Cobb County Divorce Law Blog

Apparently, some people will do just about anything to avoid paying child support, including adopting radical anti-government ideology that they say exempts them from the requirement to do so.

In what Mark Potok, director of the Southern Poverty Law Center's Intelligence Project, calls "a new trend," a growing group of both bona-fide radical-right extremists and opportunists merely seeking a vehicle to help them avoid paying taxes, child support and other debts are forming a tenuous but burgeoning alliance. The former group has genuine and deep-seated antipathy toward government policies and what its members regard as unwarranted intrusion on their personal freedoms. Potok describes the latter as "dabblers" willing to pay lip service to what is called the" sovereign citizens" movement as nothing more than an expedient to relieve them of lawful payment obligations.

Divorce experts and experienced family law attorneys know that the divorce process can be radically varied for different couples; that is, it seldom unfolds in a cookie-cutter manner. There are numerous reasons why couples divorce, ranging from incompatibility considerations and financial concerns to child-related issues and other matters.

In contemporary society, too, and for just as many reasons, many couples who might otherwise consider divorce are staying married. The term in coinage among some divorce commentators is the "un-divorced," and it signifies a growing trend of couples who, facially, might seem better off divorced yet are remaining married.

Georgia law provides for uncontested, no-fault divorces. Until recently, so did every other state in the country, except for one.

New York has now joined the fold, and most divorce experts say that it is about time. "There is a human cost and a financial one," says Robert Ross, a New York judge, in referencing a requirement to find fault as a prerequisite to obtaining a divorce. Ross says that a "grounds" trial during which a divorcing couple had to prove fault was "not a good thing."

According to some family law experts, the "Greatest Generation" has been replaced by the "greatest divorcing generation" as baby boomers are contributing mightily to the country's divorce rate.

Commonplace divorce concerns, such as child support, custody and visitation, do not figure so prominently into many boomer divorces. Many couples in the "gray divorce" phenomenon are past the child-rearing stage, have accumulated property and wealth, and have simply grown apart. Divorce settlements for them are increasingly about settling financial affairs, equitable property division and, fundamentally, moving on to find a deeper meaning and purpose in life.

Georgia wants non-custodial parents - typically fathers - who are court ordered to pay child support to do just that. To increase the likelihood, it has instituted the Georgia Fatherhood Program ("GFP"), an initiative operating under the Georgia Department of Human Services Division of Child Support Services.

The program is the largest of its kind in the United States. It works only with non-custodial parents who are under judicial order to make child support payments and are either not doing so or are having difficulty in staying timely.

The division of marital property in a divorce proceeding can be of significant, if not overriding, importance. In many ending marriages, there is much to consider, including the family home, alimony obligations, pension and retirement accounts, investments of various types, as well as tax consequences that are often at play.

Many divorcing couples, though, fail to take these matters sufficiently into account, choosing instead - and for various reasons, divorce being a deeply personal matter - to focus on the most straightforward and immediate concerns confronting them. During divorce, many spouses are emotional, impatient, preoccupied and stressed. Often, they simply want to agree on points quickly, sign the relevant papers and move on.

That failure to think carefully and long term can hurt materially in the future. What happens in divorce really matters in upcoming decades. Many family law attorneys and financial planners, such as Van Sievers in Montgomery, Alabama, counsel clients to focus sharply on what will matter later.