California law holds that parents can obtain an order from the court allowing them to move children away from their current residence, even if that creates a situation where the visitation or custody of the other parent is reduced. The standard, as always, is the vague and ambiguous "best interests of the child" which as [...]
The answer in California is none. When a tenant remain in possession at the expiration of a fixed term, the unlawful detainer may be brought without notice. This means you simply file the lawsuit, attach the lease, check the appropriate boxes and fill in the appropriate blanks, and have it personally served by someone other [...]
The sad reality that children can be used as pawns in an effort by one parent to hurt another parent never dawned upon me until I witnessed it first hand. Throughout my entire life, I had never seen, or heard of such a thing and it never occurred to me that anyone would do such [...]
The Problem with Eyewitness Testimony a talk by Barbara Tversky, Professor of Psychology and George Fisher, Professor of Law Laura Engelhardt Stanford Law School, April 5, 1999. In a presentation sponsored by the Stanford Journal of Legal Studies, George Fisher placed Barbara Tversky’s research on memory fallibility into the context of police investigations and jury [...]
While people are certainly entitled to their own opinions, they are not entitled to their own facts. Unfortunately, because the our legal system encourages complexity and bases decisions on arcane, often illogical, byzantine rules which encourage gamesmanship rather than fostering an environment that discourages falsehoods, you, the truth-teller are in no advantageous position for being [...]
The television show "Lie to Me" starring Tim Roth tells a story about a "human lie detector" who, by reading facial cues and reactions, can tell whether any individual is telling the truth or not. There are no shortage of people out there, Judges among them, who are convinced they have some special ability to [...]
When I became a family law attorney/mediator after a dozen years as a therapist, one of the biggest surprises was the extent of lying in Family Court: lies about income, assets and even complete fabrications of child abuse and domestic violence. Why would people lie so much, I wondered? How did they get away with [...]
This is a common question from clients and the answer invariably is one attorneys give time and time again to a multitude of questions: it depends. Your initial time period will depend upon why you are evicting the tenant. If they aren't paying rent, you have to serve the three-day notice to quit or pay [...]
