Attorneys Dedicated to Family Law
Welcome to attorneys dedicated to Family Law, the podcast where our experienced attorneys at Curran Moher Weis guide you through the complexities of family law. Whether you are facing a divorce, custody dispute, or financial matters. Our dedicated team is here to provide strategic insight and practical advice. Each episode, one of our attorneys will dive into key legal topics. And help you navigate your unique situation with confidence.
Attorneys Dedicated to Family Law
EP #3: Debunking Divorce Myths in Virginia: What You Really Need to Know with Grant T. Moher, Esq.
Divorce doesn't play by the rules you think it does—at least not in Virginia. In this eye-opening episode, Attorney Grant T. Moher, founding partner of Curran Moher Weis, systematically dismantles the most persistent myths surrounding Virginia family law.
Connect with Grant and his team by visiting www.curranmoher.com to schedule a consultation and download their guide on steps to take when considering separation or divorce. Don't navigate this complex landscape based on misconceptions or well-meaning but misguided advice from friends and family.
In child support cases. When child support is at issue, there are guidelines where you take a calculator, you plug in one party's income, plug in the other person's income, plug in a few other things like daycare costs, health insurance costs and that sort of thing, and the guidelines spit out a number and that's what child support is. Now courts have the option to deviate from that number if they believe it's appropriate.
Intro/Close:Welcome to Attorneys Dedicated to Family Law, the podcast where our experienced attorneys at Curran Moher Weiss guide you through the complexities of family law, whether you're facing a divorce, custody dispute or financial matters. Our dedicated team is here to provide strategic insight and practical advice. Each episode, one of our attorneys will dive into key legal topics and help you navigate your unique situation with confidence. Let's get started.
Charlie McDermott:Welcome back listeners and viewers. Charlie McDermott, producer of the show, and I'm here with an awesome guest today, as always Grant Mohar. Grant, how are you doing?
Grant Moher:I'm doing great, charlie, thank you.
Charlie McDermott:Yeah. Well, you have a great episode, a great topic debunking divorce myths in Virginia, what you really need to know, and in today's episode we're going to dig deeply into that. So today's guest, grant T Mohar, a founding partner of Kern Mohar Weiss, one of Northern Virginia's premier family law firms, grant is known for his strategic advocacy and practical guidance in complex divorce and custody matters. He's been recognized by Virginia Super Lawyers, best Lawyers in America and Northern Virginia Magazine, just to name a few. With extensive experience in high asset divorces, child custody disputes and spousal support matters, grant brings a well-rounded and insightful perspective to today's discussion.
Charlie McDermott:So, grant, how are you doing? You ready? Great, charlie. Thanks for having me on. Yeah, so let's dig into this. So there are a lot of misconceptions, I'm sure, about divorce in particular, and what's nice is we can really focus in on Virginia law, because I would imagine the law is different from state to state. Correct, yes, sir, yeah, yeah. So one of the most common beliefs is that Virginia custody law favors mothers over fathers, or vice versa. So can you explain where that idea comes from?
Grant Moher:Well, I'm not quite sure I know exactly where it comes from, but my suspicion is that you get a father who gets a custody ruling they don't like and they tell their friends that Virginia law just isn't for dads. Vice versa, you get a mom who gets a custody ruling she doesn't like and she explains to her friends that it's probably because Virginia just doesn't like moms. And in my experience it's probably because Virginia just doesn't like moms. And in my experience neither of it's really true. In my experience there's pretty, it's pretty down the middle. I don't see a large difference one way or the other.
Grant Moher:One thing that is is a little different in Virginia than some other states is that Virginia does not have any sort of presumption with respect to the type of custody arrangements that should be given in a particular case.
Grant Moher:There are some states, a lot of Midwestern states I know Missouri, michigan, minnesota, places like that that actually have presumptions of what are called shared custody, where it's not necessarily 50-50, but it's not your, just every other weekend from Friday to Sunday, sort of thing, and the idea is not that a court has to award shared custody, but that there is a presumption that it should be done in those other states.
Grant Moher:Virginia does not have any such presumption. Virginia operates strictly by what's called the best interests of the child, and the best interests of the child can certainly be viewed in many different ways by many different judges, in many different ways by many different judges. So judges in Virginia have a lot of discretion to do a lot of different things with custody, and what you'll see with individual judges because there aren't presumptions of shared custody or sole custody is that different judges bring their own perspectives to cases. Some judges come in with the idea that I'm going to award 50-50 and you've got to tell me why I shouldn't. And some judges come in with the idea that we're going to give the kids to mom or dad and it's just a question of what exactly the schedule is going to be. So one of the reasons why, if it is possible, we want to try to resolve custody cases outside of court because you just never know what you're going to get in terms of a judge and what that individual is going to bring from their own personal history into the courtroom.
Charlie McDermott:Yeah, yeah, good advice, good advice. So how do Virginia courts actually make custody decisions then?
Grant Moher:Well, Virginia courts are supposed to take into consideration the factors that are listed in Virginia Code, Section 20-124.3. There's a list of 10 factors that a court is supposed to take into consideration. They include a parent's historical involvement with the children and what their role is likely to be going forward. Parents, their ability to work with the other parent to resolve conflicts and issues. Family abuse if there is any of that that is present. And there are several other factors as well, and so I definitely let people know that if you are going into a custody case, if you believe that custody is going to be a disputed issue in your situation, read that statute and that'll tell you what courts have to take into consideration when they make decisions.
Charlie McDermott:Awesome, awesome. So then, grant, are there any factors that courts are not allowed to consider in custody decisions?
Grant Moher:There's actually not a lot of factors that a court is not allowed to consider because one of the factors is such other factors as the court deems necessary and proper to its determination.
Grant Moher:So that could mean a lot of different things to a lot of different judges.
Grant Moher:But what I will say is a lot of things that the parties often think may be factors in a court's decision or may really drive a court's decision often aren't.
Grant Moher:One of them that I commonly see is a party just telling me that the other party is just generally a bad person or generally difficult to deal with or is just sort of a jerk or something along those lines. And if it doesn't really relate to the kids specifically, courts tend to have that stuff just sort of fall by the wayside. They really want to hear about the kids, and I will say one thing that a court really is not allowed to consider in custody decisions is mom or dad. They are not considering the best interests of mom or the best interests of dad. They are considering the best interest of the child only, and so you really need to make sure that you are putting forward a case as to why it is in the child's best interest that the outcome that you want happens versus whether it's something that you just want or think is something that you know would be good for you.
Charlie McDermott:Very, very interesting. So then, for whether you're a mom or a dad, you know how would you best prepare to present a strong custody case. What's your recommendation?
Grant Moher:Well, you would definitely want to meet with a counsel, meet with an attorney and go over what you plan to do and what your strengths are and weaknesses, and an attorney can really go over those things with you and give you just sort of no-nonsense advice about sort of do's and don'ts what you should do, what you shouldn't do, and really help you to kind of figure out the path forward.
Grant Moher:It is typically useful to have witnesses in these cases, and witnesses usually fall into kind of one of two camps Either it's a witness that's going to say you're a great parent, or it's a witness that's going to say the other person is not a great parent, and sometimes those witnesses are the same person testifying to both things. But those can often be helpful. Documentation, emails and what have you that indicate that you are the one who is attempting to be reasonable with respect to the kids, that is trying to solve problems with respect to the kids, et cetera, are often very helpful and understand too that a judge does not know you and does not know your spouse or the other parent. And so I tend to tell people in a lot of cases that you want to try to be as magnanimous as possible toward the other side because courts often view that positively versus somebody who comes in and really just doesn't have anything good to say about the other side. A court can really ding somebody because of that.
Charlie McDermott:Wow, well, yeah, I could see that. I guess it's also very, very helpful. I mean, obviously this is an emotional situation and to be able to speak with an attorney that you know pulls some of that away, strips the emotion away and looks at to that earlier. Grant, staying out of court is probably the best path from a non-attorney. Is that the ultimate solution or does it really matter case by case?
Grant Moher:Well, it really matters case by case, but certainly a lot of what I do is often helping people to navigate certain situations on their own or to give them the tools to be able to put themselves in the best light to be able to be seen by a court.
Grant Moher:A lot of times people come to me after very difficult, painful marriages, marriages in which things obviously were not working and their boundaries may be kind of askew. They may just not really know how to interact with the other party in a way that a neutral third party like a judge may find good, and so some of the time that's what I'm doing is sort of coaching people how to be. But certainly if we can resolve I mean, if we can't resolve a case, that's what court is for. But if we can resolve a case in a way that our client believes is appropriate and they can live with, we're going to take every opportunity to try to do that for many reasons, but of course the fact that court can be so unpredictable, especially in custody cases. We want people to have good outcomes.
Charlie McDermott:Awesome, awesome. So, speaking of unpredictability, let's look into the spousal support crystal ball. Are you ready? Yes, sir, I am ready, all right. So many people think that they can accurately predict how much spousal support they'll receive or have to pay. Where does this misconception come from?
Grant Moher:Well, we generally have some ballpark ideas of sort of best case scenarios, worst case scenarios, that sort of thing.
Grant Moher:But spousal support is one thing in Virginia law that is very, very difficult to predict and is often very situation dependent, judge dependent, that sort of thing.
Grant Moher:I think one of the places where that misconception may come from is the fact that there are child support guidelines. In child support cases, when child support is at issue, there are guidelines where you take a calculator, you plug in one party's income, plug in the other person's income, plug in a few other things like daycare costs, health insurance costs and that sort of thing, and the guidelines spit out a number and that's what child support is. Now courts have the option to deviate from that number if they believe it's appropriate. If there's some significant expense a kid has that is sort of out of the ordinary, or you have a recipient parent who doesn't have a housing expense because they live with their parents, maybe a court deviates downward from that. But in the vast majority of cases court just says whatever the guidelines are, that's what child support is going to be. But that is not the way that it works with spousal support, at least spousal support that is granted from the time a divorce happens and that just goes off into the future from there.
Charlie McDermott:So if we're then spousal support, are there any guidelines or formulas used? So?
Grant Moher:yes and no. There are what are called pendente lite, guidelines for spousal support. Pendente lite is just fancy Latin for temporary, because we lawyers like using fancy Latin terms sometimes. But when you begin a divorce case, there are months from the time you actually begin the divorce case until a final divorce hearing is held, and if one person needs support over the course of that time, then you can get what is called pendente lide temporary support. And temporary support is typically done according to guidelines, kind of like child support you plug in one person's income, you plug in another person's income, spits out a number. That's what somebody pays.
Grant Moher:Typically, of course, court has the ability to modify it up or down if it believes that's appropriate. But oftentimes those guidelines are used. But guidelines are expressly not supposed to be used to determine support. That happens from the time a divorce is granted off into the future. So do courts sometimes look at those guidelines and perhaps use them as a yardstick? Probably, but they're not supposed to, and instead courts are supposed to look at other things rather than just sort of formulas.
Charlie McDermott:OK, OK. So then what kind of factors actually influence how spousal support is awarded then?
Grant Moher:Well, kind of like child custody. There is a statute called it's 20-107.1 that lists a number of factors that a court is supposed to take into consideration when awarding spousal support parties decisions that were made about leaving the workforce or stepping back in the workforce during the marriage that perhaps impacted one party's ability to kind of maintain their income stream. A lot of different things can be taken into consideration by a court, but mainly and I think probably the most important one of those factors typically is the needs of the recipient party versus the ability to pay of the payor, needs not necessarily just being food, clothing, shelter, but needs in the sense that to allow that individual to live a life that is at least somewhat commensurate with the life that they lived during the course of the marriage.
Charlie McDermott:Okay, and so for my next question, you may have covered part of that, but let me ask you the full question here. How do long-term marriages or big differences income affect spousal support outcome?
Grant Moher:Sure, sure. So typically the length of the marriage, in my experience, will impact more so the length of the spousal support. So if you have a marriage of long duration, commonly the support award that is given is what we would call a death or remarriage support award, meaning it just goes for an undefined duration. It goes until either party dies or the recipient spouse remarries or begins cohabiting with someone in a relationship analogous to marriage for a period of time. Those spouse support awards can always be modified by a court in the future.
Grant Moher:If circumstances change, somebody loses their job or takes has to take a step back Tirement happens, something along those lines. But typically your shorter term marriage would would result in a spousal support award that is perhaps of a defined duration, maybe just a term of years, but a longer term marriage, usually you're looking at something that has no defined end date, but again those can be all over the map just depending on the circumstances. I've seen marriages of just a few years end up with unlimited duration spousal support just for one reason or the other, and I have seen marriages that have gone a long time that have ended up with spousal support of a shorter nature just due to the factors that were at play in that case as far as the differences in income, that will affect your amount of spousal support. So typically if there is a large disparity in income, one person's making a lot, the other person's not making as much there's just going to be more support that is paid.
Charlie McDermott:Okay, okay, all right, let's then, grant, jump on over to prenups. I have a few questions for you there. So there's a belief that premarital agreements are very much not standard documents.
Grant Moher:There are many, many different reasons why people may want a premarital agreement, and those premarital agreements have to be carefully drafted and tailored to those specific goals that parties have. For example, you have a young couple that is getting married that may intend to have children. Maybe one person owns a closely held business that involves other family members. They want to sort of shield that business from any kind of problems in a divorce. That's a completely different situation than, for example, an older couple who is marrying later in life. They may have children from prior marriages or prior relationships and they're not looking to have kids of their own together and they're looking to perhaps preserve assets, pass them on to their children, those sorts of things. And so and those are just two examples I mean there are many, many different examples of situations where premarital agreements, you know, would need to be tailored just very, very differently for very, very different circumstances.
Charlie McDermott:Okay, so then how about Grant? What are the best practices for what? Pre-nuptial?
Grant Moher:agreements should and should not do. Yeah, that's a good question, because a lot of times in my initial consult with people when they come in and want to see me for a premarital agreement, it is just sitting down and figuring out what their goals are. What are you really looking to achieve with this? And sometimes these are goals that are maybe very achievable and sometimes they're goals where I may want to tell them you may not want to try to do that with a premarital agreement, or a premarital agreement may not be the best sort of vehicle for that agreement or a premarital agreement may not be the best sort of vehicle for that.
Grant Moher:Premarital agreements are very good, for example, at ensuring that things are sort of divided in the event that there is a divorce, depending on how they're drafted. They're very good, for example, at ensuring that people have the freedom and flexibility to leave their estate when they pass away to whomever they want to leave it to, with their spouse sort of being restricted or not able to kind of jump in and claim a share if they're not kind of entitled to that kind of jump in and claim a share if they're not kind of entitled to that. Those things are pretty easy to do. But sometimes what people want is they want people to sort of be required to do things during the course of a marriage and they want a premarital agreement to require people to do certain things during a marriage.
Grant Moher:That doesn't really work out often, because what do you do if they don't do it? Get divorced. I mean, we obviously don't want that to happen. So when I have people that come in and say, well, I'd like this thing to say that my spouse needs to do this or needs to maintain this insurance or pay me this amount of money, in certain circumstances you can do that, but it's just. It's real tricky and probably not the best plan to kind of start going down that road.
Charlie McDermott:Very, very interesting. Okay, so then, what are some problems with poorly written premarital agreements?
Grant Moher:Well, there can be a lot of problems, and I guess not necessarily just poorly written agreements, but agreements that just don't really apply to your circumstances.
Grant Moher:They could be written very, very well, but these things, you know, when you're drafting a premarital agreement you're drafting something that could be pulled out and used five, 10, 20 plus years into the future when parties could be in very different circumstances that they did not anticipate at all when they started.
Grant Moher:And so one of the problems that you end up with if you have a poorly written agreement or an agreement that really doesn't take into consideration where the parties are at that point, is that they're going to get enforced, even if that enforcement or are likely going to get enforced, even if that enforcement or are likely going to get enforced, even if that enforcement really leads to a very inequitable result. And the other problem with poorly written premarital agreements is that if they are unclear, then if you can't agree on a resolution of those, you got to go to court and maybe a court sides with you on how this particular clause should be interpreted or something, and maybe they don't. I have seen really costly and unfortunate litigation happen as a result of premarital agreements that just either A were not worded very well or B just didn't apply really to the party's situation at that point as they found themselves, and so you got to be very, very careful with what you put in these things and what you kind of want to do with these things before you enter into them.
Charlie McDermott:So, Grant, in that case I mean, do these get rewritten over the years or reevaluated, or is it kind of you hope it's locked in?
Grant Moher:and you don't touch it Not really, I mean it's, it's Virginia very much favors contracts and contract enforcement. So if and certainly there are situations someone has a gun to your head or something, I mean you're obviously not gonna, you know that contract's not going to be valid but, um, you sign. It is very, very difficult to over overturn an agreement in virginia and uh, you know when you well, uh, can they be redone at some point in the future? Things can always. Agreements can always be redone if both parties agree to that. But if both parties don't agree to that, they won't necessarily, and far from from that.
Grant Moher:What I have found is what I kind of deem my, my underwear drawer rule, which is that people tend to sign these things and then they just kind kind of deem my underwear drawer rule, which is that people tend to sign these things and then they just kind of put them in their underwear drawer and forget about them. They just go on with their lives. They don't want to pull out their premarital agreement every month or so and you know, see what it says about this, that or the other thing. So it is interesting I've had people show up in my office before and they're getting a divorce and I asked them have you guys signed any premarital? Oh yeah, yeah, we did. I think they go grab it and I say, well, geez, this changes things completely.
Charlie McDermott:So that is definitely more what we see. Well, how about any advice you'd give someone considering a premarital agreement?
Grant Moher:Well, I would definitely tell them to give it the give it the consideration it deserves. This is your life, this you know who to get married and to whom to get married and kind of under what circumstances one of the most important decisions you will make in your life. This is not something you want to do with a document that you found surfing around the internet on Google and filled in the blanks, or something along those lines. This is something you want to talk to, somebody who has experience in this stuff, who's drafted dozens of these agreements and can kind of tell you dozens of these agreements and can can kind of tell you, yep, this is a good idea or no, this is not a good idea. And and really be able to draft them in such a way that that they will be easy to interpret, easy to sort of live by, and that, in the unfortunate event that you know a divorce does take place, that that they will be able to be implemented, and implemented fairly.
Charlie McDermott:Yeah, all right, so let's get into timing here, grant. So a lot of people think that they have to live separately for a full year before even starting the divorce process. Is that accurate?
Grant Moher:Definitely not. So in Virginia you do have to be separated for a year if you have children or if the divorce is contested in order to actually finalize a divorce take place can be done at any point in time, and what can happen over the course of the separation period is a lot of I mean a lot of things can happen over the course of the separation period people spending money or, you know, establishing sort of ad hoc custodial schedules for their kids, sort of ad hoc custodial schedules for their kids moving to different places. There are all kinds of things that can happen, and the decisions that you make and some of the things that you do over the course of that separation period can really impact things when it comes around to time to actually file for a divorce. And so you definitely want to talk.
Grant Moher:If separation or divorce is something that could happen to you or you're in early stages of that, you want to talk to somebody a trusted attorney as soon as humanly possible, just to get the lay of the land and see what should I be doing, what should I not be doing? For example, the date of separation in Virginia is the date of financial separation, meaning any debt that you incur post separation, any asset that you earn, any money that you earn from your employment, et cetera. Technically, typically, those are considered your separate assets or your separate debts, and so you know, I may want to talk about things like opening up new bank accounts, things like that. So there are a lot of things that you can do from the time a separation takes place, or even before a separation takes place, to make sure that you're setting yourself up to be in the best position you can be in.
Charlie McDermott:So then, grant, how about the difference between filing for divorce and being granted a divorce in terms of timeliness?
Grant Moher:Sure, sure. So filing for divorce simply means that we take a document called a complaint for divorce and we take it down to the courthouse and we give it to the clerk and that starts the divorce proceeding. Give it to the clerk and that starts the divorce proceeding. That kind of starts the sort of the train moving, and then eventually the court will set a final hearing date for the divorce and that will be, as I say earlier, months down the road, depending on your jurisdiction, on which county you're in. It could be eight, ten months, it could be more than a year, depending on kind of what the court has available and how quickly its docket moves. And certainly between the filing and the final hearing, ideally what we would do is we would have some discussions, we'd exchange some information, documentation, we'd find out what we're dealing with and hopefully we'd be able to come up with some kind of a negotiated resolution. But you know, of course, if we can't, that's what the final hearing date is for.
Charlie McDermott:About any exceptions to the one separation rule in Virginia grant.
Grant Moher:Yes, if a party does not have minor children, uh, and they have executed a separation agreement that essentially resolves everything that is uh comes out of their marriage, they can get divorced six months after a separation. They don't have to wait the full year. But otherwise, and I guess technically, if a party can be shown to have committed adultery, they can technically get a divorce at any point in time based on that. But in my experiences, typically courts will not set final hearing dates in cases even involving adultery, such that the final hearing would take place before a year, because a court doesn't want to have a whole divorce hearing only to find out they couldn't prove adultery. So now we just can't do anything. So even if there is adultery present, typically a court's going to schedule that a year out, because either you prove adultery and that divorce is granted based on that or you can't, and at least you can grant the divorce based on having lived separate apart for a year.
Charlie McDermott:All right, all right. So then, how can couples who are still living under the same roof handle the separation requirement?
Grant Moher:Will living under the same roof handle the separation requirement? So we actually have on our website a few blog posts on this of kind of how to live separate and apart in the same house. It can be done. It's tricky. It is not just sleep in separate bedrooms and you know sort of stop having marital relations with one another. It's you have to really live like roommates. You have to be. You know, passing like ships in the night. You're not taking meals together, you're not hanging out inside the house or outside the house. You're not taking vacations together, you're not. You're not cleaning each other's side of the room, you're not doing each other's laundry, you're not wearing your wedding ring. There are a lot of things that kind of go into that. And and but, but the the general rule is you want to live like roommates, okay.
Charlie McDermott:Okay, yeah, that's really helpful. So just to wrap things up, Grant, what would you say is the biggest piece of advice you'd give someone who's just starting to explore divorce in Virginia may be influenced by misinformation.
Grant Moher:Well, the first thing I would say is you want to speak to somebody, you want to speak to an attorney who has a lot of experience, who can give you the lay of the land, answer any questions that you have and, hopefully, dispel any misinformation that you may have. The internet is wonderful. You can get a lot of answers on Google and other sort of sites that you may go to. You can also get a lot of information that just isn't correct, and I've had a lot of people who will come to me and say well, you're telling me this, but my cousin who got divorced had this happen to them. Well, that's, I guess.
Grant Moher:Another thing that I often find is that people tend to and it's not, it's certainly understandable they're speaking to people that they know, people that they trust, and these people are telling them their experiences, and just that experience may not apply to your case, and so you want to get somebody who you know you believe is going to give you the straight dope and it's not going to sugarcoat anything and it's just going to give you, you know, 100% unvarnished opinion as to as to you know what your case is looking like, and you can't get that from Google or chat GPT or your cousin or anything like that.
Charlie McDermott:Definitely not your cousin Grant. For listeners and viewers who need that help, obviously, who live in the state of Virginia, how can they learn more about you, the firm, and get some help?
Grant Moher:Sure, so you can go to our website at curranmohrercom. We have a lot of information there. We have uh 12, 12 things, uh sort of a a downloadable file of 12 things that you should do, uh when you're considering separation and divorce. We have a lot of blog posts that uh address all kinds of things, from holiday visitation, living separate and apart in the same room, how we divide stock options, just all kinds of different things. And if you would like to schedule a consult with us, and at that point we can give you all the information you need, we can answer your questions, we can talk to you about next steps going forward, you can either go to our website, fill out the form and request a consult, or you can give us a call at 571-328-5020. And we'll be happy to set up a time to chat.
Charlie McDermott:Well, thank you, grant, and I'll tell you. You know, just just sitting back and listening to your answers, it's and I've never gone through a divorce, thank you Lord, but it just sounds completely overwhelming. I mean all the different easy chunk of however long it's been 30 minutes. You are extremely busy, so I know your listeners appreciate it and really look forward to getting you back on the show in the near future, but we need to get you back out there in the world helping your clients. So, grant, you have an awesome rest of the day there.
Grant Moher:Thanks, Charlie. I really appreciate the opportunity to be here with you today and chat.
Intro/Close:That wraps up this episode of Attorneys Dedicated to Family Law. We hope you found today's discussion insightful. If you have questions or need personalized legal guidance, visit us at currenmohurtcom. Be sure to subscribe so you don't miss our next episode, where another of our experienced attorneys will tackle an important family law issue. Thanks for listening. Until next time, we're here to help you protect what matters most.