Many litigants, particularly in highly contested divorce or custody modification actions, often insist that their case will never settle, and will ultimately need to proceed to a trial. In fact, only a very small portion of such cases which are filed in the...
The Supreme Judicial Court ("SJC") recently held that its holding in Pinti v. Emigrant Mtge Co., 472 Mass. 226, which was decided on July 17, 2015, "applies in any case where the issue was timely and fairly asserted in the trial court or on appeal before July 17,...
The Massachusetts Appeals Court has issued a Rule 1:28 Memorandum and Order in a divorce case entitled Roof v. Abelowitz upholding the validity and enforceability of a prenuptial agreement that the wife signed only one day prior to the wedding. The court considered...
In a highly anticipated decision and the first judicial review of a Consumer Financial Protection Bureau ("CFPB" or the "Bureau") administrative enforcement action, the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled in October 2016 that the...
The United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit has joined the Fifth Circuit in finding that a statutory scheme in which mortgage lenders were required to affirmatively opt-in to receive notice of foreclosures by homeowners' associations violates the lenders'...
Last month, the Commonwealth's highest appellate court considered how legal parenthood is defined in the context of children born to a same-sex couple as a result of artificial insemination. The case, Partanen v. Gallagher, is currently under advisement by the Supreme...
Alimony is the payment of money (i.e., cash) made to, or on behalf of, a former spouse provided that: a. such payment is made pursuant to a written divorce or separation instrument; b. the divorce or separation instrument does not designate the payment as one that is...
The cross-border enforcement of child support has long bedeviled parents and children who seek a delinquent parent's compliance with a court order. Given the many difficulties inherent to the enforcement of court orders in foreign jurisdictions, as well as the heavy...
We've been asked the question "who gets the engagement ring?" by a number of clients whose engagements have been terminated prior to marriage. As so often is the case in family law, the answer to that question is "it depends."The starting point in the legal analysis...
Registering a child support order that was obtained in another state or even in another country is accomplished in Massachusetts by following the procedure outlined in M.G.L. c. 209D. Otherwise known as the Uniform Interstate Family Support Act ("UIFSA"), this...
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