible for distributing the sums garnished from the husband had a different way of handling things, however. The sums garnished from the husband’s income went roughly 70% for alimony and 30% for child support.

How the Right Argument or Evidence in Your Maryland Child Custody Case Can Still Be Wrong If It’s Presented at the Wrong Time

December 16, 2019 | by Anthony A. Fatemi, LLC

Having a knowledgeable family law attorney on your side in your child custody case can help you in a number of ways. That’s because there are a number of ways in which your case can go wrong if you lack the sort of effective legal counsel that your case needs.

Procedural mistakes, for example, can be devastating. You can have the strongest evidence possible or make the most compelling and persuasive argument possible, but if you have not met all of the requirements of the procedural rules, then that proof or argument may go for naught and you may still lose.

A case from Prince George’s County offers up a good example. In early 2016, a mother and a father reached an agreement on joint custody. A few months later, the judge decided that the mother had engaged in misconduct to deny the father visitation and ordered that the father receive sole legal and physical custody of the child, with the mother receiving only daily electronic contact via Skype or Facetime.

Don’t Put Your ‘Head in the Sand” — Tackle Your Maryland Child Support Case Head On

December 2, 2019 | by Anthony A. Fatemi, LLC

Did you know that the well-traveled idea that ostriches bury their heads in the ground to hide from danger is actually totally false? Rather than just hiding and doing nothing, ostriches are actually hard at work when they put their heads in the ground. What they’re really doing, as opposed to just averting their eyes and ears from the threat outside, is diligently tending to their eggs that they’ve nested inside that hole in the ground.

When it comes to your child support obligation case, be like the real ostrich, not the mythical ostrich. Be pro-active; don’t hide from your problems. Simply sticking your head in the sand, so to speak, and pretending like your problems don’t exist is a bad idea. In a contempt case against you based on your back-owed child support, it is a terrible idea. You can lose your right to make arguments about what your child support payments should be going forward, you can have your wages garnished, you can lose your passport and you can potentially lose your freedom (and be thrown in jail.) Instead of that, reach out to an experienced family law attorney and find out what you can do to benefit yourself and your family.

D.G. was a father who had a back-owed child support problem. He was a professional basketball player who had a child with M.G., a woman who lived in Howard County. D.G. agreed in 2014 to pay the mother $4,000 in child support.

Don’t Let Your Past Litigation Errors Cause You to Give Up on Your Maryland Child Custody Case

November 13, 2019 | by Anthony A. Fatemi, LLC

In life, everyone makes mistakes, sometimes. Some of those mistakes happen within the confines of your family law case and, if that happens, the consequences can be severe. Even if you have made significant mistakes in your case, it is still imperative that you don’t give up and that you continue aggressively to fight for your relationship with your children. The law in Maryland may give you more options than you might have thought. Contact an experienced family law attorney to find out what paths may be available for you.

So, what do we mean by mistakes? As an example, let’s look at the case of C.K.N., a Montgomery County mom and Cameroonian immigrant going through a custody battle with her child’s father, E.L. A custody case, like other civil law cases, has a “discovery phase,” where each side has the opportunity ask the other side to respond to certain questions (called “interrogatories”) and to turn over copies of certain documents (called “requests for production.”)

One of the reasons it is so important to have a skilled family law attorney representing you during every phase of your case is that failure to follow certain rules, including discovery rules, can lead to severe punishments. In C.K.N.’s case, she failed to respond to certain discovery requests on time, so the judge punished her by imposing severe restrictions on what she could argue at her hearing and what evidence she could present in her custody case.

Why It is So Important that You Get Every Term, and Every Modification, of Your Maryland Marital Settlement Agreement Put Down in Writing

October 30, 2019 | by Anthony A. Fatemi, LLC

In many different types of legal or business settings, one receives the advice to “get it in writing.” Why is that? It’s because a written document carries much more weight as evidence in court than oral testimony about the contents of an oral contract. Getting “it in writing” has the potential to help either side or both sides. Additionally, thanks to something within the law called the “Statute of Frauds,” a failure to get it in writing can cost you dearly when it comes to many types of agreements.

What does this mean to you if you’re going through a divorce? It means that, whether you are creating a new marital settlement agreement or modifying an existing one, it pays to get it in written down. It also pays to have an experienced Maryland family law attorney on your side.

For an example of this concept, look at this recent ruling and you can see why it is so important to get it in writing. In 2010, A.M. and R.H. agreed to the terms of a marital settlement agreement. The agreement called for the husband to buy out the wife’s ownership interest in the couple’s marital home and for the wife, after getting paid, to relinquish her ownership rights to the property.

How a Maryland Wife Avoided Paying Any Alimony Even Though She Made More Than Three Times What He Did

October 16, 2019 | by Anthony A. Fatemi, LLC

When you’re going through a divorce, there are many things that may concern you, especially if you make a substantially larger income than your spouse. Obviously, one of those things is your spouse seeking alimony for a long duration, perhaps even indefinite alimony. However, there are some things you can do that will limit the amount of alimony the judge will order – or perhaps even allow you to avoid an alimony obligation entirely. To best protect yourself from an excessively large alimony obligation, be sure you have representation from an experienced Maryland family law attorney every step of the way.

A recent case involving a Montgomery County couple shows the way one wife achieved this goal. The wife was a medical doctor employed by the FDA, making around $180,000-200,000 per year. The husband never made even ½ that amount and, at the time of the couple’s divorce, alleged that he made “a mere $30,000” per year. The husband alleged that he had made multiple attempts to secure full-time employment, but had failed each time. He also asserted that his monthly expenses exceeded what he was making by several thousand dollars per month.

Based on those numbers, you might expect that the husband would receive a significant amount of alimony, mightn’t you? However, in this case, the trial judge ordered the wife to pay zero in alimony and that ruling stood up on appeal. How did the wife achieve this success? She did it by producing her own evidence that cast doubt on the credibility of the story that the husband provided to the courts.

How Your Child’s Other Parent May Be the One Who Owes Child Support in Maryland, Even if the Children Reside with Him/Her More than 50% of the Time

September 30, 2019 | by Anthony A. Fatemi, LLC

Everyone assumes they know certain things about family law cases. For example, when you share custody of your children with your ex-spouse, and your ex-spouse has the children the majority of the time, many people might assume that either you are paying child support to your ex-spouse or that neither parent is paying support.

Did you know that this does not necessarily have to be the case? In some situations, based on what you make and what your ex-spouse makes, your ex-spouse may actually be the one to pay support, even though the children reside with you less than 50% of the time. This just goes to show that you should never assume when it comes to the law. Instead, contact an experienced Maryland family law attorney to get the facts.

As an example of how this can happen, there’s the case of N.K. and M.B. N.K., the mother, made $108,000 annually as a physician. Initially, the father made $130,000 annually and paid the mother $1,432 a month in child support. The father had the children for 128 overnights, and the children stayed with the mother the remaining 65% of the time.

A Self-Represented Father in a Maryland Custody Case Demonstrated Why Proceeding Without an Attorney is Generally the Wrong Choice

September 16, 2019 | by Anthony A. Fatemi, LLC

An old saying by English author Alexander Pope theorizes that “a little knowledge is a dangerous thing.” In few places is that more true than in the law. Too many times, non-lawyers sincerely believe that they can pursue their case successfully on their own. They think that, by spending a little time with the Google or Bing search engines, they can equip themselves adequately to act as their own attorney in their Maryland family law dispute.

Very often, they are mistaken. The consequence of that mistake is often losing a case that, with the aid of skilled lawyer, might have possibly ended more favorably. With something as precious and valuable as your family at stake, why would you chance losing due to some statutory technicality, filing deadline or nuance of caselaw that you’d overlooked? Your family is too important, which is why you should be sure you retain a knowledgeable Maryland family law attorney to handle your case.

How can your case go very wrong on your own? A recent dispute addressed by the Court of Special Appeals offers a useful example. O.K. was a father in a dispute with E.L., his children’s mother. On a temporary basis, the court gave the mother sole legal and physical custody.