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Family Law Blog

Healthy Family Treats for Halloween

There are few kids out there that don’t enjoy the occasional indulgence in candy and other sugary treats, and Halloween seems the perfect time to allow them to satisfy their sweet tooth. However, while Halloween is a great time to experience as a family, making costumes, carving pumpkins, and Trick-or-Treating, you don’t always have to let your children’s health go by the wayside. In fact, it can be a great opportunity to instill even more healthy habits in your kid and encourage them to make good eating and snacking choices while being offered less-healthy options.

Now, this doesn’t mean you have to be the family on the block that only offers chopped veggies to wandering ghosts, goblins, and witches. Nor do you have to absolutely ban any and all candy from the household. Instead, it can simply mean being more aware of how much candy is being consumed and talking to your kids frankly about the long-term consequences of such. As we’ve noted before, kids enjoy learning and being given the chance to make their own informed decisions. The same applies to consuming candy on Halloween! Here are some ways to address the sugar dilemma while keeping the kids happy:  Continue Reading

Keep Family Memories Alive with a Photo Album

Memory can be a tricky thing. Sometimes people who experience the same event together—such as, say, a birthday party or family vacation—can remember wildly different things about it in the aftermath. But thanks to digital photography and online storage, it’s become easier than ever to record significant events in your family’s development. Births. Weddings. Graduations. Promotions. All times you’ll want to be able to look back on with proper recall years down the road.
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How Does Your Family Celebrate Labor Day?

The three-day weekend of Labor Day is one where families often have mini-vacations, hold barbecues in the back yard, or otherwise relax. Some kids who have just started school enjoy their first Monday holiday, while parents can appreciate a day free from work responsibilities.

Beyond just having an extra day to laze around and enjoy good food, though, have you considered taking the Labor Day celebration a bit further with your family? After all, the holiday was established to highlight the contributions of workers in society. This can apply to families, just as much as it does to the professional arena.

How so?

Consider this: How hard does your family work to stick together, even during tough times? As a parent, you may be working hard at your job to provide enough to make ends meet. Kids may be working hard in school in order to keep their grades up. Or maybe they’re even old enough to have started holding down jobs themselves!
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Help Your Kids Develop Positive Friendships—Now and Forever

Did you know that the first Sunday in August is International Friendship Day? Forming friendships is an invaluable part of a child’s development and can play a vital role in their evolving self-esteem and personal identity from their earliest years into adulthood. Friendships not only help them learn valuable social skills, but it also lays the foundation for trust, environmental awareness, empathy, and being willing to explore beyond the safety of the family unit.

Some children have no difficulty in establishing new friendships wherever they go, while others struggle to make such positive connections. Sometimes this is simply because of a lack of experience, while shyness can also pose a personal obstacle to bridging the gap between them and other children.
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Your Family & Fireworks: The Beautiful, the Dazzling… the Dangerous?

July is upon us, with its heat waves and barbecues and, of course, the Fourth of July! Independence Day is that great mid-summer escape opportunity, inspiring trips to the water park, family picnics, the devouring of many helpless watermelons, and to top it all off—the fireworks shows.

Now, thanks to many of the dry conditions and laws in effect, most areas have a personal fireworks ban in place. So if you and your family want to enjoy fireworks this year, your best bet is one of the many fireworks shows in the area.

A few of the main displays include Big Bay Boom, San Diego SeaWorld’s Into the Blue show, and the Red, White, and BOOM!
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Modifying Your Estate Plan During a Divorce

Divorce can be a complicated and frustrating process. Modifying your estate plan while going through a divorce can complicate things even further, especially if your estate plan is not up to date. It is important to ensure your estate plan is up to date when you are divorcing, because your spouse could inherit under your will or life insurance policy, should you pass away while your divorce is pending and fail to remove your ex-spouse as a beneficiary.

There are certain rules in California that make it tricky to modify your estate plan while going through a divorce. First and foremost, when you start your divorce by filing the dissolution petition and serving your spouse with a summons, an Automatic Temporary Restraining Orders, or “ATROS,” goes into effect. The ATROS automatically impose four rules – by way of California Family Code Section 2040 – that limit a spouse’s ability to change his or her estate plan. Continue Reading