The interplay between inheritance, trusts, and divorce raises a series of issues every estate planning and family law attorney must be prepared to address. What steps should estate planning attorneys take to protect assets prior to or in anticipation of divorce? What is the procedure for courts to value a trust interest for purposes of equitable distribution and/or support payments? What are the recent legal decisions that influence practices related to inheritance, trusts interests, or divorce? Attend this online program to hear expert faculty answer these questions and others that arise when these topics collide.
Best Lawyers award for Attorney Jonathan E. Fields
It is a tremendous honor to announce that Jonathan E. Fields has been selected by Best Lawyers. This honor is bestowed on him by both his clients and peers. Best Lawyers was started four decades ago by two Harvard Law Graduates and is one of the most prestigious peer review publications. Their Lawyer lists are compiled by tens of thousands of leading lawyers confidentially evaluating their professional peers. No fees can be paid to become listed in the Best Lawyers publications. If the lawyer is recognized as a Best Lawyer they must maintain their subsequent votes in the polls to continue to be included in future editions.
Best Lawyers Award for Attorney Sheryl J. Dennis
It is a tremendous honor to announce that Sheryl J. Dennis has been selected by Best Lawyers. This honor is bestowed on her by both her clients and peers. Best Lawyers was started four decades ago by two Harvard Law Graduates and is one of the most prestigious peer review publications. Their Lawyer lists are compiled by tens of thousands of leading lawyers confidentially evaluating their professional peers. No fees can be paid to become listed in the Best Lawyers publications. If the lawyer is recognized as a Best Lawyer they must maintain their subsequent votes in the polls to continue to be included in future editions.
Citybiz Interview with Sheryl Dennis, Managing Partner at Fields and Dennis
See Sheryl Dennis’s recent interview with Citybiz.
Vicki L. Shemin will be joining panel “What Have We Learned? Parenting Coordination Developments Since the Issuance of Standing Order 1-17,”
Along with Chief Justice Casey and the Honorable Judge Giordano, Vicki L. Shemin will be co-presenting with other family law practitioners on the topic, “What Have We Learned? Parenting Coordination Developments Since the Issuance of Standing Order 1-17,” sponsored by the BBA’s Family Law Section. Please save the date and RSVP:
Vicki L. Shemin will co-present on April 16 at the NASW 2021 Symposium on “Voices of Empowerment & Social Justice.”
Vicki L. Shemin, a partner at Fields & Dennis in Wellesley, will co-present on April 16 on the topic of “Unlikely Partners: Divorce Attorney and Couples Therapist” at the NASW 2021 Symposium on “Voices of Empowerment & Social Justice.”
Article by Attorney Vicki L. Shemin Featured in Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly
Inspired lawyer proposes Bench-Bar Civility Honor Roll
Across the nation and in Massachusetts, there has been a call to arms to promulgate civility in all bench-bar facets. For example, annually the American Inns of Court designates a month to spotlight the need to work toward a “vision of a legal profession and judiciary dedicated to professionalism, ethics, civility and excellence.”
And, as recently as Feb. 22, the Massachusetts Bar Association held a program on “How the Bench and Bar Can Work Together to Improve Lawyer Civility.” While I believe we can all agree that it is easy to “talk the talk,” when there are no directional signposts to navigate theory into practice insofar as “walking the talk,” we are left to wonder where the rubber meets the road. Just three days after the MBA conference, I was privileged to have witnessed firsthand a spontaneous act of civility at its finest.
At long last, on Feb. 25, we had a 9 a.m. hearing on an uncontested G.L.c. 208, §1A, divorce case. The parties had been waiting since July 2020 for their court date. After two and a half hours in the Zoom waiting room, parties and counsel were finally called for the hearing.
The judge asked for a clarification and written edit to the child support section of the separation agreement and told us she could not approve the agreement as is.
After attorney Jared Wood and I hammered out a written revision, attorney Wood snatched victory from the jaws of defeat: He dashed out to his car, drove to the parties’ homes to get their original signatures on the edited agreement, and then rushed to the Middlesex County courthouse to flag down a court officer and get the revised agreement into the hands of the judge’s clerk. (There may or may not have been the necessity for attorney Wood to have not one but two McDonald’s cheeseburgers and a milkshake on the way back to his office, for his emotional and physical fortification.)
Just three days after the MBA conference, I was privileged to have witnessed firsthand a spontaneous act of civility at its finest.
At 3 p.m., parties and counsel took a leap of faith by signing back into the judge’s Zoom waiting room. With five minutes to spare, at 3:55 p.m., the judge gave us a second call, enabling the parties to have their long-awaited hearing and their agreement approved. None of this could have happened without attorney Wood’s tenacity, grace and kindness under pressure. He literally went the extra mile(s)! In his honor, I propose that we institute a Bench-Bar Civility Honor Roll to inspire us to attain the lofty theoretical “vision of a legal profession and judiciary dedicated to professionalism, ethics, civility and excellence” — and to celebrate the role models among us who have truly elevated their professional practices as models of civility. For, in the end, they are our guideposts. See full article
Vicki L. Shemin is a partner at Fields & Dennis in Wellesley. She can be contacted at VShemin@FieldsDennis.com.
Expertise Selects Fields and Dennis LLP for Best Divorce Lawyers in Boston for 2021
Expertise selected Fields and Dennis as one of the top Divorce Lawyers in the Boston area.
Each year Expertise.com reviews over 326 divorce lawyers in the Boston area to find the top 19 in the area. Fields and Dennis LLP was selected as one of them. They base their selections on five criteria.
- Availability, or its responsiveness and availability to their customers.
- Qualifications, do they build customer confidence with their licensing, accreditations, and awards?
- Reputation, do they have a history of outstanding service?
- Experience, are they masters of their craft?
- Professionalism, do they provide service with honesty, reliability, and respect.
Fields and Dennis LLP has met and exceeded these expectations!
Advice On Cooperative Co-Parenting During & After An Acrimonious Divorce: It will Improve your Mental Health
Once every 30 or so cases, if a family law attorney is fortunate, she may come across parents who are able to rise above the fray and put their children front-and-center. So remarkable are these instances that they break the mold of what we traditionally see in our cases – particularly when the cases are protracted, there has been deception of one kind or another in the marriage, and/or the parting is bitter and hostile.
The anonymous letter you are about to read is from a mother whose matter checked all of those boxes. Throughout the case that went on months and months longer than it should have, I was constantly amazed to observe how the two parents were able to pull off the seemingly impossible: co-parent as if they were not locked in a rancorous legal battle. While it is so easy to “talk the talk,” I was honored to bear witness to this Mom and her ex who “walked the talk.” So impressed was I with her example that I asked her to write a letter to other parents in like circumstances. I hope her example will prove an inspiration for all divorced/divorcing parents – and their lawyers – who read her words.
“Anyone going through a divorce with kids knows the guilt of feeling like you shattered a childhood full of happy family memories. Will divorce traumatize my children and make them distrust the entire concept of love and commitment forever? If you are going through a divorce then clearly it’s the only choice – if there was any way to save the marriage, you would have. But amid the rage and frustration, there is still choice and control you can have about how you co-parent. Even though my own divorce negotiations were protracted, bitter, and painful, the one thing I could control was the kind of co-parent I was – even if it meant swallowing my pride. Now that I am on the other side of it, I know that it was worth it.
Like all marriages, each divorce is different. The bitter resentment, the heartbreaking disappointment, the burning anger, the maddening frustration – the flavors of sadness and umbrage that permeate each decoupling are so deeply personal that they are nearly impossible to explain to someone outside the broken union. So how can one divorced person ever give any practical guidance to anyone else going through this mess? When it comes to divorce with kids, I think some words of advice are true for nearly all situations: compartmentalize, take the high road for the kids’ sake, and have a long-range view. There is no winner and there is no loser – there is just your duty to be the best parent you can be to your kids. They were not to blame for your failed partnership and they don’t deserve to bear the brunt of your conflict. Divorce is never smooth for kids but I believe that having parents that can sit next to each other at graduation makes it a hundred times less traumatic.
When I first asked my ex-husband for a divorce, the conversation was desperately sad. There was no way for us to remain married and yet we had two elementary-school aged daughters who had lived a charmed life and had no inkling of the troubles that had been brewing for years. Our heart broke for the havoc we were about to wreak on their sweet and innocent lives. Despite failing as husband and wife, we had succeeded at parenting. We adored them equally and both wanted what is best for them. We hugged and cried. We planned on quickly dividing our assets and determining a parenting schedule. Surely, we would work it all out with no issues. We were not like other people who had ugly acrimonious divorces. Famous last words.
The next year brought pain and anger unlike any I’ve experienced before. I felt betrayed, deceived, and bamboozled by my ex-husband as we moved through endless negotiations. I raged and seethed. Our lawyers exchanged scathing letters and threatened litigation. The union that I once felt sad about breaking felt more and more poisoned as I stayed up nights pacing and doing financial calculations. And yet, as we hissed angry words about money, we continued to act as a team for our daughters. As proposals were fired off and rejected by our lawyers, we took them out to dinner for their birthdays together. We went to their soccer games together. We sat next to each other at their plays. We visited each other and I offered him tea and cookies in front of the girls. I sent him photographs of the kids doing cute things. We were flexible with moving parenting days around to suit our work schedules or kids’ activities. We divided and conquered when each kid had to be at a different activity at the same time.
So how were we able to do it? I can speak only for myself of course, but I consciously compartmentalized, swallowed my pride for the kids’ sake, and had a long-term perspective.
No matter the circumstances of the divorce, every child deserves parents that are adults in control. When adults in control have personal problems, they go to their day jobs and put those problems aside to do their work. I viewed co-parenting as the most important job of my life. That means I consciously compartmentalized my anger with my ex from his love for our daughters. I vented my fury about the negotiations to friends and family (and my lawyer of course). However, when it came to interacting with my ex on child-related issues, I put those feelings in a separate box and forced myself to be an amicable co-parent – because that is what my children deserved. I treated him as two separate people – the man who is the adversary in the negotiations and the man who is the father of our children. I was furious at the former; and I was gracious and civil to the latter. It was not always easy but I reminded myself that I am an adult in control. It meant lots of deep breaths, remembering happy family memories, and talking myself down. But even on days when I received particularly infuriating correspondence or yet another untenable settlement proposal, I sent friendly texts about playdates and piano lessons.
Grace in co-parenting is not always reciprocated. But my advice is to just let it go – swallow your pride, laugh it off with friends, and move on. Of course, taking the high road is admittedly hard. For example, it stung when my ex did not remind my daughters to wish me a happy Mother’s Day while they were with him that weekend. It would have been easy to get back at him a month later. But when it came to Father’s Day I made sure the girls made cards and presents to celebrate their dad. Because they are still young and need reminding of such things – and I don’t want them to grow up with the memories of having forgotten these days and hurt their parents’ feelings. I intend to always remind them of such occasions and help pick out gifts for him for birthdays or holidays. Similarly, I will never speak ill to my kids about their dad or anyone on his side of the family, even if I believe some of them have treated me unkindly. Kids deserve untarnished relationships with their grandparents, uncles, aunts, and cousins. They should never feel any guilt about complicated adult conflicts that have nothing to do with anyone’s genuine love for them.
There were some people that gave me advice to act counter to these principles when they thought I was being bullied or taken advantage of financially. I am glad I did not heed these words. I appreciate that those that gave me this advice did it out of love for me. But here is my suggestion to anyone else going through this: don’t take anyone’s advice to get nasty or to play emotional games when it comes to parenting. Trust your own instincts to protect the kids from being involved in the conflict. Despite whatever differences led to the divorce, try to visualize life ten, fifteen years from now. Your ex will forever be the parent of your children. And that means you will have to parent them together forever. Life is long, kids are unpredictable, and parenting throws curveballs – a child can get sick, a child can experience emotional or behavioral challenges, a child might need extra attention. That is when you need to be partners more than ever. The impulse to do short-term damage is not worth damaging the long-term co-parenting team. The best thing I did during the co-parenting process is to force myself to have long-range perspective.
We finally reached a settlement over a year later and the divorce became final a few months after that. I was exhausted and relieved to close that chapter of my life. But more than anything I felt proud of how we parented during the process. One of our children is experiencing some emotional difficulties and our co-parenting teamwork has proved to be invaluable. It is hard to be a single parent. A trusted co-parent that loves your child as much as you do is vital. I am so grateful to have the ability to call on my ex for support even on his non-parenting days or to have the flexibility to re-arrange the custody schedule to address the girls’ needs for space from each other. Had I damaged the co-parenting relationship, who knows if that would be possible.
If I could have done anything differently during the co-parenting process is to worry less about the parenting schedule. I had initially thought that the girls would have one primary home and I was devastated when my ex pushed for 50/50 schedule. (I was so hysterical during this conversation with my ex that I excused myself to aggressively jump up and down in my bathroom like a crazy person – an out-of-character behavior for me!). But now I think the schedule works out wonderfully, especially with the flexibility to visit and see the kids during the “off” days that an amicable co-parenting relationship allows. Having equal time with both parents gives stability and structure for the children, and kid-free time allows adults to pursue their own interests.
After the divorce was final, my ex purchased a home in my neighborhood and I am thrilled: the proximity brings even more consistency for the kids and makes travel between homes for things like forgotten mittens, books, or just a hug all that much easier.
With the passage of time, the boiling anger felt during the divorce process quiets to a simmer and eventually cools off. And that makes compartmentalizing easier and ultimately unnecessary. Sure, flare-ups of conflict will arise. But if you built a foundation of respectful and amicable co-parenting then you can move past those conflicts with grace. Your kids deserve it.”
Vicki L. Shemin, J.D., LICSW, ACSW, a family law attorney, mediator, collaborative law attorney, divorce coach, and clinical social worker, is a partner at Fields and Dennis LLP in Wellesley, Massachusetts. She can be reached at 781.489.6776 or VShemin@FieldsDennis.com.
A Diamond is Forever, But the Engagement Ring May Be Ne’er
The article below was written by Vicki L. Shemin, J.D., LICSW, ACSW and published in Citybizlist on January 25, 2021
Lest you think that the proprieties and perplexities surrounding broken engagements are a modern phenomenon, we need only look back to the 15th century.
It is said that in 1477, Archduke Maximillian of Austria commissioned the very first diamond engagement ring on record for his betrothed, Mary of Burgundy, thus setting a penchant for diamond engagement rings among the higher echelons of European society.
With that stage set, the marketing genius of DeBeers was sure to follow. And, nowadays, it seems that engagements have become all about the diamond ring.
But fast forward a bit and then show me an announcement of a broken engagement. The next exclamation is inevitably: “Did she give back the ring?” (Apologies for falling into the typical gender trap.)
Did she? Should she? With some statistics estimating that a quarter of a million engagements do not end in marriage, this is a significant fiscal and sociological question with both legal and moral implications.
As with all things marital, the answer to what a court is likely to do when it comes to “who gets to keep the ring” depends on varying state laws (by which I do not mean to imply that the law is always as clear as a princess cut).
Typically, these cases are analyzed as to whether the intent was to give the ring as a gift, whether the ring was actually given as a gift, and whether the donee accepted the ring as a gift. But wait…there’s more. A conditional promise to marry is also attached. More to the point, the majority of states have taken the view that if the affianced does not perform on the promise to marry, then the ring must be returned as that token was itself the consideration for the promise to say “I do.”
But that analysis would be too simple. Some states – like Massachusetts – take fault into consideration and consider who broke off the engagement. After satisfying that inquiry, the one who broke off the engagement does not get the ring. While that might appear to be an elegantly simple resolution, anyone who knows human nature understands that the person who actually broke off the engagement may well have been provoked to do so, or, may have done so because their louse spouse-not-to-be was really at fault.
But, back to elegantly simple solutions. Consider Montana! That state takes an approach as clear as a gem. The engagement ring is deemed to be an unconditional gift that is kept by the recipient – despite whether the marriage ever happens and despite who pulled the plug on the engagement.
In case you are wondering, is the law more settled when it comes to wedding bands or engagement rings after the marriage? I think not. While some would strenuously argue that wedding rings are marital property subject to division in the event of divorce, others would counterpunch they are completed gifts because any preconditions attached to the gift have been met (i.e., the wedding itself sealed the deal).
Are there any escape clauses? A least two worth noting. First, if an engagement ring is given on a holiday or birthday, some say that the argument is strengthened that the ring was merely a completed gift irrespective of whether the marriage goes forward or not because the ring is less attached to the promise of marriage and relates more to the occasion of the special date on which it was given. So, let that be a cautionary tale for those who are contemplating a Valentine’s Day, Christmas, or New Year’s proposal. Second, if the engagement ring is a family heirloom, this should be a no-brainer dictating that it should be returned to the donor.
So, what’s the law about the propriety of who gets to keep the ring? Indeed, what’s fair in this facet of “all’s fair in love and war”?
Well, as all things in the law, the answer is what law students are taught on their first day of law school: “it depends.”
And, even at that, are we talking about human laws, or, underlying moral codes (as the latter cannot be legislated)?
Vicki L. Shemin, J.D., LICSW, ACSW, a divorce lawyer and clinical social worker, is a partner at Fields and Dennis LLP in Wellesley. She can be reached at 781.489.6776 or VShemin@FieldsDennis.com.
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