You might not realize that there is much more to family law than just the consequences of a divorce. Family law addresses outside focus areas as well, such as annulment, adoption, agreement modifications, and even military benefits. In short, there’s more than meets the eye when it comes to family law. It’s there to aid in all aspects of families and court.

Outside Focus Areas: The Reach of Family Law

Adoption

An aspect of family law that you might not have considered, is adoption. Bringing a new member into your family outside of natural birth can be quite difficult. There’s a lot of issues that have the ability to pop up when adopting. That’s why having an attorney on your side can be so helpful. You want to make sure adoption goes smoothly, and that you have someone to help you sort through the potential issues that come with bringing this child into your home and family.

Annulment

Annulments are usually very difficult to receive, but there are instances where this route is appropriate and thus, awarded. Family law attorneys are trained to spot a marriage that can be voided, rather than dissolved. An annulment basically goes to say that the marriage never happened, where a divorce merely dissolves it and resets your status to ‘single’.

As we’ve mentioned, an annulment is not commonly awarded, and has to be due to one of these issues:

• Duress: One spouse is coerced, or forced, into marrying the other
• Fraud: One spouse lied about something that was essential to the marriage. For example, mental health issues, impotency, etc.
• Bigamy: One spouse was married at the time when they married you
• Incest: The spouses are related to one another in some way
• Mental incompetence: One spouse is not mentally capable of making the decision to marry
• Underage: One spouse is below the legal age to marry, or lacks a parent’s consent
• No cohabitation: The spouses never lived together at any point in time during the marriage.

As you can tell, these grounds are quite difficult to meet, and require evidence of such a claim. However, if you meet those grounds— you’re most definitely eligible to apply for this avenue of our outside focus areas. But, the court does not grant annulments easily. After reading this, or speaking with an attorney, you might come to realize that you do not meet these requirements and will have to file for divorce.

Military Benefits

Due to the fact that South Carolina is home to many military members and families— military benefits are very much integrated into family law proceedings in our neck of the woods. In the event of a divorce from someone in the military, you might wonder what that means for your family and the benefits they receive from your spouse. Having an attorney to explain the rights you have, the benefits you maintain, and how these things change post-divorce is extremely important. Especially when there are children within the marriage.

Family Law and Decision Modification

We mentioned modifications to child support in our child support section, and it comes into play here. Family law in Anderson does allow for you to modify certain orders and agreements made in court. However, modification requires there to be a significant change in circumstances, such as a remarriage. There can be modifications make to visitation, custody, support, and alimony as well. The only area not up for renegotiation, is property division.