3 tips to protect yourself financially in a divorce

David M. Gabriel & Associates

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

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

David M. Gabriel & Associates

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

Gray divorces: Why they happen and how to avoid them

David M. Gabriel & Associates

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

Immigrants tying the knot after signing a prenup

David M. Gabriel & Associates

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

Same-sex custody interference nets man 3 years in prison

David M. Gabriel & Associates

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.

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

David M. Gabriel & Associates

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

Rape victims can be forced into family court to defend custody

David M. Gabriel & Associates

It seems like something that should be impossible, but it isn’t: A woman is raped and conceives a child during the rape. The rapist is convicted of the crime and the woman, whose religion prohibits abortion, gives birth to the child — then has to fight her rapist for custody of the child. This is the reality that is facing at least one woman in Massachusetts. While this victim has gone public with her plight, there are likely countless others quietly facing the same trauma in the state’s family courts. While research is limited, studies indicate that more than 70 percent of rape victims who conceive eventually choose to give birth rather than abort the pregnancy. Laws regarding rape victims who become pregnant during the assault vary widely from state to state. Some offer no protection to victims at all, while a few outright bar a convicted rapist from custody. Many states, like Massachusetts, fall somewhere in between. The current law in Massachusetts was passed in 2014, and it appears to give women more protection than some other states — however, it isn’t without its critics because it actually provides rapists a clear forum that they can use to continue to harass and traumatize their victim. The law allows a rapist to seek visitation and requires the judge to make a determination on the issue. The judge has to consider whether or not the child is of suitable age to have visitation, agree to the visitation, or visitation is in

Large donation leads to accusations of property division fraud

David M. Gabriel & Associates

Hidden assets are a major concern for divorce lawyers. Not only are they illegal, they can end up causing major headaches down the road. That’s exactly what lies behind the troubles facing the Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Massachusetts. The Institute was gifted a total of $63 million over the years by it’s largest benefactor — which certainly has earned him some significant accolades that he must value far more than the money. Unfortunately, it seems like a portion of those funds were part of the marital assets that he actively hid from his wife at the time of their divorce. Now, she would like her portion paid back — which could put the Institute in a crunch if it has already spent or allocated the money to one of its programs. It will also likely tarnish the reputation of its benefactor permanently, despite the size of his donations. The Institute’s benefactor and his wife of 50 years divorced in 2010. During the process, the benefactor stated that he did not have any offshore accounts — conveniently forgetting about a tidy $4.5 million tucked away in a Swiss Account. That $4.5 million became part of a larger donation — $40 million — transferred to the Institute in 2014. The Institute’s benefactor may have thought that he was safe from his ex-wife’s scrutiny by then, or that the money would be able to transfer undetected, but that clearly wasn’t the case. Perhaps he thought that it was simply too late, now that

3 tips to protect yourself financially in a divorce

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

Gray divorces: Why they happen and how to avoid them

Immigrants tying the knot after signing a prenup

Same-sex custody interference nets man 3 years in prison

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

Rape victims can be forced into family court to defend custody

Large donation leads to accusations of property division fraud

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