Physical abuse of children and spouses constitute a sad reality in too many family units. Like other states, Georgia has attempted to combat that reality with statutory protections for certain acts of violence committed among family members. This article discusses the scope of those statutory protec...
In contested actions involving child custody, judges often award temporary relief to the parties, pending final trial, after hearing limited evidence at interlocutory hearings. At final trials in such cases, judges can rely on the evidence from their temporary hearings, but only if they expressly no...
An unfortunate byproduct of court backlogs and burgeoning litigiousness in the modern era is an increasingly long delay between the commencement of a case and its trial. Those delays seem just as prevalent in family matters, including child custody disputes. Yet child custody cases present a unique...
Georgia’s liberal discovery rules apply to parties and nonparties alike and require only that information sought be relevant (or at least reasonably calculated to lead to the discovery of admissible evidence) and nonprivileged.(1) In divorce cases, those liberal rules enable spouses to seek sensitiv...
Practitioners in the area of family law frequently represent ex-spouses and parents in proceedings claiming contempt of a prior divorce decree or child custody order. Typically, those proceedings commence with the filing of a “petition” in an action assigned its own new case number. The petitioner’s...