Minneapolis Family Law Blog

As an equitable distribution state, Minnesota enforces a division of assets that is "fair" given the circumstances of the marriage, and subsequent divorce, of two people. What is important to note about equitable distribution and the "fair" division of assets is that this doesn't mean that the assets will be divided equally. There is no guarantee that one spouse will get "50 percent" and the other spouse gets the other "50 percent." It could happen, but it is far more likely that the division of property will not be "equal." Instead, the division will adequately and fairly reflect the circumstances of the marriage and divorce.

Given this type of property division, it is very important for couples who are going through a divorce to be prepared to negotiate and talk about property division before their case gets to court. This is because a judge may not rule in a way that either spouse anticipates, leaving them with less than what they wanted in terms of property and assets.

Life comes at you very fast. One day you are married with a child, and the next your divorce is finalized and a joint custody agreement is in place. Given how life works, there is no way that anyone could predict the future. We don't know what tomorrow will bring. So when you agree to a child custody arrangement, it isn't as if the arrangement will stay in place unchanged for years and years. Life will happen, and the agreement will need to be updated and altered frequently.

Say, for example, a parent gets a new job in a new state. Or what if a medical emergency forces a parent to move far away from the city they -- and their child and ex-spouse -- live in? These situations require the spouses involved to be considerate of each other and to address the issue in a timely and effective way.

Although we most commonly think of adoption as the process of adopting a child through an agency, adoption comes in many different forms. A stepparent may adopt his or her spouse’s child. Grandparents may end up adopting their grandchild. Someone may make an agreement with a family they know to adopt a newborn child. There are many categories of people who may be looking to adopt a child in order to grow their family.

The Minnesota Department of Human Resources website provides some basic knowledge about the adoption process of “waiting children.” These children are infants whose parents made an adoptive plan, children who are under state guardianship and children that are waiting to be adopted from outside of our country. Children who are under state guardianship may have special needs because a court may have terminated their birth parents’ rights.

Last week we wrote a post about alimony and some modifications that are coming to the state of Minnesota. A couple of weeks before that, we talked about taxes and divorce. Today, we're going to talk about both topics and how they are related.

When alimony (or spousal maintenance) is involved in your post-divorce life, it is important to keep detailed records of all the alimony payments. Whether you are the paying spouse or the receiving spouse, the details of these transactions are vital. You want to log every critical piece of information about the payment: