Our guest contributor this week is Judianne Cochran a nationally recognized expert/consultant in the following disciplines: sex offender profiling; false allegations in custody cases; interstate and international parental abduction; interstate custody and parental alienation. She has testified in numerous Courts throughout Ohio and the country. Judi presently resides in Columbus, Ohio.
In recent years there has been a steady and alarming increase in the use of false allegations of vague, unsupported claims of domestic violence and even vaguer claims of child abuse, used solely in an attempt to find a shortcut to a presumed better position in custody cases. What is more alarming is the observation that more often than not the attorneys of record for the litigants making these claims have been those unschooled in and relatively new to the family law arena, who have chosen to step outside their actual specialty and add a minor “division” of family law to their practices. Often, a new, young, unskilled associate is added to the practice to handle these family law issues.
Some of these practitioners use this mechanism so frequently that simply hearing the name of the … Read More... “Custody Wars: My Lawyer Suggested that I Fabricate a Child Abuse Allegation!”
Would my kids be better off if I got a divorce” is one of the toughest questions I have been asked in therapy. I try to help parents work through this complicated question. The answer has lifelong implications for the entire family.
Here is an update about our client, Kent Swaim, whose two sons were abducted to Japan by their mother, published in the DDN on September 8, 2010.
On October 24, 2009, our Ohio Family Law Blog published an article entitled, 
Over the past month or so, I have come across some interesting items related to post-divorce parties, celebrations and gifts. In my opinion, some of them are respectable, others are pretty far out there, and a few are bizarre or just sort of crass. Different strokes for different folks, I guess. Nonetheless, I will share some with our readers.
I am pleased that Donna Ferber, a psychotherapist and a frequent contributor to the Ohio Family Law Blog has agreed to co-author this article with me! Our goal is to present both the legal and emotional perspectives of a trend that we are seeing in our professional practices: long term marriages ending by divorce when the wife has come to the conclusion that she has just “had enough” and that the husband is seemingly caught “blindsided” by the situation. The intent of the article is not a male versus female point and counterpoint, but rather a collaborative discourse that can provide insight into the complexity of the issues.
The lazy, hazy days of summer will soon be gone, only to be replaced with the frenetic days of a new school year. Despite the grumblings from your children about returning to school, most children are actually ready to resume the routine that school brings. The beginning of the school year is exciting. Your child will be happy to see friends and to meet their teachers, but it can also be a time of uncertainty and worry. They might be concerned about how they will do this year in school, if their friends are in their classes, or if they will like their teachers. It can be especially difficult for those students attending a brand new school, or those who are transitioning from elementary to middle school, or middle to high school.