Navigating Maryland's New Family Law: What You Need to Know

Join family law attorneys Ashley Ward and David Coaxum as they delve into Maryland's transformative family law reforms. Discover how new no-fault divorce options and a comprehensive 16-factor custody framework are changing the legal landscape. Gain insights into how these updates affect your rights, assets, and family dynamics. Whether you're navigating a divorce or advising loved ones, this episode offers essential guidance to stay informed and prepared. Perfect for families, legal professionals, and anyone impacted by these changes, tune in to understand the future of family law in Maryland.

Coaxum, David | Gordon Feinblatt, LLC

Ward, Ashley | Gordon Feinblatt, LLC

Family Law | Gordon Feinblatt, LLC

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Transcript

Intro

Discover how recent reforms in Maryland family law are transforming divorce, custody, and child support processes. Join family law attorneys Ashley Ward and David Coaxum as they unpack these changes, offering insights to help you navigate this evolving landscape with confidence. Let’s jump in.

David Coaxum

Hi everyone. Thanks so much for tuning in. My name is David Coaxum and I am an attorney here with Gordon Feinblatt and I'm joined today by my partner Ashley Ward. 

Ashley, it's great to see you. 

Ashley Ward

Thank you. Good to see you as well. 

Hello everyone. I am Ashley Ward. I also am an attorney in the family law department and I'm really excited to discuss today the latest changes in family law.

David Coaxum

Well, let's dive right into it. 

Ashley Ward

Yeah. 

David Coaxum

Talking about the latest changes in family law. Many people are really interested in these discussions. The first point I'd like to touch on and talk about is the concept of no-fault divorce and separation. Can you tell a little bit about how the legislature modified those laws? 

Ashley Ward

Absolutely. So, for years, obviously we've had different types of fault-based divorces. We've also had uncontested divorces. 

However, the most recent change is that we no longer have fault based. So essentially you can file for divorce on the grounds of either a six-month separation, either mutual consent or irreconcilable differences. And all of them do not base in any type of issue of fault. 

Specifically, the big change in terms of the separation aspect of no fault is six months as opposed to one year. Maybe about 20 years ago, it was two years that you had to wait before you get divorced. But now it went to one year and now six months. That's a massive change that allows people to be able to move forward a lot quicker and more efficiently. And it’s really changed the way people are kind of coming at their divorces. 

David Coaxum

So, when you say years ago, you had to wait two years to be separated before you could get a divorce, I guess the concept then was to try to maintain and restore marriages as much as possible.

Not that that's not still a desire, but now the time has been reduced to six months. period. Then for those that don't really know the idea of a fault divorce means that you're getting a divorce based on grounds that caused harm in the marriage, like adultery or cruelty, desertion. And so when you say now we have in Maryland, no fault divorces, do those things even matter? 

Ashley Ward

That's a really big misconception that I see I have to kind of explain to my clients. It does, just in a different like basis. So no, the court's not looking at what causes divorce, the purposes of determining if there's going to be a divorce but certainly becomes relevant in terms of financial or custodial outcomes. 

I’ll give you an example. So, you can no longer file for divorce on the grounds of adultery. Let's say your spouse was having an affair and they use money that was jointly owned to dissipate assets, going on vacations, spending a lot of money, that certainly would affect any type of monetary reward or property distribution. 

Also, most people forget for alimony, there are lot of factors that the judge has to determine or look at to determine if it's going to be granted and how much. And one of them is the cause of the dissolution of the marriage. And that can certainly be a grounds or fault-based ground. 

Also, we're going to get into it probably later example, one of the grounds was cruel and vicious conduct. Again, you can't necessarily use that for purposes of getting divorced, but it actually has become very much a basis for determining custody relationship between the parties and parents. 

So yes, I do try to bring back that assumption that it's still important. It's just kind of in a different window in terms of how you're to be looking at it, but it's just not for the divorce. But what caused the divorce, certainly, or the marriage to break down, certainly is important for the court to know.

David Coaxum

So I guess on some level, the basis for a divorce can no longer be adultery or cruelty, but because the court has to consider a number of different factors when they distribute marital property, these factual premises still matter significantly in how the court might make those decisions, right? 

Ashley Ward

Exactly. Spot on.

David Coaxum

And then you talked about how the court still considers these things when deciding child custody determinations. There's been a big change in the law effective October of 2025 concerning how a court determines what's in the best interest of a child. 

Ashley Ward

Yes. 

David Coaxum

In custody determinations. Can you talk a little bit about that change? 

Ashley Ward

Absolutely. This was a massive change for family law because prior to October 2025, we used case law primarily our kind of bread and butter for best interest factors was two cases Montgomery and Taylor. 

As a family law attorney, I know that other family law attorneys know that.

People who don't do family law a lot were not aware of it. And quite frankly, most self-represented parties were not aware of that. They weren't quite sure what to present to the judge or to the court in order to make a determination of what the best interest was. 

Additionally, and what we even saw a lot of was it was kind of a moving target. Every judge definitely had different discretion on how they would balance those factors out. So sometimes you really weren't even quite sure what factor would really help you or hinder you in trying to reach your custody goals. 

So, by actually codifying them, we actually have now 16 enumerated factors and they're very detailed. But more importantly, not only are there factors that are written down, both attorneys have to present on those factors, but the judge or the magistrate, depending on where you're for, have to actually articulate their findings on the record or in a written opinion to each factor and how they actually reach their goal or reach their decision for the purposes of custody.

David Coaxum

So earlier you mentioned the words or names Montgomery and Taylor and for those that may not know, it's common for lawyers sometimes to refer to a particular case by name if that case was so important that it established a rule that courts in the state of Maryland have to follow in making certain decisions. And two cases were the case of Montgomery versus the social services department and then the other case was Taylor v. Taylor. And so those were two critical cases that established the best interest factors for the court to consider in custody cases. And now those factors have been codified. Are those codification factors very different from how the courts might have made decisions on custody prior to the statutory change? 

Ashley Ward

Not necessarily. Quite frankly, some of them are exactly the same, but they definitely added some ones that we tried to use in the past because a lot of times both of those cases were saying that those were not exhaustive lists. So that would leave attorneys to creating their own factors that they want the court to focus on. Now with the 16 enumerated factors, there are additional factors of the courts looking at one of them being domestic violence and the effect of that on children. 

David Coaxum

On some level, I guess it makes it easier when a custody case is appealed to the appellate court in Maryland for the courts to consider what the trial judge used to make its determination and also creates more of a standardized way of reviewing cases so it doesn't create this kind of hodgepodge of custody cases all over the board. 

Is that the impression that you're getting? 

Ashley Ward

It is and that's one of the reasons why I was so excited to see it be codified because quite frankly, family law is one of the departments kind of that do not go up to appeal as much because most of the decisions are discretionary and it's a hard standard to overcome. 

Having a very clear broken-down factors that are enumerated will allow parties who feel as though the judge did not make the decision properly to actually go before the appellate judge in regards to actively attacking whatever they presented, if they presented anything at all. Certainly, I could see it being a reversible error if judge doesn't actually articulate all the factors when they make their decision. 

David Coaxum

Has this really changed much in the way that you practice day to day as far as advising and representing clients in custody cases?

Ashley Ward

For me, not necessarily, because it seems like I was doing what a lot of attorneys are doing now anyway. 

So, I always took the factors and looked at them. And when I met with my clients and throughout our time together, I would be putting the facts of our case within those factors so that I could be able to present them together. 

The only difference now is I know exactly what the factors are. And so, as a part of our case, we're going to look at the factors and say, OK, you want custody? Let's talk about in detail how you fit these different factors and what we need to work on now so that we can address where possibly you are coming up short. 

And so, it just kind of makes it a little bit easier, honestly, to be able to organize. In terms of our presentation, It's far more clear. We don't have to go world to try and make the judge understand. can literally go, your honor, as you know, enumerate factor number one is this. And you heard this, and this is how that goes to that. 

Now, I was always doing that for my cases, but I think now more attorneys are going to do it, which is going to really help the bench be able to make a decision. 

David Coaxum

Right. And as far as the judges in the state of Maryland, it probably makes it easier for them as well to determine custody cases because now they have a very clear statutory list of factors and it's better for clients as well. So, clients have a clear understanding of what the factors are that the court has to consider. So, as they prepare the case and help their lawyer prepare for the case, they can understand what those factors are and how their particular lives feed into fitting those factors. 

Ashley Ward

Absolutely. It definitely helps. And even after the case is over, I've already had the opportunity to go over each factor and say, the judge said this, these were the facts that we presented, and this is how they came up with that, as opposed to trying to explain it based off of my understanding. No, the judge explains it in detail based off of the presentation that we provide for those factors. 

David Coaxum

So you often have this situation where one parent with a child might have use and possession of the marital home, which means that they're allowed to stay in that home for up to three years after the divorce is granted to allow a minor child to continue to have the consistency of living in the home that the child may have been raised in or grew up in.

 And so, when that use and possession period expires, sometimes one parent might want to keep the home. So, has there been any change in the law to allow for something like that to happen?

Ashley Ward

Yes, there's massive change quite frankly. But now the legislature made it so that mortgage companies lenders have to provide an opportunity for owners to assume the mortgage as opposed to refinance and just kind of explain that. And more specifically, excuse me, it's for conventional mortgages because obviously there are some differences. And more importantly, it applies retroactively. So it's a lot of words, but let me break it down.

So, let's say you purchased a home prior to the divorce with a 3% interest rate. Whether you have children or not, the court's going to have to decide whether or not the house is going to be sold or if you are going to be able to keep the house. Let's say mom says, I want to be able to keep the house. The court will say, okay. The mortgage company only allows for refinancing. To refinance, you're going to have to change the terms of that mortgage. And looking at our economy now and look at some of the mortgage rates, you can go from a 3% to a 4 or 5% and that can really change someone's ability to be able to afford that house, which will essentially lead to a forced sale. 

With assumptions, most of the time you are able to essentially assume the same mortgage you have and you're just taking the other person off of that mortgage. So you keep the same terms. So, it's more likely that you can keep that house because you already were able to afford it before. And so most mortgages or a lot of mortgages, that's not a requirement. Lenders will always have assumptions as an option because it can be dangerous to them, especially if they rely on two people to be responsible for that mortgage. 

But of course, in terms of you already explained is definitely a concern for people in terms of forcing mortgages or forcing homes to be sold, the effect on children and their ability to have some form of stability that would affect on people to be able to have a home. They might have sold that home, but they might not be able to afford a new home now just because of the economy. So, this assumption aspect is allowing parties to be able to keep usually one of the largest assets that they do have.

David Coaxum

That's interesting because when you think of an assumption and not to get too much into the weeds of commercial law, so to speak, but I imagine lenders are not very happy about this statutory change, right? 

Because it means that the legislature is now making an impression and impacting the way lenders might decide to extend a loan to one or two individuals, especially if they're extending a loan to a marital couple at the time when they are married, they're making that determination based on the qualifying factors of a two income family. 

Ashley Ward

Right. 

David Coaxum

And now to be compelled to allow someone to apply to assume the mortgage. That means that only their financial circumstances are going to be considered, which takes away the aspect of looking at the two-income qualifying factor. 

So, have we seen or have you heard of any impact of this statutory change with lenders at all or in practice? 

Ashley Ward

Not quite yet. I know that a lot of lenders have not completely started to follow this, so there's been a little bit of a fight there. But it seems as though primarily because people forget, yes, it's a change, it's a big change, you still have to qualify.

And so a lot of times, because the price can already qualify, it's not necessarily becoming so much of a problem because they're able to be able to afford that mortgage. 

You made an excellent point. I can see in the future there being some changes in the lending practices to protect the lender in regards to assumptions. Asking if you've ever had a divorce before, asking if you've ever had to assume a mortgage, like those questions. I could see them possibly asked, so that would certainly be a factor in determining someone's ability to lend.

David Coaxum

I’ll tell you something else I'm interested to see how this impacts individuals is typically with an assumption, you are assuming the loan at the amount that exists at that time.

Ashley Ward

Right

David Coaxum

Most people have to buy out the other party, right? 

Ashely Ward

Yes

David Coaxum

So, if you're buying out the other person's interest in a home, you will likely need to refinance it, not necessarily assume it. 

Because if you're refinancing it, you can then take money out of the home that might be considered equity. But if you're assuming the loan, you can only take over the existing mortgage at that time without taking money out of the mortgage. 

So, it's interesting to see how that will play out in some of these cases. 

Ashley Ward

What I have seen when people are doing that is they're doing assumptions, but then on top of that, they're getting a home equity line credit. So they're going either through the same company or a separate company and taking a loan out and then only in the amount they need to pay the other person and then they're giving it that way. 

But again, that's an ability to be able to qualify. The new issue now is timing. So I've had cases where in settlement we discussed, maybe I can qualify for the assumption. I can qualify for a HELOC but not in the amount that I owe you. Maybe we can have a payment plan. Well, the law is very clear when they're making rulings on that, it's expected that you have the ability to do it. And so there's going to be a question about how that ends up lending itself to an award of ownership if the party can actually pay the person, their monetary reward based off of them keeping the house. 

David Coaxum

It's something that's going to play out, I'm sure, in the near future. So I look forward to seeing how these changes impact individuals and what they intend or plan to do. 

And so the next thing I want to talk about deals with the child support changes in the law concerning individuals who have children in a different family context where they may have a child with one person and a child with a second person and they have separate child support obligations that they have to comply with. 

It's referenced as the multi-family adjustment in relation to child support obligations. Can you talk about that a little bit? 

Ashley Ward

Sure. Honestly, I was surprised by the change because child support typically doesn’t have that many changes and we had just recently we had like two back-to-back changes. One being where the magic number for joint custody was 120 overnights, now it's 92. And so that changed a lot in terms of awards. But the multifamily adjustment essentially is acknowledging a recognition that traditional child support calculations don't adequately account for the reality of blended families.

So we're talking about people who have, let's say they've gotten married and they have a child, but they also have a child with someone else? And so in that situation, usually child support does not acknowledge a child's living in that home. And so the amount that that parent is responsible for the obligation, they're kind of losing money that's also paid for their other child. So essentially this adjustment, it allows for a credit in the calculation for children who are living in a parent's home. The caveat is they need to be living there for at least more than 92 overnights.

So it has to be a joint schedule. You can't just have a child and get credit for this. You have to show that you're caring for this child half of the time.

And with that, and they're not subject to the actual support that you're dealing with in this case, but they will take 75% of what the basic child support obligation would be for the child based on the parent's income alone.

And so what ends up happening is it reduces the child support obligation because they're trying to ensure that the child is living in your home that you're responsible for at least half of the time still has some form of your income to care for them. 

David Coaxum

So just for clarification, this involves the situation where a parent who is under a obligation to pay child support for a child outside of their home has another child in their own home dynamic. And the court is now going to give that obligor, or the person who's obligated to pay, some credit to recognize the fact that they are raising another child in their own home. 

Ashley Ward

Exactly. Exactly. 

David Coaxum

So when you think about the credit that is given for the obligation to take care of that child in their home. When someone has a child support obligation for another child outside of the current case dynamic, is there a credit that the court gives that person for other child support obligations outside of the current one? 

Ashley Ward

Yeah. So, do you mean like if they're paying child support for another case, do they get credit for what they're paying? 

David Coaxum

Correct. 

Ashley Ward

Yes. And that's been established for quite some time, which I think makes sense because child support is based off of amongst other things the party's grossed income. So if you have a child support obligation you already know that amount that you're obligated to pay is no longer a part of your income so that gets reduced. So what you can see in certain situations is in terms of a child support obligation they'll have you know credit for the amount of overnights they have maybe for health insurance that they're paying but they'll also have credits for having other child support obligations, for having additional children, for having alimony payments that they have to pay to the other parties. There's lots of aspects within a child support obligation that the state's trying to make it as fair as possible and acknowledge parties' obligations outside of just that child. 

David Coaxum

And just for clarification as well, is the credit that's given to the parent who has a child living in their home, is that credit adjusted from their gross income determination, if you know, or is that credit adjusted somewhere else in the calculation? 

Ashley Ward

It's in the gross. My understanding is, yeah. 

David Coaxum

Okay. All right. That's interesting. Wow. Well, these dynamic changes make for some significant modifications in how child support and divorce cases are handled by the court. What would you say is the single most important thing you think people should understand about how these laws have changed?

Ashley Ward

The most important thing I think is to understand what you're presenting in court because you might have an idea of what you think is important, but because of these changes, there had been adjustments to what needs to be presented. And so to understand those changes, you need to be able to know what exactly needs to be presented so the court can actually observe and make rulings based off of what is now important or what's now kind of pertinent to their rulings, which quite frankly, I don't know if you necessarily want to know that these are all very large changes. wasn't necessarily a commercial or some big news breakdown of these. 

We know them in the legal world. So for self-representative litigants, it's definitely a murky world to navigate knowing these drastic changes that occurred. 

David Coaxum

Excellent, excellent. Well, Ashley, thank you so much for going over these changes and discussing them today. I'm sure that there are many listening that have had questions that have been answered today and they may have other questions that have not been answered that are relative to their specific family dynamic. And we certainly welcome those of you who are interested to contact us. If you have any questions whatsoever, you can contact Ashley or you can contact myself. We're happy to help you and very happy to assist you here at Gordon Feinblatt 

Ashley Ward

Absolutely.

Outro

That’s it for today’s episode. Thanks for joining us on the Gordon Feinblatt Podcast. If you enjoyed this discussion, be sure to subscribe, share it with your network and stay tuned for future episodes from our team. For more information about our firm, or to connect with one of our attorneys, please feel free to visit us on our website gfrlaw.com or email us at gordonfeinblatt@gfrlaw.com. As a disclaimer, please note this podcast is intended for informational purposes only and is not legal advice to any person, entity, or firm. The information discussed in this podcast is obtained from a variety of sources. Portions of the content may contain attorney advertising under the rules of some states. Prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome in the future.