Divorce & Family Law

Mansfield Divorce Attorney Discusses Changing a Child’s Last Name Question: My daughter has her biological father’s last name because her biological father signed the birth certificate.  He has not seen her since she was 1, she is 8 now.  What do I have to do to changer her last name? Answer: I am often asked as […]

Importance of a Health Care Proxy Health care proxies are allowable in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and what they do is they name a health care agent. That person has the right to make your health care decisions if you’re unable to do so if you’re incapacitated from doing so. So a typical case where […]

Information needed at your Divorce Attorney Meeting   In order to get the most value out of your initial consultation with a lawyer, you should bring as much information with you as possible. Primarily, if you have children, pay stubs are necessary because one of the first things I do in an initial consultation is […]

How Long will my Divorce Take? A lot of times when people come to see me about a divorce, one of the first questions they ask is how long it takes to get a divorce. Everyone wants the divorce to be over and they want it over as quickly as possible. In Massachusetts, it takes […]

Time Frame to Pay Alimony in Massachusetts The length or the term of the alimony and how long it’s payable depend entirely on how long you’ve been married. For instance, if you’ve been married 15 to 20 years, you’re in the highest category. Say you’ve been married 16 years and 1 month. They would count […]

Paying for Extracurricular Activities in a Divorce The payment for extracurricular activities is generally agreed to by the parties. In my experience, both parents really do have the best interest for their children at heart and they know what’s important to the child and what’s not important to the child. If it’s a sport or […]

Uninsured Medical Expenses in a Massachusetts Divorce Uninsured medical bills are discretionary with the judge in terms of the allocation of the payment although in the vast majority of cases, it’s put 50-50 because if one parent is paying full child support guidelines according to the child support guidelines. That was taken into consideration when […]

Applying Dependency Tax Exemptions to my Divorce Dependency exemptions for the children are allocated between the parties by the court and it depends on the relative income of both parties. If there is a situation where one party would be what we call ‘wasting’ the exemption, meaning it has no beneficial impact on the amount […]