Michigan Lawyer Blog

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.