Anoka Divorce Law Blog

In some Minnesota divorces, spousal support may be an issue. Spousal support, which is commonly called alimony, consists of monthly support payments that are made by a higher-earning spouse to a lower-earning spouse for a period of time after a divorce. It is not ordered in every case.

In order to determine whether to award spousal support as well as how much to award, courts consider several factors. They consider how long the couple was married, the lifestyle that they have enjoyed, the need of the recipient, the ability of the payer to meet the obligation, and the health and age of both parties.

People in Minnesota who decide to divorce may find themselves emailing back and forth with their lawyers and discussing the breakup of their marriages using their smartphones, email accounts and other digital devices. Just like with other key events in people's lives, a divorce often sparks a great deal of electronic communication. In addition, it may inspire people to make some changes to their accounts and devices in order to protect their privacy and prepare for the single life to come.

Many married couples share passwords to online accounts. These can range from entertainment options like Netflix and Spotify to joint credit cards, mortgages and online banking accounts. While joint banking accounts should generally be left alone during a divorce, people may want to change their passwords to all of their personal accounts. While married, some people choose to share passcodes for their smartphones, passwords for their laptops or access to their personal email accounts or messenger services. In most cases, people will want to change the level of access they provide to their ex-spouse. Even for accounts that remain joint during the marriage, passwords should be changed if they are kept by one person after the divorce is finalized.

As divorced couples in Minnesota may have experienced firsthand, the process of dividing assets is a difficult one that tends to be contentious. The appearance of cryptocurrencies on the financial scene has only made the whole process all the more difficult, especially since many family law lawyers have little experience with this digital asset.

Cryptocurrencies complicate the divorce process in two main ways: To start with, these assets are easily hidden, and if the owner is a little tech-savvy, they can make their digital tokens untraceable. Granted, if the tokens were bought through an exchange, they'd be easy to track; however, if the owner bought them directly from someone else and moved them offline, these digital assets become very difficult to track, consuming a lot of resources in the process. As a result, it is important for owners to disclose their ownership of the assets during the divorce proceedings. Otherwise, they risk severe penalties, including giving the other spouse a larger share of the assets or going to jail for contempt of court.

Parents in Minnesota have some valid reasons to be concerned about direct forms of communication like texting and social media. However, a new study suggests such technology may actually help kids feel loved and supported when one parent no longer lives in the same home. It has long been asserted that kids cope better with divorce when divorcing parents get along, but researchers came to a different conclusion.

The team behind the study evaluated data from parents who had gone through divorce with children ranging in age from 10 to 18. Researchers also considered parental warmth, closeness and other aspects of the typical parent-child relationship along with various co-parenting styles. But what ended up making the biggest difference with parent-child relationships was the frequency of communication.