You file your enforcement motion, you’ve documented everything, you show up ready, and the other side’s attorney stands up and says the order isn’t specific enough to be enforced by contempt. And the judge agrees with them. That’s a rough afternoon, and I’ve watched people take it as a loss on the merits when it … Read more
Unpaid child support is the most common enforcement problem I deal with, and it’s also the one where people wait the longest before doing anything. They don’t want to be the bad guy. They keep hoping it’ll turn around. And two years later they’re owed twenty thousand dollars and they’ve convinced themselves it’s too late … Read more
I’ve read a lot of enforcement motions written by self-represented parents, and I can usually tell in the first paragraph whether it’s going to survive. Not because the facts are bad. Usually the facts are terrible, in the sense that the other parent has genuinely been doing something outrageous for months. The motions fail on … Read more
This is the question I probably get asked more than any other, and it usually comes with a lot of hope attached to it. My daughter is thirteen and she wants to live with me. Doesn’t that settle it? I want to answer this carefully, because there’s a real legal mechanism here and it matters, … Read more
Child support modification is one of the few places in Texas family law where the legislature gave you a genuinely simple path, and hardly anybody uses it. Most people assume they have to prove a material and substantial change, they can’t figure out how to prove one, and they never file. There’s a second door, … Read more
Here’s a scenario I see several times a year, and it never stops being painful. Somebody comes to me eight months after their order was signed. Things have gone badly at the other parent’s house, they’ve got real concerns, and they filed a modification asking to become the primary parent. And the court denied it … Read more
If you only learn one thing about the money side of a Texas divorce, make it this. Everything the two of you possess when the divorce is filed is presumed to be community property, and if you think some of it is yours alone, the burden is on you to prove it. Not on your … Read more
This is one of the most emotionally loaded questions I get, and it usually arrives in the same form. My spouse cheated, and I want the judge to know. Or, my spouse made my life hell for nine years, and I’m not going to stand up in court and call it irreconcilable differences like nothing … Read more
There’s a mindset problem that shows up in almost every person who gets served, and I want to name it early because it costs people more than any single filing mistake I see. The mindset is this: they filed, so it’s their case, and my job is to respond to whatever they do. That’s wrong, … Read more
When you got served, you probably focused on the petition, because that’s the document with your name on it and your ex’s accusations in it. But if your case was filed in one of the many Texas counties that use them, there was another document in that stack, and it’s the one that’s going to … Read more