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Many people, attorneys included, believe that when both spouses are working outside the home and have been married for less that 20 years, the court will not award alimony. Two cases decided by the Iowa Court of Appeals on September 2, 2009 show that this is not always the case. Alimony may be used to […]

Several recent court cases have once again confirmed that anything you say can and will be used against you even if you have not been given your Miranda warnings. In State v. O’Dell, the defendant was stopped for routine traffic violations. Because of the very cold weather, the officer asked the defendant to sit in […]

Plain view is one of the exemptions to the rule that law enforcement needs a search warrant to use evidence against a suspect. For example, if a car is stopped for speeding and the officer sees marijuana sitting out in the open, in “plain view”, the officer can seize the marijuana and use it to charge a person with possession ...

A new rule from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has some Americans leaving China and Ethiopia without the children they adopted there.

A new study reaches the at once fascinating and troubling result that preschoolers as young as three can suffer one of the most debilitating mental illnesses we know of: chronic depression.

Story County will be one the sites in Iowa for the nationwide Adoption Saturday, this November 21st. Adoption hearings will be held at the Ames Municipal building, 515 Clark Avenue. This special event will run from 8:00 A.M. to 12:00 P.M. (Noon). I will be one of the lead attorneys handling most of the adoptions that day.

The Iowa Court of Appeals once again stated how difficult it is for a parent to change custody after a divorce. In the case of IN RE THE MARRIAGE OF MICHELLE SAWYER AND BRENT SAWYER Upon the Petition of MICHELLE SAWYER, filed on August 19th, 2009 the Court ruled:

Iowa law favors placing a child with his or her parent over all other placement options, even if it means separating siblings. In: IN THE INTEREST OF K.Y., S.H., and J.Y., Minor Children, A.M.Y., Mother, Appellant, filed August 19, 2009 the Court of Appeals upheld the decision of the Juvenile Court to place a child with the non custodial father

If the Washington Post hoped to give readers something to talk about, it couldn’t have done better than to publish a front-page piece on Sunday about a woman living in a tony New York suburb who’s squeaking by on $300,000 a year.

As an article on the American Psychological Association website notes, psychologists pretty much agree there’s not much data to support the effectiveness of lie-detector tests to sort out truth from lies.