David M. Gabriel & Associates

Can I bring my significant other or children to my court hearing?

This is often a question that clients ask us. The simple answer is no, we advise against it. But you may be wondering why? We advise bringing a significant other or your children to your court hearing for a multitude of reasons. For one, children are often the subject of the hearing and it would be inappropriate and unfair to the child to be witness to the hearing. If the child is not subject to the hearing, we still advise against having them accompany you because you need to give your full attention to your attorney’s and the hearing. We further suggest that that boyfriends and girlfriends are left at home. Again, in contentious cases there are often accusations thrown about regarding your significant other, to have said person present would potentially lead to more conflict and distraction. So remember, as much as we want our clients to have support, it is better for your case if the crowd of supporters is restricted.

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Celebrity’s courtroom antics may have damaged his custody case

The custody trial involving media celebrity Alex Jones ended with the father of three losing physical custody of the children to his ex-wife. It’s a rather dramatic turn-around, given that his ex-wife has had only occasional supervised visitation for the last two years. We’ve previously discussed the question of whether or not the bombastic star of “Infowars” could lose custody of his children due to his on-the-air antics. His attorneys effectively dealt with the question of what their client was really like by trying to distance the man from the media persona he’d created. They were successful at keeping most of the media clips from “Infowars” from being shown in court. What they couldn’t control was their client — his own actions in court may have been the undoing of his defense and destroyed what seemed like a solid footing against his ex-wife’s custody case. When first divorced, Jones had enjoyed the support of a slew of professionals. They had declared his ex-wife’s “emotional dysregulation” a danger to the children, stripping her of most of her time with the children. Somehow, the fact that Jones was diagnosed with narcissistic personality disorder, a serious mental health issue, escaped notice. His ex-wife’s current legal team focused on the media star’s disorder and his determination to keep the children and their mother apart. They said that previous experts had missed the classic signs of parental alienation syndrome, where one parent engages in actions designed to encourage the children to disrespect, loathe and even

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3 tips to protect yourself financially in a divorce

If you had to, could you list off your family’s income, assets and debts with a reasonable certainty? If the answer is, “No,” then you need to educate yourself financially before you initiate your divorce. Many times, high-profile couples have prospered together with one spouse taking the financial reigns and the other handling the home and children. When a divorce happens, the less financially-educated spouse often has no idea what sort of stock options the couple holds, what other investments they have or even what banks they’re spread around. Sometimes they aren’t even aware of property they own because the spouse handling the income bought it as an investment and didn’t bother telling them. Here are three things that you need to do as quickly as possible if you suspect a divorce is on the horizon: — Document everything. Get copies of every tax return, deed, bank record, bill or brokerage statements. Get your insurance paperwork together, including inventories of the household goods. Copies of your spouse’s business records for the last several years are also valuable — especially if you think the business may be worth more than he or she is letting on. 2. Put money aside. You are going to need more money than you realize — part of it will go to attorney fees, but part of it will go to just ordinary living expenses and you probably don’t really know what those are yet. You may have additional expenses like therapy bills, new furniture for

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Could ‘Infowars’ broadcaster’s custody rights be in jeopardy?

Judges in custody cases have a pretty wide latitude to consider virtually anything that they consider relevant to the child’s best interest. That could be bad new for Alex Jones, the fiery host of the broadcast show “Infowars.” The hyperbolic conspiracy theorist has promoted some widely-debunked claims, like the idea that the Sandy Hook elementary school shooting was just a hoax and the “Pizzagate” rumor, which suggested Bill and Hillary Clinton were running a pedophile ring through a Washington D.C. pizza place. His rhetoric is often vile, volatile, and openly suggestive of violence. His ex-wife thinks that this is a bad thing for the kids to be around and wants the court to award her (preferably) sole custody of their three children. His attorney says that “Alex Jones the performance artist” is just a persona spouting the rhetoric he supposedly endorses on his show. Alex Jones, the father of three, is supposedly a totally different person. His ex-wife disagrees. She states that his rantings aren’t just about ratings — that they prove he’s both unstable and unfit as a parent. His ex-wife has cited numerous examples of his inflammatory behavior that she feels are indicative of his mental state, including things like challenging actor Alec Baldwin to a fight and alleging that former President Obama founded the Muslim terrorist group ISIS. While the judge in his case has said that she wants to keep the focus on the children and not on “Infowars,” she is allowing clips from the show

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Gray divorces: Why they happen and how to avoid them

Somewhere around 2007, a new phrase entered the vocabulary of the divorce attorney: “gray divorce.” It was once virtually unheard of for couples who had been together for decades to divorce, no matter how decayed the bonds of their matrimony — now, it’s becoming much more commonplace. Some divorce attorneys think they know the reason for the trend — it’s really as simple as the fact that human longevity has increased. People are living longer and staying healthier well into their seventh and eighth decades. Only a few generations past, someone who was aged 60 or older might decide that the hassle of a divorce was pointless, given how much longer he or she expected to live an active lifestyle. Now, people approaching their 60s are seeing a future for themselves with another 20-25 healthy, active years and deciding that they don’t want to spend the last 20-25 years of their lives in a miserable marriage. Hopefully, you can avoid joining their ranks by following a few simple pieces of advice; — Don’t assume that just because you’re okay with the marriage that your spouse is also okay with the marriage. Talk about where you each are, emotionally, as you start to approach those “gray” years. — Take a frank assessment of your romantic life. Is it what you need it to be? Have all the other hassles of life gotten in the way and made you forget to pay attention to that part of your relationship? It’s time to

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Immigrants tying the knot after signing a prenup

Because the current political climate has taken a darker turn toward immigrants, a lot of foreign nationals are “tying the knot” with their American brides and grooms almost impulsively. Marrying a United States citizen is one of the quickest ways to achieve your lawful permanent resident status, or green card. However, an impulsive marriage could raise red flags with immigration officials, especially if it includes a prenuptial agreement. Immigration attorneys say that many of the international couples who are rushing their weddings are also getting prenups — just in case the marriages don’t work out — to protect their assets. Prenups aren’t unusual, especially for professional couples with considerable wealth. About 14 percent of couples have them. A prenup would seem like a reasonable thing to do, especially if a couple is marrying after a whirlwind romance or a long-distance love affair. However, most of those couples don’t have to worry about an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent investigating whether or not the marriage is a fraud designed to get around restrictive immigration laws. If a marriage is deemed a sham, the consequences can be serious — it could include deportation, the inability to return to the United States or even incarceration. One of the many things that ICE agents look at when they determine if a marriage is real is whether or not the couple has jointly-held assets and mingled their funds. A prenup may make that difficult to do because it’s essentially designed to keep that from happening

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Same-sex custody interference nets man 3 years in prison

A conservative businessman has been sentenced to three years in jail for helping a woman kidnap her biological child, flee the country and find new living arrangements overseas after she left a same-sex union and converted to a form of evangelical Christianity. Is it a case of “no good deed going unpunished,” as the defendant claims, or a deliberate act based on religious convictions? According to the court, it’s purposeful interference (and conspiracy to do the same) of a same-sex parent’s right to visitation and custody of her child, likely motivated by the man’s anti-gay beliefs. He has been an influential donor to right-wing religious groups in the past. The biological mother was in a same-sex relationship, legalized under civil union laws in Vermont, before she gave birth to the couple’s daughter. The child was conceived using donor sperm through artificial insemination, and the non-biological mother wasn’t listed on the birth certificate as a parent. After the couple split, the biological mother changed religions and became a self-proclaimed “ex gay.” She was represented in her efforts to deny the other mother’s visitation rights by Liberty Counsel, a law firm that often takes up anti-gay custody cases. This is a case they continuously lost. It eventually became clear that the court was about to strip the biological mother of primary custody and give it to the child’s other mother instead. That is not uncommon in custody cases where one parent refuses to follow the court’s orders and play by the rules.

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Get an attorney’s help to prove your ex-spouse is cohabitating

In Massachusetts, alimony can be suspended or terminated based on the fact that an ex-spouse has been cohabitating with someone else in a common household for three months or longer. But what if your ex won’t cop to the cohabitation? How do you tell if cohabitation is really happening or the whole thing is just your suspicions playing on coincidences? There are some usual tell-tale signs: — Your ex-spouse’s new partner is spending all of his or her nights with your ex. — He or she is parking down the street, around the corner, or trying to hide the car in the garage. — The kids have been told not to mention their new “Uncle” or “Aunt” to you. Most of the actual evidence that you can take into a courtroom isn’t easily obtained without the help of an attorney and, quite possibly, a private investigator. If you’re only paying a modicum of support, and the payments are due for only another year or so, you’ll have to ask yourself if the cost of investigation and litigation is worth the result. However, if you’re paying substantial alimony and it’s due to continue for a long period of time, then you should absolutely seek the help of an attorney to get the proof that you need to obtain a modification. What sort of evidence can an attorney get that can help your modification request? Cell phone records, for example, can often be obtained with the help of an attorney. Even if

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