Divorce at the click of a mouse – it may be coming soon to Brazil, according to an AP article published in the San Diego Union Tribune.  Brazil’s Senate recently approved legislation allowing online divorces under certain circumstances, and the bill awaits a vote from the House of Representatives.  If the bill becomes law, not everyone would be eligible for quick internet divorces, since it’s meant for those with less complicated and consensual divorces.  The idea has not come to California yet, but if it did, how well would it work?

As part of Brazil’s online divorce, you’d be able to divide assets.  While this seems like it should be simple enough, many of the most difficult issues in a divorce come up when figuring out who gets what.  For example, under California law, do you know what happens if one spouse started a business before getting married (making it separate property), and continued working in the business during the marriage?  Continue Reading

As we all know, it’s still a buyers market here in California, and you and your partner may be thinking about pooling your resources and buying a home together.  This can be a great investment, but it can also turn out to be a costly mistake if you don’t take the right steps.  Consider the story of a woman and her boyfriend who bought a townhouse together, as told in a Christian Science Monitor article by Marilyn Gardner.  She had contributed a smaller portion of the down payment, and had been paying part of the mortgage, but the home was titled in her boyfriend’s name only.  When they broke up, he kept the home and the equity, and she lost all the money she had put in.  Continue Reading

Abraham Lincoln once said, “A house divided against itself cannot stand,” but in lands far away from California, two men in Germany and Cambodia have proven otherwise. In 2007, a German man divorcing his wife took a chainsaw to his wooden house, splitting it in two and then transported his newly redesigned home to his brother’s property. The following year, it happened again. This time the setting was Cambodia, where a man similarly decided that the court system’s idea of property division just wasn’t for him. Instead, he sawed his home in half before moving it to his parents’ property. Continue Reading

If you’re thinking about how to handle your California divorce and protect your assets, you may want to take into account the divorce of millionaire H. Beatty Chadwick. He’s never been charged with a crime, but since 1995 he’s been jailed for civil contempt after $2.5 million didn’t turn up during his divorce proceedings. When will he get out? Possibly not until he produces the money. While his wife believes he hid the money in offshore bank accounts, Chadwick maintains he lost the money in a failed overseas investment.  It’s important to protect your financial interests, but hiding assets or hiding money behind fraudulent business transactions is never the answer. Continue Reading