Year: 2019

Under Washington law, debts or assets acquired during the course of a marriage are generally deemed community property that is subject to equal division upon divorce. Property acquired prior to marriage is usually exempt from that division. However, Washington...

Washington has replaced the terms “custody” and “visitation” with a single concept: parenting time. When divorcing spouses have children between them, there must be a parenting plan in place, defining with whom the children will live and how each parent will share in...

Washington is a “community property” state, which means that assets and debt acquired during the marriage are, in general, divided equally upon divorce. But there is not always a 50/50 split, because the court looks at the spouses’ financial and familial situation as...

If you are planning to divorce in 2019, the new federal income tax law that took effect with the 2018 tax year includes some changes that could change the course of financial negotiations. Since 1942, alimony, called maintenance in Washington state, had been...

A recent Bank of America survey shows that 28 percent of married millennials keep their finances separate, compared with 11 percent of Gen Xers and 13 percent of baby boomers. Why the dramatic increase? Perhaps millennials were sobered by living through the hardships...

You may have read about lengthy, adversarial and expensive legal fights in the tabloids or seen them reported on TV. However, the recent divorce of actors Jennifer Garner and Ben Affleck is an example of how high-profile couples can resolve their differences over...

Settling what was perhaps Washington state’s most famous divorce, MacKenzie Bezos received 4 percent of Amazon’s stock, worth approximately $36.8 billion, from company founder Jeff Bezos. No alimony was awarded and clearly there was no need for it. She is now the...

Have you and your spouse decided to end your marriage but are uncertain about what to do next? Are you worried about the cost in money, time and emotional turmoil of a trial or other lengthy legal process? You do have options, which you should discuss with a...