Welcome October?

I won't kid you.  I love birthdays.  I love making them at least a week-long celebration.  It's easy for me to make the entire month of October a birthday celebration, as daughter's birthday is exactly two weeks after mine. We just roll from one birthday to another.  This year, however, my birthday falls on the three month memorial of my dad's death.  Already I'm guessing that this birthday will be a bit bittersweet.  After all, how many people count a visit to their father's grave as part of the birthday celebration?  You may be asking how all of this relates to the Trenches, but you know I'll find a way.  You also know I've been there.  How many years will it take before you can pass your anniversary and your former spouse's birthday without it feeling weird that you're not celebrating?  How long before the new way you're celebrating Christmas, Thanksgiving,  Rosh Hashanah or Yom Kippur feels right instead of strange?  Quite a while.  Eventually though, you find your way to your new normal.  It will happen, trust me.  It just takes time.   Here in the Trenches.

Baby Veronica

As you all may have read in the news today, Baby Veronica was reunited with her adoptive parents and has left the state of Oklahoma (finally!) to head home to South Carolina.  The case is over and everyone can move on with their lives.  Swift justice indeed - it took only 3 or so years for the case to work its way from original adoption, to the U.S. Supreme Court  and back again to South Carolina, to an Oklahoma Court that stayed enforcement of the South Carolina order, to the birth father being charged criminally, and finally to the stay lifting and Veronica heading home. In the Trenches, that really is pretty fast.  Lots of lawyers (including some of my friends here in the Trenches) worked very hard to make that happen.  Good work!
When clients ask how long a case can take, I try to tell them that the only way you can predict the length of a case is to stay out of court.  When you mediate, collaborate or negotiate, you can control the pace of the settlement of the case, you can control how much time to spend on what, how much importance to give to facts and issues, and most importantly, when to compromise and move on.  Otherwise, the court determines how much time the case takes, at least initially. Someone is usually disappointed.  How disappointed they are determines whether they take an appeal.  If the judge did make a mistake, you come back to the trial court and do it again.  That's called a remand.  Maybe there's another appeal after a remand.  We can do this over and over again, and some people do.   Oh, and did I mention that you probably won't get that initial trial date until somewhere 6 to 7 months down the road, an appeal takes 9 months to a year,  and then you go down and start all over again.  Cases on remand from an appeal don't get to cut the line, so they get set in as if they were just filed.  And on it goes.  Which way would you like to spend years of your life - in court or moving on?  Here in the Trenches.

Income and Child Support

I don't usually talk about substantive issues on this blog.  Today, I make one of my exceptions.  Let's talk income.  Not income for tax purposes.  Not income as in money you can spend.  I want to talk about income for child support purposes.  You see, what we consider income here in the Trenches isn't necessarily what clients consider income.  Hence, a short primer on income in the Trenches.  Income here in the Trenches is any money, services, or gifts received on a regular basis, or as a result of employment, which reduces the living expenses of the recipient.  That means if your business pays for your cell phone which you use for both personal and business purposes, your health insurance, your car expenses, or for your uniform, those amounts are considered income to you here in the Trenches.  If your parents give you money to live on every year, if you live with Mom and Dad for free, or if Mom and Dad let you live in a house they own and don't charge you for it, that can be considered income here in the Trenches.
If you have your own business, there are a lot of legitimate IRS deductions that the court can and will add back into your income.  Yes, I know depreciation is a legitimate expense, but it's only one on paper; we consider it income here in the Trenches.  If you have a home based business, unless it's a landscaping business, the IRS understands you need to make the grounds of your office look good to impress clients, but here in the Trenches, it's probably income.  Same thing for nice dishes to serve clients coffee and snacks, if you also use them to eat dinner.  Meals out?  Are they staff meals for your office of one, or are they for entertaining clients?  It makes a difference here in the Trenches whether we consider them income or a true business expense.  Remember, if it decreases your need to pay for your living expenses personally or it is only an expense on paper, we here in the Trenches don't care what the IRS says.  It's income.  But wait, there's more.  Did you loan your business money?  Is it a true loan or an infusion of equity?  We know there are legitimate reasons for both.  One, however, is a liability of the company and may have an effect on income; the other has little to no effect on income.  The difficulty is that legitimate business purposes and Trenches income sometimes work at cross purposes.  It's enough to give you heartburn.  Here in the Trenches.

All Dressed Up and Nowhere to Go

There is one aspect of life here in the Trenches that is hard for us to explain and for clients to understand.  How do you explain that the judge doesn't want to hear your case?  That the prosecutor doesn't want to move forward with the charges?  It doesn't feel fair.  It's their jobs, right?  We pay them to hear the evidence and make a decision, and to prosecute the accused.  They're hired and appointed to make decisions and to keep us safe.  So why isn't that happening?  Here in the Trenches, we've been on both the attorney and the client side of that conundrum.  As attorneys, we tell our clients that we understand that it doesn't feel fair, we know this is not how the process is supposed to work, but that's what happens sometimes.  It's all part of the judicial system.   Sometimes, there are good reasons why a prosecutor doesn't want to try a case, and why a judge doesn't want to hold a trial.  It really doesn't matter to the client.  They feel scared, betrayed, frustrated, and disappointed.  I don't blame them.  Here in the Trenches.

Some of you may remember the trials and tribulations of my backyard.  That's a picture of it, finally finished up above.   Now, my front yard, that little postage stamp with the apple tree that bears bushels of fruit each year, needs to be redone.  I agonized over it.  I had in mind something different than the backyard, perhaps a cottage feel.  I poured over books and websites.  I sat across the street and stared at it.  I could not make a decision.  I thought it was because I was tired, not in the mood, unmotivated.  Then, this morning, I started thinking about the apple tree.  What did it need under and around it?  Should I do something special to take care of it?  Turns out that apple trees have special needs.  There are a lot of plants you shouldn't grow under them, and some you should.  I looked up those plants.  I sat down with pencil, paper and the internet.  In an hour, I had the garden planned and the plants ordered.
Life in the Trenches is kind of like planning a garden.  Usually, you have a plan for how a case should progress, and clients have an idea of how their case should go and how the issues should resolve.  Many times, those plans work out and the case concludes satisfactorily.  Sometimes, however, the case just doesn't progress the way it should.  No matter what you try, you can't mesh the other side's needs with those of your client.  Your strategy isn't one with which your client is completely comfortable.  The case feels more difficult than it needs to be.  What's called for in that situation is a step back.  Both the lawyer and the client need to review the client's story and reassess the facts.  Usually, one or the other can find another way to look at the facts, another way to approach the case, another way to move forward with their life.  Suddenly, everything in the case seems easier, a resolution presents itself, compromise is possible and the case resolves.  Here in the Trenches.

Act in Haste; Repent at Leisure.

Hitting "send" or "post" takes a second, but what is posted or sent lasts forever.  How many times have I written about Facebook, Linked In, My Space, Twitter and the like?  Not enough, obviously, as here I am, needing to write it again.  Just because you can post something, doesn't mean you should.  Can you please think before you put it out on the internet?  Think about the repercussions of what you're putting out there.  If you're in the middle of a child support modification case, don't post pictures of yourself on expensive vacations, going to exclusive clubs, sending your doggie to daycare, and the like.  If you're in the middle of a child custody case, pictures of yourself partying, drinking, in skimpy clothes, hanging on a different member of the opposite sex every day, are not good to post.  If you're claiming you're disabled, pictures of yourself running around town, exercising and talking about how busy you are is generally not smart either.  The sad part of all this is that under normal circumstances, any of these postings is not damaging, but under the circumstances of a particular case, they're crushing.  The truly tragic part of all this is that at the time each of these things were posted, there was no child support modification, no custody case and no claim of disability.  It is only later, when each of those legal issues raised their ugly heads, that the posts became important.  The point is to be careful as to what put out in the public domain; even though it may not seem harmful at the time, the more the world knows about you, the more it can be used against you.  Plus, it never goes away but exists forever.  Here in the Trenches.

I Don't Wanna

Your children did not ask you to divorce.  They did not cause the divorce.  They don't want it.  They are.....children.  I know - shocking.  Children will always want you and your spouse to be married.  They always want to have their family intact.  If you had your druthers, you would want that too.  The things that make you either no longer love your spouse or no longer be able to live with your spouse are generally (and there are exceptions) not things that make your children not want to live with their other parent.  For your children, the separation is an unwelcome shock.  They do not have the life experience to deal with the emotions and the changes that divorce brings.  That means that it takes them longer to get used to their divided family and the permanence of the situation.  You may have moved on 3 or 6 months after you separated, but your children have not.  They need time, and they need you to understand that.  Sure, to you looking at a new home is exciting and represents a new beginning; to your children it represents confirmation that their lives will never be the same.  Most parents are aghast if you ask them to nest in the marital home, where the parents and not the children rotate in and out of residence, for the next 10-15 years. Yet, that is exactly what they ask their children to do, and to be happy and excited about it.  They aren't; and they will never be.  Resigned to it, used to it?  Yes.  Happy about it? No.  Understand that and slow down, even if it inconveniences you; your children will thank you for it.  Here in the Trenches.