Milwaukee Family Law Blog

Judges in different states, including Wisconsin, have started to award fathers custody and spousal or child support because many dads have taken on stay-at-home roles as their wives have become primary breadwinners. With more mothers going into the workplace, fathers are often getting primary custody of their children in divorces. Changing roles in society have altered child custody trends. Sometimes a woman's desire to be successful can mean that she spends more time outside her home than her husband, which can affect whether she receives physical custody of her children in a divorce.

In the past, women received custody of children because of traditional roles in society. Women often received primary custody of their children and homes while men had visitation rights. Judges have increasingly started to award fathers primary custody because their decisions have been based more on which parents can spend more time with children in a given day, especially when they are younger. When fathers don't receive physical custody, judges are more prone to give dads 50 percent of the time with their children. Working moms and dads have a better chance of co-parenting if they initially work out parenting agreements together during divorces.

Wisconsin residents might be interested to hear that it is becoming more common for wives to be ordered to pay alimony to their ex-husbands in divorces. Husbands and wives do not necessarily have the stereotypical marriage arrangements that they used to have in the past. Traditionally, wives stayed at home while the men were the primary breadwinners. Now, however, wives may be the primary breadwinners, or both spouses may earn income equally.

Alimony was originally designed to allow the spouse who stayed at home to care for the home and children to continue living in the lifestyle he or she had become accustomed to. Traditionally, the woman was the one who received alimony from her husband during a divorce. With studies reporting that over 40 percent of the wives who work earn more than their husbands, that trend is beginning to shift. This makes it so that some husbands are, in fact, receiving alimony from their wives rather than the other way around.

A common question for Wisconsin residents who are divorcing is whether they can be held financially responsible for a former spouse's credit card debt. The answer may surprise some. Because Wisconsin is a community property state, a credit card company can pursue the cardholder's spouse for credit card debt even if the spouse is not a joint account holder. The spouse is presumed to be jointly liable for the debt unless he or she can prove otherwise.

In a divorce decree, the court divides the former couple's assets and debts between the two parties. If one spouse was incurring credit card debt without the other spouse's knowledge and without the other spouse benefiting in any way from the expenditures, the court should be so advised. The judge likely will take these circumstances into consideration when allocating debt between the parties, particularly if the expenditures contributed to the end of the marriage.

Should a mother's status as an illegal immigrant have any bearing on whether she is entitled to custody of her child? That was the question faced recently by an appeals court in a child custody case watched closely by immigrants' right advocates in Wisconsin and elsewhere. To the relief of many such advocates, the court concluded that immigration status had no bearing on the issue of custody.

The case involved a young mother who was an undocumented immigrant living in the United States. In 2009, after becoming an unwed mother at the age of 17, the woman moved in with her daughter's paternal grandparents and continued to live with them until September 2011. At that time, after a fight with the grandmother, the mother moved out and took her daughter with her. This led to a custody battle between the mother and the grandparents.