Merrillville, Indiana Legal Blog

When you have children, vacation planning can be complicated. You plan your route and mode of travel for minimum stress and look for places to stay that are close to kid-friendly amenities. If you are traveling over the winter holidays, your schedule will include visits with relatives and events on the most special days.

If you and your children's other parent are no longer together, you must consider the terms of your custody order before you set any plans in stone. In fact, it is safe to say that gone are the days of just picking up with the kids and heading out of town for the holidays. However, holiday travel does not have to be stressful. First, you may have to accept that you may not always get your way every year.

During an Indiana divorce, there are certain guidelines the court will use to determine how much child support will be paid to the custodial parent. Various factors are considered in this context and medical support is one of the most important. Children need to be adequately cared for and a foundational part of that is ensuring they receive the proper medical care. For the custodial parent who is receiving support and the non-custodial parent who is paying it, it is useful to understand the health care and medical support in the guidelines.

One or both parents will be ordered to have health care for the child. It must be at a reasonable cost. It can be public, like Medicaid, or provided by the employer. It will be considered accessible if it is available in the geographic area in which the child resides.

There are many aspects of an Indiana divorce and people who are in the middle of such an upheaval are not expected to immediately understand all of them. While some cases are contentious, others are relatively amicable. Many fall somewhere in between. If the couple has certain issues about which they can agree and others that are in dispute, there are ways to have a smooth divorce process that addresses contested and uncontested issues. Understanding what the law says about this is critical to using it effectively and a law firm experienced in family legal cases can help.

Bifurcation in a divorce means that the issues are split. With this process, the parties can have a summary disposition of some parts of the case while there will be a hearing on others. It can expedite the case so a party who wishes to remarry can do so while the case is not yet completed. The summary disposition might sound comparable to a summary dissolution. With a summary dissolution, the sides are not in need of a hearing because they have agreed on all issues. The divorce is relatively straightforward and after the required time-period has passed, the divorce will be granted. A summary disposition does the same with the individual parts of the divorce that have been agreed to. For example, if the parties agree on property division, it can be completed without a hearing.

You may be someone who has become more vocal about what you want in life as you have aged. Now that you are reaching your retirement years, you may feel that the time has come to make some major changes in your life in efforts to live more happily. In particular, you may feel that the time has come to end your marriage.

To some, it may seem like an unnecessary upheaval to go through divorce while also retiring. However, if you are unhappy in your marriage and feel that ending it is for the best, it may not seem unnecessary to you. Certainly, you understand that a lot of changes will occur and that there is a chance for financial upset, but you also know that you can plan ahead.