Fredericksburg VA Family Law Blog

Child support disagreements are hard and usually need the intervention of the court system to help settle the dispute. This was the case for supermodel Linda Evangelista and the father of her son, Francois-Henri Pinault, who were in court this week trying to figure out an agreement on child support.

This case has been in the media because Evangelista, 46, requested approximately $46,000 a month for child support for their son. To the rest of the world, this sum seemed extreme, but when you are a celebrity figure, the amount may be justified.

Many people who may be contemplating divorce may not realize that there are different types of divorce and depending on your situation; there may be an easier way to go through the process. While divorce may be common, how you proceed can vary widely.

There are four types of divorce processes, with three of them most recommended by attorneys. The first type of divorce is the do-it-yourself divorce. While it may sound like the way to go, most experts believe that you should not go this route. Divorce is a legal process and you could hurt yourself in the long run by not understanding what you could be giving up.

The divorce rate in the United States is approximately 50 percent, but those serving in the military may experience a higher divorce rate because of time apart and the stress that comes from serving our country. With the increase in divorces, comes an increase in child custody issues. For those service members going through a divorce, they understand that they are going into this battle with their choice of career against them. But this may change because it was announced last week that the House Armed Services Committee is trying to garner support from the Pentagon that would strengthen service members' rights in child custody disputes.

The committee is asking for support of the Family Protection Act, which would prevent family court judges from ruling against service members in child custody cases based only on their past or future deployments. When you are in the military you don't have a lot of say in where you will be deployed and advocates for this legislation feel that this shouldn't be counted negatively against a service member. Deployments are unavoidable with some service members and the committee believes that a service member should not be judged on this when awarding primary custody of their children.

Couples who can't wait to be divorced from their spouse sometimes don't think about how they will have to continue to communicate with their ex-spouse even after the divorce because of the children. When the divorce is final, that is the end of the marriage, but these couples need to find a way to communicate and work through challenges until their children are grown.