Punta Gorda Legal Blog

Mechanical violations, parking tickets and speeding citations are infractions nearly everyone has dealt with. Whether you fail to see the stop sign or zip through it intentionally, you may end up with a ticket that will cost you time to resolve and ultimately money. However, when it comes to drunk driving, you are looking at an offense that can be far more serious than an infraction.

The severity of a drunk driving arrest and its potential penalties depend on several factors. In many cases, if you have no previous DUI arrests, the charge against you will be a misdemeanor. While you still risk harsh penalties, a misdemeanor is less serious than a felony. Nevertheless, in certain situations, a DUI charge can easily escalate to a felony.

Whether they grow up in Florida or any other state, children can experience both short and long-term trauma after their parents get divorced. However, parents can take steps to help their kids adjust to their new circumstances in a positive and healthy manner. For instance, parents can make time to listen to what their children have to say and validate their feelings. This is important whether those feelings are positive or negative.

Parents should not burden their children with the drama or stress that they may feel. Instead, kids should be allowed to remain kids for as long as possible. This means allowing them to spend time with their friends regardless of what the parenting plan says. It can be worthwhile to seek out other families that have gone through a divorce for advice on how to handle conflicts with the child's other parent. Children should never be made to feel as if the divorce was their fault.

Millennials are more likely to keep their finances separate and to have prenuptial agreements than previous generations, but experts say the latter is more likely than the former to protect their property in a divorce. In an equitable distribution state like Florida, what people have earned separately may still be considered their own property. However, a court still has some discretion in what it determines is shared property and how that property will be divided. There are advantages in a divorce to having individual accounts. It can allow each person to have ready access to money for use during the process.

A prenup can be a positive tool not just for the financial protection it offers but because it forces couples to talk about their finances and their attitudes about money. Couples may also modify their prenup later. However, a couple who does not want a prenuptial agreement might want to print out their account statements prior to the marriage to show what they are bringing into it.

Many people in Florida are dealing with extensive student loan debt. In some cases, people decide to delay marriage, children or major purchases because they are struggling to pay off loans that can amount to hundreds of thousands of dollars. With the costs of college rising, many people have few options but to take out student loans to pursue education for their future careers. At the same time, divorce is a major financial event. The effects of the end of a marriage on a person's finances can last for years beyond the relationship. Couples dealing with student loan debt burdens may be concerned with how their loans are handled during the property division process.

In general, people who had their student loan debts before marriage will also retain the obligation to pay for them after divorce. Like other premarital debts, they will continue to remain separate liabilities. However, people may have more questions when the loans were acquired after the marriage began. In general, debt assumed after the marriage is marital debt, but that does not mean it will be divided equally between the spouses. Florida is an equitable distribution state, which means that marital debt will be divided between the parties on grounds of fairness.