Falls Church Virginia Family Law Blog

Whether you've yet to break the news of your divorce or you've been divorced for some time now, your kids are likely to present you with some challenging questions about it.

If you're not quite sure how to go about answering them, here are a few helpful approaches you can take to the most common questions.

Some Virginians seeking a divorce may have a lot of animosity towards one another and may feel that they have no choice but to have their divorce legal issues settled by a judge in court. However, others may wonder if there is a less adversarial way to end their marriage. In the age of "conscious uncoupling," some people in Virginia seeking a divorce may be interested in learning more about how collaborative law can be used to settle their divorce.

In the collaborative divorce process, each party will retain their own attorney. The parties and their attorneys will all agree in writing to settle their divorce through out-of-court negotiations, with the goal of creating a settlement agreement that can then be approved by the court. To show their commitment to the process, if the parties cannot agree on all their divorce legal issues and some or all of them must be settled by the court, the parties' attorneys will bow out of the case and the parties will have to retain new attorneys to litigate their divorce.

While some couples in Virginia enter into prenuptial agreements (referred to as premarital agreements in Virginia law), other couples may not take this step before walking down the aisle. However, sometimes circumstances arise in which the couple wishes they had executed a prenup prior to marriage. Fortunately, couples in such situations may be able to form a postnuptial agreement (referred to as a marital agreement in Virginia law).

Postnuptial agreements can address many of the same topics a prenuptial agreement can cover, such as property division and spousal support in the event of a divorce. If a party was coerced into entering a postnuptial agreement, if a party did not make a full disclosure of assets to the other party or if the agreement is unconscionable, then it may not be enforced. Postnuptial agreements in Virginia take effect as soon as they are executed.

Virginia law has statutory guidelines regarding how much child support to award. However, there can be a deviation from these guidelines if adherence to the guidelines would be unjust or inappropriate. The finding that rebuts the statutory child support guidelines needs to state how much child support would have been awarded per the statutory guidelines, why a deviation is justified and evidence of the following factors.

One factor the court will consider is what monetary support the parents and child receive from other current or former family members. If the child has independent financial resources, this may also be considered. Child custody arrangements, along with expenses associated with travel for visitation periods are another factor the court will consider.