Mediate Michigan

Breaking up is always hard to do, but it is very possible that it is hardest when you’re breaking up with your business partner. Although it may seem simple to just hire lawyers and allow them to handle the proceedings, that is often not the case. Just ask any business owner who has had to deal with a breakup in the business world.

Often business partners looking to split head directly to their lawyers and to court. But, Silvana Raso, a partner at the New Jersey-based law firm Schepisi & McLaughlin, contends that mediation might be the better route. Raso has the following warnings to businesses that may be headed to a proverbial “divorce court.”

• The owners cede control of their business to strangers – the lawyers and judges who likely have little or no practical experience running a business, and have limited knowledge of the business that is now the subject of the lawsuit.
• Often, the owners lose the right to make any financial decisions and must seek the court’s approval before making any decisions which might affect the business.
• Through litigation, the business owners may have unwittingly made their lawyers new partners in the business: Lawyers are often paid for their work from the profits once shared only by the owners, and those lawyers will be paid before the business owners share in those profits.

via Tips to Make Business Divorce Simple | BusinessNewsDaily.com.

For an increasing number of Baby Boomer daughters, Mother’s Day is a world removed from breakfast in bed and a homemade card with tiny outlined fingerprints.

Rather, it is a day – like so many others – to focus on their own aging mothers and celebrate in ways more appropriate to the limitations of the elderly.

The second Sunday in May serves as a reminder that elder care issues are an increasingly dominant aspect of today’s work and family dynamics in general, with a somewhat greater impact on women, in particular.

Among the many staggering statistics that detail the costs of and rate at which our population is aging, this one stands out: people over 80 years old are the fastest growing segment of the aging population, and women make up the majority of that over-80 demographic.

via For Baby Boomers, Mother’s Day Puts Focus On Elder Care Crisis – Forbes.

Embroiled in a legal battle over the custody of his dog, a Brooklyn man is offering everything from a $250 game of fetch with his beloved puggle to limited edition art pieces to raise money for his depleted legal fund.

Manhattan art gallery employee Craig Dershowitz, 34, has already burned through $60,000 of his own savings in the cross-country court battle for the return of Knuckles, who is one-quarter pug and three-quarters beagle. Dershowitz’s ex-girlfriend, wardrobe stylist Sarah Brega, currently has the dog in her home in California.

via Man spends $60,000 in custody fight for Knuckles the dog – TODAY Pets & Animals – TODAY.com.

When things don’t work out between you and the person you married, you suffer internally, agonizing over a new life without each other, reminiscing about the way he once made you feel. Then, it hits you: what about your children? What happens to them?

For most, the custodial decision is practical. The children will stay with you, their mother, their nurturer, their care-giver. You are the one who kisses their feverish foreheads, who cleans up the vomit and tucks them into bed. Is Divorce Becoming a Luxury?

Beyond the financial aspects of your marriage and deciding who keeps the kids, not much is discussed, and many parents forget about the emotional turmoil their children suffer as a result of divorce. But it’s not just the parents who suffer from the failed union. Often, children of divorced couples undergo the mayhem in silence.

via 9 Things Kids Of Divorced Parents Don’t Want To Admit [EXPERT] | Ms. N. Meridian | YourTango.

Forget fighting like cats and dogs. These days, divorcing spouses are fighting over their cats and dogs.

On Tuesday, News 4 Tucson investigated the rising number of pet custody battles, which attorneys surveyed by the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers in 2006 say have increased substantially in the past decade.

Pets are considered property in every state in the country, according to the local news report, so judges often have their hands tied when couples come to them looking to reach custody agreements for their pooch.

via Pet Custody: Divorced Couples Fighting Over Fido VIDEO.