UPDATES IN MICHIGAN FAMILY LAW

Can a Former Spouse Keep Life Insurance Proceeds She's Waived if Former Husband Forgets to Change Beneficiary on the Policy?

In Sweebe v Sweebe, Michigan Supreme Court Docket No. 126913, decided on April 26, 2006, the Michigan Supreme Court held that a former wife who had waived her right to life insurance proceeds could not retain those proceeds that had been delivered to her by the Plan Administrator of an employer-provided life insurance policy when the former husband had failed to change the name of the beneficiary prior to his death. To read the entire decision, click here.

To contact Jeanne Hannah with your questions or to view her Family Law website, click here.

Resources for Divorced and Divorcing Parents: Family Connex

Family Connex is an online resource for divorced and divorcing families developed by the National Family Resiliency Center (formerly Children of Separation and Divorce Center). The focus is completely child-centered.

NFRC has its headquarters in Columbia, Maryland. The Center guides and supports children throughout the difficult and ongoing process of separation and divorce, with the goal that children will survive the divorce process and emerge healthy and hopeful for the future. NFRC conducts support groups for children and young adults. The groups last from nine weeks for 6 & 7 year olds to 10-12 weeks for older elementary children and young adults. These group sessions are offered twice a year. Most of the sessions are for children only, however, some involve parents and significant others.

Online resources may be very helpful for parents who do not live close enough to NFRC to take advantage of the group sessions. At a cost of $99.99 for individuals and $149.50 for co-parents, parents may access online the Parent Manual for a Parent Plan Workshop – Cooperative Process for Parent Decision-Making.

To me, the strength of the Family Connex Parent Plan Workshop is that it stresses that parents need to stay centered on the idea of resolving their parenting time issues by stepping aside from their interpersonal issues with the other parent and by keying directly on the needs of their children. There are several key focus points for NFRC:

Read more about Family Connex on my website.

Virtual Visitation: A Threat or a Wave of the Future?

Courts around the country have begun to consider and utilize new approaches in "Virtual Visitation." Exercising parent-child contact using the Web capitalizes on the usefulness of creative approaches to visitation when one parent lives far away from his or her child or children. While initially, using the Internet was seen as a partial solution to long-distance parenting, more and more judges are viewing, "virtual visitation" as part of the answer in routine divorces cases.  Some lawyers and parents, however, perceive it as a dangerous opportunity to routinely grant move-away requests by offering a "make-up" of lost parenting time through the Internet.

For more on virtual visitation, see my website at www. traversecityfamilylaw.com

Technorati tags: virtual visitation, relocation motion, removal from state, child custody

Child's Preference in Custody Decisions Revisited

The frequency with which I am asked when a child can choose the parent with whom he or she wishes to live is not singular to me. Ben Stevens, a South Carolina attorney, writes the following in his Blog:

Cohabitation and Real Property Ownership: The Problems with Joint Ownership When the Relationship Fails

Imagine that your live-in relationship goes South and the love of your life leaves. Imagine that the two of you have acquired a house together, and titled it jointly “with full rights of survivorship.” Imagine fifteen or twenty years go by, and you’ve made all of the mortgage, tax, maintenance, insurance, and other payments necessary to acquire the house. The house in which you and your former lover had a small – say $20,000 – interest (one acquired with your money) is now free and clear of a mortgage. Property values have increased and the house is now worth $250,000. Is it yours? Can you leave it to your children? Can you sell it free and clear? The answer to all of those questions if the property is in Michigan is “No.”

In a case of first impression, the Michigan Court of Appeals decided Wengel v Wengel, Docket No. 263657 (February 28, 2006) [For Publication] The specific issue involved is whether the doctrine of adverse possession can be extended to apply to real estate owned as a joint tenant with full rights of survivorship.

I've prepared an extensive article on the topic of joint ownership of real property by cohabitants. To read a pdf copy of this entire article, click here.