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Domestic Violence During COVID

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Domestic Violence During COVID             What is “domestic violence”?  It is the willful intimidation, physical assault, battery, sexual assault, and/or abusive behavior perpetrated by an intimate partner against another.  Violence against women is often accompanied by emotionally abusive and controlling behavior, and this is part of a systematic pattern of dominance and control.   Domestic violence results in physical injury, psychological trauma and sometimes death.  National Coalition Against Domestic Violence (NCADV). Restrictions aimed at stopping the coronavirus from spreading may be the very thing that is causing violence in homes to increase and become more severe.  Historically domestic violence goes up whenever families spend more time together, we have seen these trends at Christmas, summer vacations or school breaks.   Currently 1 in 3 women and 1 in 4 men experience physical violence by an intimate partner nationwide.  ( The national intimate partner and sexual
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Stimulus Check and Child Support

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Stimulus Check and Child Support I have been getting a lot of questions about the stimulus check and how it is being handled for families with a child support arrearage.  You have seen on the news reports that a person will not get their stimulus check if they have a past due balance for child support.  That is not exactly true.  A person will in fact get their stimulus check, it is simply that it may not be delivered directly to them.  I spoke with an attorney with the child support division and learned that it appears they are going to handle stimulus checks like they do tax intercepts.  What does all that mean?  The stimulus check instead of going to the person who is behind in their support, it will go to the child support office handling their child support case.  Once the check arrives at the child support office, a notice will be sent out to that parent informing them that their check has been intercepted and is being held by the child support division.  They will have a c
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Estate Planning during COVID -19

     Estate planning is probably on most of our minds right now.  As we face these unprecedented times with daily announcements about the status of the Coronavirus, it begs the question are my affairs in order?  The biggest misconception among many is that because you don’t have a huge amount of assets, you think you do not need an estate plan.  Nothing could be farther from the truth.  Everyone has an estate.  The purpose of an estate plan is to give you the control of how that estate is going to be handled instead of letting the government decide or some Judge who has never met you and has about 15 minutes on his or her docket to hear the facts and make a decision.  And while the assets of your estate are important, I think an even more critical aspect of estate planning is determining who is going to make decisions for you while you are still alive.  Who is going to make your medical decisions for you when you do not have the capacity to do so?  Do you have a partner, live in frien
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