Watch SMDA associate Sean Serafini’s April 9, 2026 argument before the Michigan Supreme Court in Frownfelter v Esurance Property & Casualty Co., et. al.

This case involves a minor child of divorced parents who was involved in an auto accident while she was a passenger in a car driven by her brother. Since her brother lived with her father, and the father owned the car, suit for her injuries had to be filed against her father. Additionally, suit was filed against both her mother’s and father’s respective no-fault insurers after they refused to pay for the child’s medical treatment and essentially just pointed the finger at each other.

There were two primary questions in this case. First, whether the minor child would get no-fault PIP benefits from her mother’s auto insurance or her father’s auto insurance. This question turned on where the child was considered “domiciled”.

The second issue was whether the minor child, who indisputably primarily lived with her mother, would be subject to a coverage reduction provision in her father’s policy of auto insurance, that would leave her father with only $20,000.00 of liability coverage instead of the $250,000.00 of coverage that he had purchased. This determination turned on the definition of “resident” in the policy of insurance that Esurance had written and issued to the father. Accordingly, this finding would also determine the amount the minor child, who suffered serious injuries to her spine, would be able to recover under the insurance policy.

Both the trial court and Court of Appeals held that the minor child’s domicile was with her father, because she had spent the night before the collision at her father’s house. Similarly, the Court of Appeals upheld the trial court’s ruling that the child was a “resident” of her father’s house, such that the coverage reduction provision applied. SMDA appealed this decision to the Michigan Supreme Court, which agreed to hear oral argument on the matter.

On April 9, 2026, Mr. Serafini argued for reversal of the lower court decisions before the Supreme Court. Regarding the first issue, Mr. Serafini argued that although the lower courts had incorrectly applied the existing test used to determine the domicile of a minor child of divorced parents, the Supreme Court should re-write the rule complete, as it had led to numerous conflicting Court of Appeals opinions in the previous few years. Amicus briefing in support of this position was submitted by the Family Law Section of the State Bar of Michigan and the Michigan Association for Justice.

On the second issue, Mr. Serafini argued that Esurance should be forced to provide the $250,000.00 that the child’s father had bought and paid for. Though Esurance failed to define the term “resident” in the policy, Esurance argued that the term should be given the broadest meaning possible, such that the child would be considered a resident of her father’s household, when she did not live there and only visited about one weekend per month.

Mr. Serafini asserted that Esurance, with a team of coverage attorneys and underwriters, had no excuse for not defining the term “resident” if they truly intended to expand the term resident to include a person who spends a couple of nights per month at another family member’s house. However, since Esurance did not define the term, it was ambiguous, or subject to multiple meanings, as a matter of law. Mr. Serafini argued that because the Supreme Court has long held that any ambiguity in an insurance contract must be construed against the drafter of that contract, which was Esurance, and because the Court has repeatedly stated that insurance contracts should be construed in favor of providing coverage, the child’s father should get what he thought he was paying for: $250,000.00 of liability coverage.

The Michigan Supreme Court is expected to issue either a written order or opinion detailing its decision within the next few months.

Click here to read more about Attorney Sean Serafini.

• Disability Insurance Claims
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  • Asset Protection & Nursing Home Planning
• Estate Planning
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If your parents are at the age when illnesses and medical conditions are a concern, you will have worries about the costs of long-term care. One of the biggest problems confronting senior citizens today is the extraordinary cost of this care. Such costs can exceed one’s entire lifetime savings. When proceeds come to an end, the only option may be to apply for Medicaid.

However, while Medicaid does pay the costs of long-term care, eligibility is complex. One of the eligibility requirements is that the amount of assets your parents can own individually and jointly is extremely limited.

“Look-back” period

There are a variety of ways to protect your parents’ assets without jeopardizing Medicaid eligibility. However, it requires significant planning to accomplish this goal. And it’s not something you will want to do yourself. When your parents apply for Medicaid, the Deficit Reduction Act of 2005 grants Medicaid personnel the authority to minutely scrutinize all of your parents’ financial or financially related documents. These personnel can look back five years to scrutinize property transfers or other financial transactions that may indicate an attempt to reduce the amount of assets to qualify for Medicaid benefits. Suspicious transactions could result in denial of your parents’ application.

Irrevocable trust

Your best strategy is to encourage your parents to start planning now. While many planning tools exist, one of the best is an irrevocable trust. The moment your parents place chosen assets in an irrevocable trust, they no longer own them personally. The trust owns them instead. While no longer owning the assets, they can in the right circumstances receive income from any income-producing assets within the trust.

Creation of an irrevocable trust is an extremely serious decision on your parents’ part. As its name implies, once they transfer their assets into the irrevocable trust, they cannot revoke it or change it. They must rely on the trustee to provide for them in accordance with the trust’s provisions. For this reason, choosing the trustee is a critical decision. Some people designate a trusted adult child as their trustee, and others designate a bank or financial institution. Still others designate their family attorney.

It’s important to strongly encourage your parents to think carefully about Medicaid planning. Everything must be in place at least five years before your parents apply for Medicaid, and five years is not a very long time.

You may be over at a friend’s house when, out of nowhere, an otherwise friendly dog bites you. Over 4.5 million Americans receive dog bites each year, shares the American Veterinary Medical Foundation. While a decent amount are superficial wounds that do not require any medical attention, plenty of people need to go to the emergency room to address the wound.

You are put between a rock and a hard place when a friend’s dog bites you. You want compensation for your injury, but you also do not want to damage the friendship. During this time, the most important thing is your health, and you should take the following steps after suffering a dog bite.

Get medical attention

Either drive yourself to the nearest medical facility or contact an ambulance. You should not apply Mercurochrome, hydrogen peroxide or rubbing alcohol to the wound as this can impede healing. Before you reach the doctor’s office, you should also take pictures of the wound. This will help for insurance purposes.

File a lawsuit

Review your legal options. Filing a lawsuit against a friend may seem extreme. However, you should keep in mind that most of the time, you will not actually sue your friend. In actuality, the lawsuit will go against your friend’s homeowner’s insurance company. This means you receive compensation for your injuries without taking money out of a friend’s pocket.

File a dog bite report

Check with your county to see what forms you need to fill out after a dog bite incident. Many people worry the county will put the dog down. If this is the dog’s first incident, then chances are good the owner will simply need to pay a fine and enroll the dog in training courses. Your friend will also likely need to register the dog with the local animal control department as “potentially dangerous.”

We handle numerous probate and trust administration cases, where siblings do not get along. It is better to work through issues with your siblings, prior to your parents’ passing away, as there is less stress and emotion.

There are several questions to ask your adult siblings, which may help repair and strengthen your relationships.

1.) What can I do to help us grow closer? This question opens the door to issues that you may not know exist. It may give your sibling the ability to finally open up about something that is bother them, and in turn, the ability to work through the issue.

2.) What is the long-term plan for Mom and Dad? Who has the ability to help pay for support? What do your parents want? Is anyone willing to help care for your mom and dad? It is better to discuss these issues while your parents are healthy, so that emotions are more easily contained.

3.) What do our family heirlooms mean to you? There may be certain items that are very important to one family member in the sentimental sense, but that are also a much higher value than most of the other items. This is the perfect time to also discuss these heirlooms with your parents, so that they can list specific gifts in their estate plan (and balance out the value) pursuant to their own wishes as well. This can prevent much stress and sadness, once your parents have passed.

4.) How can I best include your partner in family meals? If you learn about your siblings significant others, it can strengthen your bond.

5.) What do you wish I knew about you now? As each of us has changed over time, so have our siblings. We may still view our siblings as we did as children, but perhaps they have made significant changes in their lives, that they would like us to know about, so that we can better understand them.

The aforementioned questions are a great start for siblings to work on relationships amongst themselves. The next step after discussing sibling relationships, is to sit down with your parents, and ensure that you are all on the same page about long-term care, specific gifts, etc. Our firm would be happy to assist with creating a long-term care plan that is best for your parents, that will also minimize sibling disputes after your parents have passed. To schedule a free consultation, please contact our office at (586) 264-3756.

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There are three main options that you have, when deciding where you are going to live after your divorce:

1.) Stay in the home;

2.) Purchase a new home; or

3.) Rent a new property

Some factors to consider when deciding which option is best for you, are as follows:

1.) Is the location convenient to your work and social communities?

2.) How does this choice meet the needs of your children, now, and in five years?

3.) Does the home’s size and layout suit your new single lifestyle?

4.) What are the tax implications of the required actions?

5.) Have you considered the total costs for each option, including maintenance and utilities?

6.) If you make this choice, what are you giving up in terms of other financial goals?

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Getting divorced at any age creates profound stress and uncertainty. However, this is even more so for older individuals. There are several considerations to help prepare yourself from financial pitfalls.

1.) Create an inventory of all assets, before meeting with your attorney. You should know how each asset is titled (jointly or individually).

2.) Be mindful of past employment and any pension or stock options that you may have.

3.) Be aware of social security benefits. You can collect off of your ex-spouse’s social security benefit, as long as you were married for ten (10) or more years. This is true even if your ex-spouse remarries. In addition, your ex will not be affected if you do collect based on their earnings.

4.) Upon the conclusion of your divorce, check the beneficiary designations and title to all of your assets, and ensure that your ex-spouse has been removed from all of them.

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How to reconcile the valuation of a business, its potential equity distribution, and support obligations.

If you are a business owner, you want to ensure that your spouse is not able to “double dip” in receiving part of the business, and spousal support based upon your income. This would allow your spouse to receive double recovery on one asset.

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The Hawaii Supreme Court is listening to arguments in a significant LGBTQ case, involving legal parenthood. The case involves a lesbian couple, where one of the women sought out a sperm donor and became pregnant while the other woman was deployed in the military. Upon returning from deployment, the non-pregnant spouse filed for divorce. The child was born before the divorce was finalized.

As a general family law principle, when a married woman gives birth to a child, the birth mother and spouse are presumed to be the child’s parents. A presumption that can be rebutted. In this case, the spouse argued that there was no way she could have been the child’s biological parent. The family court denied the spouse the right to sever her parental obligations. The spouse is claiming that the standards of presumed parentage do not apply to same-sex couples; however, to adopt such a view would be at odds with the landmark case of Obergefell v. Hodges, which set precedent that states cannot impose different terms and conditions on marriages between same-sex and opposite-sex couples.

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The new tax overhaul will remove a 75-year-old tax deduction for alimony payments. The new rule will not affect anyone who divorces prior to 2019; however, it will certainly change divorce negotiations.

What’s changing? Currently, the spouse paying alimony can deduct it from their taxes and the spouse receiving the alimony pays taxes on it. The idea is that the payer is generally in a higher tax bracket. Thus, with the alimony deduction, they are paying less tax. The payee is generally in a lower tax bracket, and pays less tax on the income received. The current setup preserves more money amongst the ex-spouses. The new rules will result in alimony recipients receiving 10-15% less than what they would receive under the current law, and more money to be paid in taxes.

For more information on the consequences of the tax changes, contact SMDA, PC at (586) 264-3756.

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Ten ways in which a divorce could affect your credit score:

1.) Having to refinance your home

2.) The splitting of the debt was uneven

3.) Going from two incomes to one

4.) Not disclosing all debt during the proceedings

5.) One party doesn’t pay his or her agreed-upon share

6.) One party still has access to the other party’s accounts

7.) Credit limits are decreased

8.) The divorce turns ugly

9.) There is confusion over the divorce decree

10.) Spouses don’t work together

For more information on how a divorce can affect your credit, contact the attorneys at SMDA, P.C. at (586) 264-3756.

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While the overall divorce rate is decreasing, the divorce rate for people over the age of 50 has increased from 1 in 10 to 1 in 4.

MarketWatch created a checklist to help mitigate the financial risk associated with divorce over age 50. Below is a list of items to consider, prior to filing for divorce:

1.) The family home. Should either party keep the home, can one person alone take care of the costs and potential repairs?

2.) Debts. Get a credit report so that you are both aware of the debts of each spouse.

3.) Lifestyle changes. Both spouses need to be prepared for a scaled back lifestyle. It’s very difficult for individuals to cut back on spending at this stage in their lives, after being accustomed to a certain standard of living for many years.

4.)Health insurance. This could be an issue for a non-working spouse, who will no longer be covered. Affordable health coverage is hard to find.

5.) Tax consequences. Especially with retirement assets.

6.) Social security. The lower earning spouse (if the marriage is 10 years or longer) can opt to receive half of the higher earning spouse’s social security at full retirement age.

7.) Children. Adult children may be unfavorable or hostile, you will want to consider how to help the entire family cope with the divorce.

8.) Caregiving. Who will care for you when you are older? You will need to set aside funds for caregiving expenses.

For more information on divorcing after the age of 50, contact the attorneys at SMDA, P.C.

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Researches have come up with 7 common reasons couples end their marriage.

1.) Infidelity

2.) Substance abuse

3.) Lack of commitment

4.) Too much conflict and arguing

5.) Growing apart

6.) Financial problems

7.) Getting married too young

If any of these issues have affected you, and you are considering filing for divorce. Contact the attorneys at SMDA, P.C. to schedule your free consultation at (586) 264-3756.

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For 2018, the estate tax exemption has increased to $5.6 million per individual, increased from $5.49 million in 2017. Thus, a married couple will be able to shield $11.2 million from federal estate and gift taxes.

The annual gift tax exclusion has finally increased to $15,000, after remaining at $14,000 since 2013.

For more information about the estate and gift tax limits, contact SMDA, P.C. at (586) 264-3756.

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A canadian couple was able to agree on the majority of their divorce terms; however, they had to have a judge decide who would get their Edmonton Oilers season tickets. Beverly and Donald McLeod separated in 2015, with Donald agreeing to pay Beverly $15,000 per month in spousal support. However, the couple needed a court order to determine what to do with the hockey tickets that the couple had shared for the past 11 years.

Generally, it is in your best interest to sit down with your spouse and try to come to a resolution of all outstanding issues. If you are both involved in the property division process, there is more flexibility and satisfaction with the outcome, as opposed to having a judge make a decision where both parties feel like they “lost.”

For more information on handling property division, contact our office for a free consultation.

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The headline serves as a reminder that there are serious consequences for failing to abide by a court order. If you fear for your safety, or want to leave the state with your child(ren), you need to follow the proper steps. Most of the time, that would require filing a motion and having the judge grant an order allowing a move or change in custody/parenting time.

For more information on removing your child from the State, contact our office for a free consultation.

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Currently, spousal support is tax deductible for the payer, and taxable for the payee. However, a proposed change in the tax reform bill would eliminate the tax deduction for spousal support and make alimony income tax-free to the recipient for divorce judgments that are executed after December 31, 2017.

Currently, in most cases, the spouse paying alimony is in a considerably higher tax bracket than the spouse receiving the support. The difference between the tax brackets provides a benefit to the spouse paying the alimony and a benefit to the one receiving it. The difference in tax rates has been a large factor in negotiating settlements, especially to the party that will be paying support.

If the provision goes into effect, negotiating spousal support will certainly change.

For more information on spousal support, contact our office at (586) 264-3756.

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If you have a family business, you will want to have a plan in the event of death or divorce of any of the partners. Not only will you need to plan – but you will need to plan early. Valuing businesses and determining which percentage will be awarded to the non-owner spouse in a divorce is very costly and time consuming.

There are several “tools” that business owners can use to avoid common problems:

1.) Prenuptial Agreement. The single most effective tool is to deal with the issue while a couple is on good terms. In a best case scenario, the non-owner spouse will waive any interest in the business. When negotiating a pre-nuptial agreement, it is essential that both parties have counsel of their own, and that there is full disclosure by both parties.

2.) Spousal Waivers. Another effective tool, is to have your spouse sign a waiver that he/she will waive any ownership in a company.

3.) Buy-Sell Agreement. A buy-sell agreement typically contains a plan to purchase an owner’s share in the event of death or divorce. Another benefit of a buy-sell agreement, is that it will generally include a mechanism for valuing the company, if a non-owner spouse is entitled to a certain percentage.

For more information on the intersection of businesses and divorce, contact our office at (586) 264-3756.

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