Family Law

Mar 16, 2023

Courts (and the legal field in its entirety) should choose civility

There are frequent reminders for lawyers in Continuing Legal Education (CLE) programs and articles on the importance of civility among adversaries. Civility, like all good lessons, should flow from the top down, as children learn from their parents. In law, that means civility starts with the judges and court commissioners.

Feb 19, 2023

The age of settlement: Peace rather than war

For a number of years, I’ve put together a family law cases update program for the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers, the State Bar Family Law Section and the state family court judges.

Jan 24, 2023

Lawsuit: Agency wrongfully imprisoned children

Illinois Department of Children and Family Services wrongfully incarcerated hundreds of children in juvenile detention after a court ordered them to be released to their guardian, according to a class action lawsuit filed Thursday by Cook County's public guardian.

Jan 12, 2023

Looking back: The best and worst of 2022

One of my favorite columns is to review family law cases and legislation from the prior year. It gives me yet another opportunity to express my thoughts on the good and the bad that occurred. Fortunately for me as a columnist, there was enough bad to make this column (hopefully) somewhat entertaining as “good” tends to be boring.

Nov 4, 2022

Out of the mouths of babes

While a child of 16 years with a car is going to make his or her own decision about placement, do we really want to give a 7 year old that authority?

Oct 18, 2022

The right to self-represent

In 1975, The United States Supreme Court held that a criminal defendant has a constitutional right to waive counsel and self-represent in a criminal case. Faretta v. California, 422 U.S. 806 (1975). While the trial court has a responsibility to discourage self-representation, it cannot prohibit it. The result can be (and usually is) the circus occurring in the Waukesha trial of the Christmas par[...]

Oct 13, 2022

A resource for family law cases

Ten years ago, the average number of cases to report on, between Wisconsin Supreme Court and Court of Appeals (published and citeable unpublished cases) was 15-20 per year. So far this year, there have been zero Supreme Court cases, one published Court of Appeals case and four citeable unpublished Court of Appeals cases.

Sep 20, 2022

Closing a law practice: Not as simple as it seems

After 38 years as a family law attorney with Loeb & Herman LLC, I have joined JAMS as a neutral in its Wisconsin office.

Jun 20, 2022

Courts meant to serve the public

Here's a simple idea: Courts should serve the public. In particular, parties should be allowed to be divorced without the costs and inconvenience of a public court appearance.

May 18, 2022

Herman re-certified by National Board of Trial Advocacy

Family Law Attorney Gregg Herman has been re-certified by The National Board of Trial Advocacy as a senior specialist in family law.

Mar 18, 2022

Will courts really enforce proposed financial information exchange rules?

In law, as in many things in life, some ideas are better in theory than in practice. It is not uncommon that the Legislature, which has precious few lawyers (most sessions have ten or fewer lawyers out of 133 state Senators and Representatives, and almost none of them has ever been in the private practice of law), passes legislation which sounds good on its face but has a different practical effec[...]

Feb 3, 2022

The Valadez case: A bad start to the year

The first family-law case to be recommended for publication by the Court of Appeals in almost two years makes me wish that it would have been longer. Well, the good news is that when I write my end of the year column for 2022 highlighting bad decisions, I will have a good start.