In early April, I received a phone call from Attorney Brian Wilson, a principal in the Canton personal injury law firm of Nicodemo & Wilson. He and I have teamed up on a few prior projects, and he has contributed to the Oho Family Law Blog in the past. After catching up a bit on the joys of blogging and our respective lives, he asked if I might consider writing an article as a guest blogger on their Bull’s-Eye Blog about how personal injury settlements are treated by divorce courts. Of course, I was only too happy to accommodate Brian. His blog is superb and one that I read several times a week. Check it out by clicking here. The article I wrote was posted on May 3, 2010. Thanks, Brian! Here it is starting with Brian’s introduction:
Occasionally, we have guest bloggers write on topics of interest that cross over into Ohio personal injury issues. Our guest blogger is Robert L. Mues, an outstanding Dayton, Ohio, family law attorney. I found his interesting and informative blog and website while searching the Net for…interesting and informative … Read More... “How Injury Claims Are Treated In Divorce Court”
Alcoholism is defined by Webster’s New World Dictionary as “the habitual drinking of alcoholic liquor, or as a resulting diseased condition”. It is also defined as a chronic and progressive illness characterized by physiological and psychological dependency upon the ingestion of alcohol; a loss of control over drinking, including when, and in what form, how much, and why; and interference with normal functioning in one or all such areas such as family, work, friendship, and community activity.
It’s a misconception that when parents divorce it doesn’t affect adult children. It is important to remember that our children may be adults (and even may have experienced divorce themselves), but they are still children of both parents. In going through divorce, many parents “lean” on their children, making them into confidantes and, sometimes, surrogate spouses. Children, even adult children, are uncomfortable with details of their parents’ personal life. Confiding to a child about a parent’s indiscretions puts the child in a no-win situation. Many of the adult children I have spoken with say that they are shocked and angry by their parents’ behavior. But as the child, they continue to want the relationship. Giving adult children inappropriate information puts them in a quandary – how to have a relationship with a parent who may have behaved terribly in marriage without feeling disloyal to the other parent? Children are entitled to have a relationship with each parent that is not based on that parent’s performance as a spouse.
If you are planning a foreign vacation this summer, you had better plan ahead to determine all the necessary travel documents that you will need. This can be a much more complex issue than one might think. A good place to start is the 
I vividly remember litigating a very contentious divorce case back in the early 1980’s. The Magistrate who heard the dispute still occasionally pokes fun at me about the case! Husband and Wife wanted to argue and fight over the division of a voluminous list of household goods acquired during the marriage, most having little or no value. Since then, when I was a young lawyer, I believe I have now been able to gain some valuable insight on litigation of this nature.
For those of you that read our Ohio Family Law Blog regularly, you are familiar with problems that may arise when your children travel internationally. Specifically, one parent may abduct your child to his or her home country. Another issue may be that you send your child to visit his or her parent in another country and that parent refuses to allow the child to return. If the country that the child is in is a signatory to the Hague Convention, there are mechanisms that may assist the parent in obtaining the child’s return. This process, however, can be costly, time consuming, and produce uncertain results. So you ask, what steps can you take to protect your child from ever being placed in that position?
Throughout life, we sometimes encounter difficult people. We may argue with them, fall silent, comply or take distance. In a divorce, particularly an acrimonious one, difficult behaviors abound. No one is on their best behavior under this amount of stress. Figuring out how to cope with difficult behavior is a bit easier once you can identify why a person behaves in a certain way and what he/she hopes to accomplish. Here is a list of the most common behaviors that frustrate us all and suggestions for dealing with them: