by: Jennifer R. Silva, Esq. In Massachusetts, the “alimony statute” outlines the duration of alimony payments based on the length of the marriage. Massachusetts General Laws ch. 208 §48 defines the length of marriage as “the number of months from the date of legal marriage to the date of service of a complaint or petition for…
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Pets and Divorce in Massachusetts
by: Jennifer Silva In Illinois, the start of the new year brought a change to the way that pets are treated in divorce matters. Under the new law in Illinois, in a divorce case “companion” pets (not service animals) will be treated more similarly to children than to property and could be subject to partial…
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Measuring the Length of Same Sex Marriage
Formally, under Massachusetts law, the same rules and procedures that govern traditional marriage also apply to same-sex marriage. There are no special procedures that govern gay and lesbian marriages. Same-sex divorce in Massachusetts presents many of the same issues as divorce involving heterosexual partners, including the division of assets, spousal support, and child custody. Still,…
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Shift your Perspective in 2019: Co-Parenting
We all know how New Year’s resolutions go: we hype them up, brag about them for the first few months of the new year, and then by March, wonder what happened. This year can be different because we have a new type of resolution for you to consider: Pressing ‘reset’ on your perspective. The new…
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