Greater Boston/North Shore Family Law Blog

Divorce can be a very stressful process regardless of how well the couple splitting up gets along. Property division and custody agreements can create an incredible amount of tension between any couple, as some Massachusetts residents may have discovered. But how does the family pet fit in? Many people across the country see their pets as members of the family and are unwilling to part with them easily. 

In most states, pets are considered a type of property rather than sentient individuals. However, most owners treat their pets more like children than property. Some pet parents choose to work out a kind of custody arrangement between themselves before going to court. Others are unable to come to a decision, and judges are sometimes required to get creative. 

Many people living in Massachusetts have seen a movie or television show where someone abandons his or her identity and creates a new one, but few have seen it in the real world. A family recently discovered that the man who was once a husband and father to them and who they believed to be dead was, in fact, alive and living under a new name with a new family. After having abandoned his family almost 25 years ago, this man has been ordered to pay $2 million in child support for many of those missing years.

Authorities say that the man obtained the death certificate of another individual who died in 1991, two years before he left his family. He then used the dead man's identity to obtain a death certificate and a driver's license under his name. In 2003, 10 years after leaving his first family, the man was legally presumed dead. 

Marriage and divorce have changed significantly in recent years. This is partially due to how traditional gender roles have changed over time. In Massachusetts and across the country, it is becoming more common for women to be the family breadwinners. This has had an noticeable effect on divorce as well. More and more women are paying alimony and child support to their ex-spouses rather than receiving the payments. 

In 1979, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that spousal support must be gender-neutral. Since then alimony has continued to change. While some states still support the idea of lifelong support payments, or payments that continue at least until the ex-spouse receiving payments remarries, many others have moved away from that approach. However, many people cling to traditional concepts of divorce and alimony.

In Massachusetts and elsewhere, divorces between couples with children can sometimes be more difficult than those between couples without children. This can be especially true if the child is only biologically related to one parent, as is the case for some gay and lesbian couples. In these types of child custody cases, it may be left up to the courts to decide if one or both parents should be awarded custody. 

Recently, courts recognized the parental rights of a woman who's ex-wife had given birth via artificial insemination during their marriage. It was determined that even though the couple separated and eventually divorced only a few months after the child's birth, the woman did have a parental relationship with the child. Since the ruling, both women have shared custody and parenting responsibilities.