Columbia Family Divorce Law Blog

Please review my previous AVVO Legal Guides on Interstate Custody and the Uniform Child Custody Jurisdiction and Enforcement Act (UCCJEA; in Washington State the statute is RCW 26.26). The UCCJEA provides that when a state in the US has previously entered a child custody determination, that state will continue to exercise jurisdiction until it waives or declines jurisdiction.

In this legal guide, the following topics are covered: independent custody investigations; nonparental custody when the parents are unfit; nonparental custody when the parents are not unfit; the best interests of the child; termination of parental rights; restrictions on visitation by the biological parents; domestic violence; and the definition of “parenting functions.”

There’s little doubt that divorce is far less stigmatized than it once was. In our grandparent’s generation, for instance, many couples likely stayed together for a lifetime not necessarily because they were happy but because they could not live with the embarrassment and judgment that divorce often caused.

A recent article addressed the issue of domestic violence affecting women in the state of Washington. Readers may not realize how common the problem of domestic violence is.

The Huffington Post has published its list of the “best” states for divorce. The state of Washington ranked fifth based on ease of filing and filing fee.

Whenever a Washington couple gets divorced, there are child custody, spousal support and other issues that must be worked out. When a same-sex couple gets divorced, those issues can be even more complicated.

The state of Washington plans to automatically convert thousands of same-sex couples to married status at the end of June 2014 if their domestic partnership had not already been replaced by marriage or if their legal union had already ended. The state had 6,500 domestic partnerships listed in its registry and was expected to send out notices to those couples by mid-March to alert them to the possible change in their marital status.

In a case with implications for same-sex couples in Washington and across the nation, a federal court decided that Utah’s laws that ban same-sex marriage are unconstitutional. Now that same-sex marriage is legal in the state, those same couples can seek a divorce if their relationship doesn’t work out.

Same-sex couples in Washington may have rejoiced when the Supreme Court expanded the rights for same-sex marriage nationwide. However, 35 states still ban marriage between same-sex individuals.

With legal attitudes towards same-sex couples changing rapidly, Washington couples may be surprised to learn that a judge in Mississippi refused to grant a divorce for a couple who had gotten married in California. According to reports, the divorce request was denied because Mississippi state law does not recognize same-sex marriage.