Susan W. Savard

Orlando Sentinel

Q Full custody of our only grandchild was recently given to her mother, who went through a bitter divorce with our son. The mother refuses to let us have any contact with our 7-year-old granddaughter, who we worship and adore. The only time we hear from her is when she can sneak a phone call, and she tells us how much she misses us. As grandparents do we have any legal rights to see our granddaughter?

A The issue you raise has caused much heartache and heated debate concerning the tension between constitutional rights of parents and what is best for our children. Unfortunately, you don’t have any legal right to see your granddaughter. The prior Florida grandparental visitation statute has been declared unconstitutional. Parents, whether divorced or married, have a fundamental liberty interest and constitutional right to privacy and decision-making in raising their children.

Source: http://www.orlandosentinel.com/features/law/os-ask-a-lawyer-contact-with-granchild-0320100308,0,6247643.column

Markham Heid

Washington Examiner

Thanks to plummeting property values, divorcing couples now find themselves fighting for the right not to keep the house. The crippled real estate market has turned once-valuable assets into huge financial burdens. Homes bought at or near the peak of the housing market in 2005-2006 have lost tens of thousands of dollars in value in just a few years, forcing many discordant couples to keep a painful reminder of a failed relationship.

“Instead of fighting over the house, we’re fighting over who gets stuck with it,” said Steve Halbert, 57, an Arlington homeowner going through a divorce. Halbert and his wife bought their house in 2006, shortly before their marriage and the housing market took a turn for the worse. “We thought we’d be walking away with hundreds of thousands of dollars in equity. But there is no equity,” he said. As a four-time divorce — and a real estate appraiser — Halbert said he’s accustomed to heated legal battles over property ownership. But unlike his first three trips to divorce court, Halbert said he’s hoping to lose possession of his house this time around.

Source: http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/local/No_-you-take-the-house_-86255162.html

Sharon Jayson

USA Today

Couples who live together before marriage and those who don’t both have about the same chances of a successful union, according to a federal report out Tuesday that turns earlier cohabitation research on its head. The report, by the National Center for Health Statistics, is based on the National Survey of Family Growth, a sample of almost 13,000. It provides the most detailed data on cohabitation of men and women to date.

Past research — using decades-old data — found significantly higher divorce rates for cohabitors, defined as “not married but living together with a partner of the opposite sex.” But now, in an era when about two-thirds of couples who marry live together first, a different picture is emerging in which there are few differences between those who cohabit and those who don’t.

Tim Grant

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

In her recent book on love and money, Jacquette Timmons interviewed several couples on how they deal with finances, including an unmarried couple who decided to buy a house but wound up splitting up due to deep conflicts they had while house hunting. “They realized their differences were beyond money,” said Ms. Timmons, author of “Financial Intimacy: How to Create a Healthy Relationship with Your Money and Your Mate.”

The irony of the story is if they had stuck it out long enough to sign closing documents on the house before ending the relationship, it might have been more complicated legally to split up the house than to actually go through a full-blown divorce. When it comes to buying and owning common real estate, unmarried couples do not automatically have the same legal guarantees and protections that married couples do if the time comes to part ways romantically or one of them dies.

Source: http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/10061/1039538-28.stm

Catherine Jun

The Detroit News

Breaking up is hard to do — especially in a recession. With depressed home values and a dicey job market, divorces in Metro Detroit are down, as unhappy couples ride out the financial storm, the theory goes.

But of those who do file for divorce, more are financially strapped and duking it out without attorneys, according to courts. These do-it-yourself divorces are crowding legal aid offices and court dockets and slowing proceedings with incomplete paperwork and tutorials judges must deliver from the bench. And as more couples represent themselves, many are losing out on property and custody claims that are legally theirs, judges and attorneys say.

Source: http://www.detnews.com/article/20100301/METRO/3010332/1409/metro/Divorcing-couples-leave-out-lawyers