People are astonished to learn that when Ron started practicing law in 1970, the family code was maybe a quarter inch of pages in the California Civil Code. In the 1980’s the Family Code was two or three hundred pages. Today it’s 850 pages and growing. It’s about three inches thick and we get new statues twice a year. We get new cases, which interpret the code, almost weekly. Family law is one of the most highly litigated areas in civil law, and one of the most often appealed. So it’s hard to say what the law is. You can say what it was. You can say what it is today. But who knows what it’s going to be tomorrow? That’s why we need Certified Family Law Specialists who can look at the law and give us an idea, not only of what the law is, but what the trends in the law are.
What are some of the current trends? One thing everyone’s talking about is, what is the future of a young child? If you have young children, the real issue is the movement of people. The economy is definitely changing where people are living. We have people moving to where they grew up or where they have the most family available to assist them. We’re seeing a lot of cases where a parent has to move for financial reasons, and in Los Angeles, even a move across town can completely disrupt a visitation schedule. If you have to go court because you need to move ten miles for work, it’s up to the judge to decide whether or not the move is in your child’s best interest. So in some cases the laws have to change to accommodate the current situation and your lawyer needs to know what the most recent changes in your favor are.
We’re seeing exponential growth in what is considered an asset. Thirty years ago it was a mere expectancy to have a pension plan. Today, it’s a major asset and can be missed if you’re not careful. The same is true for insurance policies. Where once an insurance policy was just a term life policy, it now has some kind of value to it. It never had a value before, but now we can look at it and there are ways to value it. Another area would be electronics and websites and artificial rights. When you own a copyright or trademark or patent, or you own software or you own music, it’s worth something now. Once upon a time it wasn’t worth a lot, but look at Michael Jackson. Not a lot of cash flow, but an incredible amount of earning potential in a catalogue of music. We’ve both handled those kinds of cases where someone comes in and they have to value something that’s very difficult to value. It takes expertise outside of even the best lawyer to sit down and run through a catalogue of what those residual rights are worth. You have to have trusted neutral experts who can give you the best valuations.
When Ron started practicing in 1970, mothers always got custody, in every case. The only way a father could get custody was to prove that the mother was unfit. The mother had to be unfit. That law lasted through the eighties. It was taken out in 1976 but the judges continued to follow it as though it were there. It wasn’t until 1982 that we got joint custody. That was a huge change. We’ve seen huge changes in the law, but we still see disparities.
