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Recent rulings of importance to your practice.

Stock options became a large part of many marital estates involved in marriage dissolution during the "bubble" of the late 1990s. As one would expect, the courts struggled with the issues this new situation presented, primarily what options were to be included in the marital estate.

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A child who is too young to testify against her alleged abuser may speak through her mother, under an unusual application of an exception to the hearsay rule. A judge in upstate New York has ruled that the mother of a 3-year-old girl can testify about what the child told her in complaining that the mother's boyfriend had fondled her. The child had awakened her mother to tell her of the assault.

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The practice of family law can be fulfilling and profitable if you ensure that your clients pay you. If you are paid for your work, your practice will be successful and you will be happy; if you are not paid for your services, you will abhor family law.

As circumstances change, matrimonial practitioners must review the law in certain areas to see if those laws need to be amended to keep pace with changing times. For example, the onset of AIDS has created almost a new class of terminally ill people. These people who are involved in divorce cases may find themselves in a legal conundrum when it comes to term life insurance benefits. Traditionally, under prior law in some states, only cash surrender value was deemed property. <i>See, e.g., In re Marriage of Mullins</i>, 121 Ill.App.3d 86, 458 N.E.2d 1360 (Ill. 4th Dist. 1984). Historically, term policies, therefore, had no value in divorce proceedings. Those cases, however, may be distinguishable where the insured was not terminally ill, and the proceeds therefore become much less speculative.

On Dec. 16, President George W. Bush signed the "can spam" legislation passed earlier in the month by Congress. The legislation provides for jail time and hefty fines for serious violators and calls for the creation of a "do not spam" registry.