Litigating With Subpoenas

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Subpoenas are an essential litigation tool used by attorneys to ensure that they have all of the information that is available. The intent of a subpoena is to get information that could have an impact on the outcome of a trial, but which an attorney would not want to disclose voluntarily. Often, subpoenas will result in the disclosure of information that can result in a settlement before the trial begins. Subpoenas can lead to a better understanding of the other side’s case with a legal search. Thus, the attorney for the party that might look culpable if the information were to be disclosed will now provide this information with a subpoena specifically requesting the information.

Subpoenas offer attorneys a chance to get information that will help prove or disprove their client’s case. Criminal defense attorneys use subpoenas to obtain witness or lay opinions that could cast serious doubt on the guilt of their clients. Information on how evidence was handled in a DUI case could be vital in putting up a proper defense.

Attorneys in civil cases will use subpoenas to get information that may result in resolving the claim without a trial, or at the least, will give an advantage in the trial to the side that was favored by the material subpoenaed.

Using the power of the subpoena requires an understanding of what a subpoena can do, and about how to get a subpoena issued. The reasons for requesting a subpoena must be established in the motion requesting it. Care must be exercised to avoid the errors often found in a request for a subpoena. The constitutional grounds for requesting a subpoena must be honored, or the request will be denied.

Subpoenas are issued by the court which has jurisdiction over the case. Every court has procedures for issuing subpoenas, and they will expect these to be followed. Courts will also stipulate how the subpoena must be served upon the person who is expected to respond.

Subpoenas must be specific in requesting information, or the judge may deny the request; subpoenas cannot be used as a witch hunt.

Subpoenas are formal legal commands and they should be taken seriously. Failure to comply with a subpoena can lead to contempt of court charges, which may ultimately lead to financial penalties and cause harm to the case you have been asked to help with.

5 Things To Avoid When Going Through A Divorce

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It is normal to feel confused and overwhelmed when going through a divorce. Sometimes people make mistakes that cost time, money and their sanity. The usual stress level rises to an almost intolerable level. However, you can take steps to recognize the 5 things to avoid when going through a divorce. Avoiding these 5 things will help you to move on to the next phase of your life in better shape and not bitter or broken.

1. Avoid Failing To Look At The Big Picture

Apply the life lessons you learned about planning for your future. Don’t allow events to unfold and then react to them. This will make you feel helpless and like your life is spinning out of control. Instead, look at the big picture which is where you want to be six months and a year from now. Plan on taking the steps to get there. Look at some “what if” scenarios. Plan for contingencies and the worse-case scenarios. You will then be prepared for all events and especially the ugly ones.

2. Don’t Let Your Mind Be Ruled By Your Heart Or By Your Anger

Emotions should not be the basis for making decisions; logic should be. Divorce is a business transaction. Assets and debts have to be divided. This is what you have after you strip away the heartache, grief, anxiety and a feeling of being lost. Putting all of these feelings on the shelf is important. You cannot and should not minimize the good things you and your spouse had together, but these memories cannot control your planning.

You are experiencing a broken heart and a lot of anger. These emotions often just prolong the inevitable, and they run the bill up. Many of the emotions are based on an unrealistic belief that you can “win” the divorce. A divorce really doesn’t have a winner. Trying to be one only prolongs your chance to move on to a better life. Costly and bitter disputes yield nothing but lingering grief.

3. Letting Someone Else Decide For You

It can be easy to give up and let someone else make decisions for you. Of course, you need legal counsel, but ultimately it is you, not your friends or your attorney that has to live with the decisions made. Divorce professionals working for you is good, but seeking the wisdom of a group can be bad.

4. Failing To Educate Yourself

If you educate yourself about the divorce process and the personal feelings involved, you will feel much better equipped to deal with all of the issues.

5. Not taking time for yourself

Separation can be a lonely place to be, but so can a quick attachment that fails to meet your needs and probably their needs as well. Take time to find out who you are now, and who you want to be. You need to avoid further disappointment.

What Is Defamation Of Character?

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Defamation is an all-inclusive word for statements that damage a person’s reputation in the community. Defamation that occurs in the written form is called “libel,” and defamation that is spoken is called “slander.” Defamation is not a criminal wrong, but it is a civil wrong known as a “tort” in the language of the law.

California defamation law requires that the victim must prove that the alleged act of defamation meets the following criteria before they can sue for damages:

> The statement must be published meaning that a third party saw or heard the statement. The term published does not mean that the statement was printed in a book. It means that the statement was made public by either the electronic medium or some type of printed medium and it tends to lower the reputation of the victim in their community.

> The statement must be false, and it must be proven to be false. The statement must be made as a fact. An opinion cannot be considered false because opinions cannot be proved to be objectively false.

> The statement must be injurious. Defamation law requires that the victim prove actual harm such as the loss of a job, being treated rudely by neighbors and friends because of the statement, or that they suffered from false press reports that were based on the statement. Proving falsity is a complex matter and the advice of an experienced attorney should be sought.

> There should be no doubt in the mind of the average person that the statements refer to the victim.

Most witnesses are protected from a law suit. Statements made by witnesses who make a false statement in court or during a deposition cannot be sued for defamation. The law protects a witness because fear should not constrain them.

Defamation is an act of libel if the defamer published a defamatory statement about a person in a written or another form, and other people became aware of the statement. The law does not impose any other criteria because it is assumed that when a defamatory statement has been made in a written or other form, it will remain injurious for a long time. Again, this is also a complex matter and the advice of an attorney should be sought.

A private person who is defamed has more protection than public figures have. A private person who is suing for defamation can prevail without having to prove that they were defamed by a person acting with actual malice. This means that the defamer can be sued if they have failed to check the accuracy of their statement and acted in an otherwise negligent manner.

It is essential that proving defamation in California must meet the above elements or criteria by a preponderance of the evidence. This means that the evidence shows that it is more likely than not that each element or criteria is met.

Defamation of character is a complex principle in California law, and it is essential that an attorney reviews each fact that tends to support a claim of defamation.

How Can I Prepare Myself for a Custody Battle?

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If you are looking to regain custody of your child/children, there are many steps you could take to improve your chances of doing so. There are also a few key tips about the California divorce process that will make you feel better prepared and informed for your custody proceedings.

First Step:

Choosing the best family law attorney you can afford is first and foremost the best way to start your journey. You will get the most knowledgeable and experienced help possible!  Hiring the right attorney could mean the difference of getting what you wanted or getting nothing at all. Some advice: You don’t want to slack off any of this process when your children’s future is at stake!

Second Step:

This may sound cliché, but keeping a journal and documenting this journey could benefit you greatly. Here are a few things you’re going to want to keep track of:

• How much time you spend with your children
• What activities you are all involved in
• How much time the other parent spends with the child/children
• Note the time the other parent is gone, when they go to work and come home, and when they travel out of town
• Note any negative remarks, threats, arguments, profanities, or any other behavior that would impact custody

It would be in your best interest to keep track of the past six months to a year. Make sure you write down everything you have done, as well as, everything the other parent has done. Be sure to be ready to prove you are an active and involved caretaker, and that you deserve custody of your children. Bringing photos or an album of your child being happy in your care could only help your situation.

Third Step:

Showing that you are well established and are able to provide for your child/children is important. Make sure the court is aware of the fact that you:

• Have a job and a place of residency
• Have already been preparing for school and child care
• Have community ties through extracurricular activities, volunteering at school, involvement in your neighborhood, etc.

Be prepared to show why the other parent is not capable of providing for the child properly. It might help to find people who would testify about problems with the other parent’s inadequacies.

Do not leave the family residence until you have a custody arrangement in place.

Do not leave the family residence without a court order or written agreement if you are planning to move out, even without the children. A written agreement needs to set the custody arrangement to start once you have left home.

Full Custody and Over-Night Visitation

Both custody and visitation are decided in court on what is in the child’s best interest. Although it is best for the child to have strong relationships with both of the parents. If this is a civil separation and there isn’t any negativity with your ex, there is no reason he or she can’t have overnight visitation.

Questions for Your Attorney

As you go through this custody process, be sure to ask your attorney all the right questions. Here are a few you should ask:

• What factors are important in gaining temporary custody of my children?
• What are the consequences of moving out of my house and giving temporary child custody to the other parent?
• If I lose temporary child custody, what should I do to gain or improve my situation and get a better permanent custody arrangement?

Making Your Case For Spousal Support

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After separating from your spouse, you are likely to experience some financial challenges. Depending on what kind of separation you had, you may be entitled to spousal support that can help your financial situation. When deciding if a spouse is entitled to spousal support benefits, the court will consider various aspects regarding their marriage. The main factor that they will consider is whether or not you have children and if so, who is the primary caretaker for these children. They will also consider your lifestyle before the divorce took place and also your marital standard of living.

When preparing a spousal support case, you will need to include several documents that basically show where and how you spend your money. Some of the documents you will include are:

1. Credit-Card Statements
2. Checking Account Statements
3. Credit Reports
4. Passports
5. Tax Returns
6. Gift Tax Returns

The best thing to do when seeking spousal support is to be prepared. It is important that you protect yourself and your children. Make sure that you have an experienced attorney by your side that is after your best interests.

For more information regarding Von Esch Law Group and their legal services, visit their website and Facebook page!

Four Surprising Facts about Family Law

In a recent State Farm Insurance commercial, a young woman says to a young gentleman, “You can’t put anything on the Internet that is not true.”  He asks her where she heard that, and in unison, they exclaim, “the Internet!”  The Internet is available to most people and given that nearly 50% of all marriages end in divorce, and an increasing number of people have children without ever getting married, family law topics are rampant on the worldwide web.  And because anyone can indeed put something on the Internet that isn’t true, this creates a lot of misinformation.  Unless or until they consult a lawyer, many people believe the family law myths and misconceptions they found somewhere on a website, and I often hear of them from people when they first come to consult with me.  Here are a few:

Do I Have A Right to Counsel in Divorce?  Parties do not have a right to counsel in divorce cases.  The right to counsel generally applies in cases where the litigants may lose their physical liberty if they lose the litigation (i.e., criminal cases).  There is also a right to counsel in dependency proceedings where the State seeks to terminate parental rights.  The recent case of Marriage of Campi, made it clear that “[t]here is no such statute or court rule governing dissolution proceedings, and there is no such risk of a loss of the custody of a child, because custody is awarded to one or both parents, not the state.”

Do I Have A Common Law Marriage?  Common law marriage, whereby a valid marriage is created by operation of law without satisfying solemnization and other legal requirements, was abolished in California in 1895.  Despite the fact there is no common law marriage in California, this does not mean that quasi-marital rights (called palimony or Marvin actions) cannot arise in a relationship where the parties lack a legal marriage.   In order for this to occur, the equivalent of a contractual relationship between the parties must exist.  The contract is usually not written but instead implied or oral and therefore typically very difficult to prove.  If such a quasi-marital relationship exists, there is no requisite time period associated with the length of the relationship to prove the claim.

Are Mothers Are Always Awarded Primary Custody of The Children?  The court is required to make custody decisions which are in the best interest of the child.  Judges believe in stability and continuity for children.  Therefore, it is the parent who primarily cared for the children during the marriage who is most likely to receive the initial award of primary physical custody.  Because many families are structured in traditional roles, with the mother being the primary caregiver, the mother often is awarded primary physical custody.  If the father can demonstrate his role as the primary caregiver, then he is most likely the parent to be awarded primary physical custody. Proper childcare, not gender of the caregiver, is the court’s top concern.

If I Quit My Job Can I Be Required to Pay Support?  The family law obligation for one to support his or her child and/or spouse is not easily shirked.  In California, the law allows the court to assign to a party an income figure equivalent to their capacity to earn it.  Therefore, even if a party does not actually earn that income, it is possible that support will be calculated as though that income is received.  This means that anyone who quits his or her job and thus lacks an actual income might be ordered to pay support.  The practical effect usually forces that person to return to work.

While the Internet contains much useful information, it also has many urban legends, myths, misconceptions and simply wrong information.  Therefore, it is important to meet with a lawyer who understands the law. If you have heard or read something which you think could impact your case, do not hesitate to ask your lawyer if it is true.

Courtesy of: JD SUPRA BUSINESS ADVISOR

Tax Court Goes To Webster For Definition Of Construction – And Watch That NAICS Code

If you are involved in construction and reconstruction, you may get a better deal on your losses from rental real estate and beginning with 2013 avoid the Obamacare tax on gains from rental real estate.  But what exactly is construction and reconstruction?  The Tax Court had to look it up in the dicitionary.  Here’s the story.

Some Background

The stake in the heart of the tax shelter vampire provided by the Tax Reform Act of 1986 was Code Section 469 , which introduced the oxymoronic concept – passive activities.  Other sections of the Code, like those concerning S corporations discuss “passive income” – interest and dividends and the like, but such investment income is not the passive activity income that 469 refers to.  Passive activity income and more significantly loss comes from a trade or business activity in which you do not materially participate.  We are required to divide our trade or business income from proprietorships, partnerships and S Corporations into two buckets.  If the passive bucket is a net loss, the loss is suspended and carried forward to be used if there is passive income in the future or when the underlying activity is entirely disposed.

The rules about how you classify your activities and measure material participation are mind boggling in their complexity.  Don’t get me started.  There is one rule that created a lot of angst, though.  Rental activities are per se passive.  This was troubling to people in the real estate industry who might for example have rental losses on a development while making money on the sale of property.  So a special rule was created for people involved in real estate trades or businesses.  If you spend more than 750 hours per year in real estate trades or businesses and the amount of time that you spend in the real estate trades is greater than the amount of time you spending doing anything else, then the per se passive rental income rule does not apply to you.  Rental losses are not passive, if you materially participate in the related properties.

Not Easy For People With Day Jobs To Be Considered Real Estate Pros

For some reason, the IRS is particularly zealous in enforcing Code Section 469.  If you have substantial income and are posting losses from rental activities, you can put as many “I love Obama” signs on your lawn as you want and you still have a better than average chance of being challenged. At least that is my inference from the cases I read and some discussions with other practitioners.

The way the cases have broken, people with non-real estate day jobs who claim that they spend more time on their amateur landlord activity are almost always accused of having insufficient records of their time, “ballpark guestimates, a colorful term that the Tax Court seems to have reserved for 469 cases. Even in the cases where people have logs, they are often found to be improbable.   You don’t see “pants on fire” in the decisions, but you suspect the judges are whispering it under their breath.
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Better Strategies Being Sought to Curb Domestic Violence

On a high school football field near Pittsburgh, an assistant coach tackled a topic unrelated to the upcoming game.

“One of the biggest components of being a man is how you treat females,” Kevin Murray told his players at Woodland Hills High. “We’d be doing you a very big disservice by not holding you accountable.”

At the jailhouse in High Point, N.C., a sterner version of that message is now given routinely to men detained for domestic-violence offenses and considered at risk of re-offending.

“We’re putting these guys on notice that domestic violence is not going to be tolerated here,” said Police Chief Marty Sumner. “The message is very clear: ‘We know who you are, we know what you’re doing. It has to stop.’”

The two programs target different audiences. But in the realm of domestic-violence prevention, where the record of success is spotty, they share a status as two of the nation’s most promising initiatives.
Coaching Boys Into Men is one of the flagship programs developed by Futures Without Violence, a nonprofit working to curb abuse of women and children. Thousands of high school coaches across the country, now joined by some middle school coaches, have received training in how to convey to their players the importance of treating young women with respect and avoiding abusive behavior.

The program has attracted the notice of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The federal agency funded a three-year evaluation, involving more than 2,000 high school athletes in Sacramento County, California, which found that participating players were more likely to intervene to stop abuse and less likely to perpetrate it.

High Point’s program — the Offender-Focused Domestic Violence Initiative — was conceived in 2009 based on an approach developed by David M. Kennedy, a professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York. While many programs focus on helping victims of domestic violence, High Point’s initiative targets the offender with a strategy of aggressive deterrence.

Since the program was fully implemented in 2012, the recidivism rate for domestic-violence offenders in High Point has been cut to about 9 percent, which the police department says is about one-third the national rate. There’s been one intimate-partner homicide since 2009, compared to 17 between 2004 and 2008.

“We’d get 5,000 domestic-violence calls a year — every year it’s our No. 1 call,” Chief Sumner said. “It gets passed on from generation to generation, but this program is a really good shot at breaking that cycle citywide.”

Efforts to raise awareness about domestic violence have been vigorously pursued in the U.S. for more than three decades. After Congress passed the Violence Against Women Act in 1994, domestic violence committed by intimate partners — current or former spouses, boyfriends or girlfriends — declined by more than 60 percent over the next 10 years.

Since then, however, the numbers have stayed relatively flat.

Even as incidents involving National Football League players and other pro athletes refocus attention on domestic violence, leading prevention advocates say more resources and smarter strategies are needed to combat it.

“We now have a safety net for victims, we have the laws in place, judges who understand the seriousness of the issue,” said Esta Soler, president of Futures Without Violence. “We need to do more to prevent the problems, not just treat the problems.”

For decades, so-called batterer intervention programs have been one of the main forms of prevention, with offenders participating in group sessions aimed at promoting non-abusive behavior. A range of local programs have won praise — such as Wisdom Walk, which focuses on African-American men in Milwaukee, and Caminar Latino, which runs a 24-week program for Latino men in Atlanta.
However, research on the effectiveness of group intervention programs has produced mixed findings — causing some judges and probation officers to mandate that men participate, others saying there’s no evidence of success.

And what about the much-discussed programs in High Point and Pittsburgh? Here’s a closer look at each:

The new regimen in High Point, a city of about 107,000, kicks into gear whenever police respond to a domestic disturbance call. Even if there’s no arrest, and no previous record of domestic violence, the alleged aggressors receive another visit from a police officer within 48 hours and are notified that they are henceforth on a “watch list.”

With any subsequent domestic violence offense, there’s an escalating series of consequences, including a face-to-face warning from a detective at the time of arrest and — for some repeat offenders — a summons to appear in person before a panel of police, prosecutors and members of the community.

“In an hour, we explain how it’s going to be different,” Sumner said. “We will use any means to sanction you.”

The pressure tactics include threatening to classify any further domestic violence offense as a felony and to expedite prosecution of any other criminal case pending against the offender. Sumner’s department has found that many domestic-violence offenders have a record of other violent crimes, and uses those records to help decide which targets of the program might deserve extra scrutiny.

The community panel makes clear that the police will maintain their aggressive stance regardless of whether the offender’s victim plays an active role in any future case or seeks to stay out of it.

David Kennedy noted that in the traditional responses to domestic violence, the onus often was on the victim to report the abuse and testify about it in court, sometimes incurring threats and further violence in the process.

“We wanted to be able to say to the offender, ‘You’re dealing with us, you’re not dealing with her. The state is going to make you stop,’” Kennedy said. “The feedback from the women is, ‘You’ve got his attention. Things are better. Keep it up, and keep me out of it.’”

If victimized women do want services, they are offered through a Victim’s Justice Center that opened in April. It’s a one-stop site where victims can meet with police, get protective orders from legal aid attorneys, and be informed of other available services.

“In the past, it was up to the victim to do all the work while dealing with the threats,” said Tiffany Atkins, a domestic violence attorney with Legal Aid of North Carolina. “Now we take the responsibility.”

Sumner said his department has been able to implement the program without increasing its budget — primarily by adding some new training and reassigning two detectives to specialize in domestic-violence cases.

Said Kennedy of the approach, “If you do it smart, it doesn’t need to be costly.”

If any high school was tailor-made for Coaching Boys Into Men, it might be Woodland Hills. It’s a perennial football powerhouse in western Pennsylvania, sending many of its players on to major college teams and even to the NFL. It also serves a 12-town district that includes some of greater Pittsburgh’s roughest neighborhoods.

“The community of kids we deal with — there are a lot of broken homes,” said Keith Davis, who attended the school and now, at 30, is in his third year on the football coaching staff.

“A lot of players have seen where their father has beaten their mother, beaten their sister — it’s no wonder they grow up the same way,” Davis said. “The program — they’re actually living it. In some schools, it might not hit home the way it did with us.”

Davis recalled how players followed news reports of the Steubenville, Ohio, case in which two high school football players were convicted last year of raping a 16-year-old girl after an alcohol-fueled party in 2012.

“A lot of our guys came back and said, ‘Coach, I’ve been in situations like that,’” Davis said. “We have to put a stop to it.”

Launched as a public service announcement campaign in 2001, Coaching Boys Into Men has since expanded to schools and coaches associations across the country — with new pilot programs this year involving coaches of 7th- and 8th-grade athletes. It’s based on the premise that young athletes will take exhortations from their coaches seriously, and then — as role models among their peers — will be taken seriously by other students as they re-think their attitudes about relationships and abuse.

“If you’re a student athlete, you’re also a student leader — respected by peers, by underclassmen, with a degree of influence and power,” said Alan Johnson, superintendent of the Woodland Hills School District. “You can be a leader for good, or a leader for bad. You have to make the decision which kind you’re going to be.”

One of the team’s top linemen on offense and defense, 265-pound senior Daniel Gibson, said the players, by taking the program to heart, had indeed had an influence on other students.

“Whatever we do, everyone else would like to do,” he said. “They get off on our vibe”

Another advocate of Coaching Boys Into Men is Wendell Say, head football coach for 35 years at Aiea High School near Honolulu. He’s been using the program for five years — it’s now a routine prelude to practices on Wednesdays.

“The curriculum is simple — it just takes 15 minutes at most, unless you let the kids talk,” Say said. “I sometimes take 45 minutes.”

Say says his players — many from low-income housing projects — often convey their firsthand knowledge of domestic violence. They’ve seen it in their family, or abused their own girlfriends, and they’ve also followed the domestic-violence cases involving Ray Rice and other NFL players.

“We still have kids who make wrong choices,” Say said. “But hopefully every year you learn more — a little understanding that just because you’re stronger doesn’t give you the right to hurt someone.”

The program — broken down thematically on a series of “training cards” — targets such behavior as catcalling and demeaning boasts about girlfriends. It also advises coaches on how to handle actual incidents of physical and sexual violence committed by team members.

The ethos is summed up in a pledge to be taken by players and coaches:

“I believe in treating women and girls with honor and respect. I know that violence is neither a solution nor a sign of strength. I believe that real men lead with conviction and speak out against violence against women and girls. I believe that I can be a role model to others by taking this pledge.”

In Pennsylvania and beyond, teaching boys and men to prevent domestic violence

On a high school football field near Pittsburgh, an assistant coach tackled a topic unrelated to the upcoming game.

“One of the biggest components of being a man is how you treat females,” Kevin Murray told his players at Woodland Hills High. “We’d be doing you a very big disservice by not holding you accountable.”

At the jailhouse in High Point, North Carolina, a sterner version of that message is now given routinely to men detained for domestic-violence offenses and considered at risk of re-offending.

“We’re putting these guys on notice that domestic violence is not going to be tolerated here,” said Police Chief Marty Sumner. “The message is very clear: ‘We know who you are, we know what you’re doing. It has to stop.'”

The two programs target different audiences. But in the realm of domestic-violence prevention, where the record of success is spotty, they share a status as two of the nation’s most promising initiatives.

Coaching Boys Into Men is one of the flagship programs developed by Futures Without Violence, a nonprofit working to curb abuse of women and children. Thousands of high school coaches across the country, now joined by some middle school coaches, have received training in how to convey to their players the importance of treating young women with respect and avoiding abusive behavior.

The program has attracted the notice of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The federal agency funded a three-year evaluation, involving more than 2,000 high school athletes in Sacramento County, California, which found that participating players were more likely to intervene to stop abuse and less likely to perpetrate it.

High Point’s program — the Offender-Focused Domestic Violence Initiative — was conceived in 2009 based on an approach developed by David M. Kennedy, a professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York. While many programs focus on helping victims of domestic violence, High Point’s initiative targets the offender with a strategy of aggressive deterrence.

Since the program was fully implemented in 2012, the recidivism rate for domestic-violence offenders in High Point has been cut to about 9 percent, which the police department says is about one-third the national rate. There’s been one intimate-partner homicide since 2009, compared to 17 between 2004 and 2008.

“We’d get 5,000 domestic-violence calls a year — every year it’s our No. 1 call,” Chief Sumner said. “It gets passed on from generation to generation, but this program is a really good shot at breaking that cycle citywide.”

Efforts to raise awareness about domestic violence have been vigorously pursued in the U.S. for more than three decades. After Congress passed the Violence Against Women Act in 1994, domestic violence committed by intimate partners — current or former spouses, boyfriends or girlfriends — declined by more than 60 percent over the next 10 years.

Since then, however, the numbers have stayed relatively flat.

Even as incidents involving National Football League players and other pro athletes refocus attention on domestic violence, leading prevention advocates say more resources and smarter strategies are needed to combat it.

“We now have a safety net for victims, we have the laws in place, judges who understand the seriousness of the issue,” said Esta Soler, president of Futures Without Violence. “We need to do more to prevent the problems, not just treat the problems.”

For decades, so-called batterer intervention programs have been one of the main forms of prevention, with offenders participating in group sessions aimed at promoting non-abusive behavior. A range of local programs have won praise — such as Wisdom Walk, which focuses on African-American men in Milwaukee, and Caminar Latino, which runs a 24-week program for Latino men in Atlanta.

However, research on the effectiveness of group intervention programs has produced mixed findings — causing some judges and probation officers to mandate that men participate, others saying there’s no evidence of success.

And what about the much-discussed programs in High Point and Pittsburgh? Here’s a closer look at each:

___

The new regimen in High Point, a city of about 107,000, kicks into gear whenever police respond to a domestic disturbance call. Even if there’s no arrest, and no previous record of domestic violence, the alleged aggressors receive another visit from a police officer within 48 hours and are notified that they are henceforth on a “watch list.”

With any subsequent domestic violence offense, there’s an escalating series of consequences, including a face-to-face warning from a detective at the time of arrest and — for some repeat offenders — a summons to appear in person before a panel of police, prosecutors and members of the community.

“In an hour, we explain how it’s going to be different,” Sumner said. “We will use any means to sanction you.”

The pressure tactics include threatening to classify any further domestic violence offense as a felony and to expedite prosecution of any other criminal case pending against the offender. Sumner’s department has found that many domestic-violence offenders have a record of other violent crimes, and uses those records to help decide which targets of the program might deserve extra scrutiny.

The community panel makes clear that the police will maintain their aggressive stance regardless of whether the offender’s victim plays an active role in any future case or seeks to stay out of it.

David Kennedy noted that in the traditional responses to domestic violence, the onus often was on the victim to report the abuse and testify about it in court, sometimes incurring threats and further violence in the process.

“We wanted to be able to say to the offender, ‘You’re dealing with us, you’re not dealing with her. The state is going to make you stop,'” Kennedy said. “The feedback from the women is, ‘You’ve got his attention. Things are better. Keep it up, and keep me out of it.'”

If victimized women do want services, they are offered through a Victim’s Justice Center that opened in April. It’s a one-stop site where victims can meet with police, get protective orders from legal aid attorneys, and be informed of other available services.

“In the past, it was up to the victim to do all the work while dealing with the threats,” said Tiffany Atkins, a domestic violence attorney with Legal Aid of North Carolina. “Now we take the responsibility.”

Sumner said his department has been able to implement the program without increasing its budget — primarily by adding some new training and reassigning two detectives to specialize in domestic-violence cases.

Said Kennedy of the approach, “If you do it smart, it doesn’t need to be costly.”

___

If any high school was tailor-made for Coaching Boys Into Men, it might be Woodland Hills. It’s a perennial football powerhouse in western Pennsylvania, sending many of its players on to major college teams and even to the NFL. It also serves a 12-town district that includes some of greater Pittsburgh’s roughest neighborhoods.

“The community of kids we deal with — there are a lot of broken homes,” said Keith Davis, who attended the school and now, at 30, is in his third year on the football coaching staff.

“A lot of players have seen where their father has beaten their mother, beaten their sister — it’s no wonder they grow up the same way,” Davis said. “The program — they’re actually living it. In some schools, it might not hit home the way it did with us.”

Davis recalled how players followed news reports of the Steubenville, Ohio, case in which two high school football players were convicted last year of raping a 16-year-old girl after an alcohol-fueled party in 2012.

“A lot of our guys came back and said, ‘Coach, I’ve been in situations like that,'” Davis said. “We have to put a stop to it.”

Launched as a public service announcement campaign in 2001, Coaching Boys Into Men has since expanded to schools and coaches associations across the country — with new pilot programs this year involving coaches of 7th- and 8th-grade athletes. It’s based on the premise that young athletes will take exhortations from their coaches seriously, and then — as role models among their peers — will be taken seriously by other students as they re-think their attitudes about relationships and abuse.

“If you’re a student athlete, you’re also a student leader — respected by peers, by underclassmen, with a degree of influence and power,” said Alan Johnson, superintendent of the Woodland Hills School District. “You can be a leader for good, or a leader for bad. You have to make the decision which kind you’re going to be.”

One of the team’s top linemen on offense and defense, 265-pound senior Daniel Gibson, said the players, by taking the program to heart, had indeed had an influence on other students.

“Whatever we do, everyone else would like to do,” he said. “They get off on our vibe”

Another advocate of Coaching Boys Into Men is Wendell Say, head football coach for 35 years at Aiea High School near Honolulu. He’s been using the program for five years — it’s now a routine prelude to practices on Wednesdays.

“The curriculum is simple — it just takes 15 minutes at most, unless you let the kids talk,” Say said. “I sometimes take 45 minutes.”

Say says his players — many from low-income housing projects — often convey their firsthand knowledge of domestic violence. They’ve seen it in their family, or abused their own girlfriends, and they’ve also followed the domestic-violence cases involving Ray Rice and other NFL players.

“We still have kids who make wrong choices,” Say said. “But hopefully every year you learn more — a little understanding that just because you’re stronger doesn’t give you the right to hurt someone.”

The program — broken down thematically on a series of “training cards” — targets such behavior as catcalling and demeaning boasts about girlfriends. It also advises coaches on how to handle actual incidents of physical and sexual violence committed by team members.

The ethos is summed up in a pledge to be taken by players and coaches:

“I believe in treating women and girls with honor and respect. I know that violence is neither a solution nor a sign of strength. I believe that real men lead with conviction and speak out against violence against women and girls. I believe that I can be a role model to others by taking this pledge.”

http://www.pennlive.com/nation-world/2014/11/in_pennsylvania_and_beyond_tea.html

Real Estate Law

Real Estate and Property Law covers an extensive legal area, which is regulated by federal and state statutes, as well as common law. Many aspects of this area overlap with contract law. The terms “real estate”, “realty” and “real property” are generally used interchangeably, although many people associate “real estate” more closely with the structures or buildings and the land. However, real property/real estate encompasses more than just the obviously tangible aspects. It comprises land and that which is attached to or belongs with the land, such as the immovable structures like buildings, houses, trees, bushes and minerals permanently affixed to the land, But it also consists of the interests, benefits and rights that are legally considered attached to the real property, which can include certain rights to the air above the land, to drill in the ground beneath it, rights to live on the property for a specific timeframe or to acquire the real property in the future, and more.

The practice area of real estate and property law deals with a variety of related issues, including the following: rights and interests in real estate and real property; sales, purchases and other transfers of real estate and real property; legal aspects of rental property and landlord issues; tenants’, renters’ and homeowners’ rights; title to real property; settlement of claims against property rights; property development; zoning and land use; related agriculture issues; home loans and foreclosures; and various other relevant topics. This is a complex practice area, further complicated by the significant inconsistency in the laws throughout different cities and states. Real estate attorneys are versed in many different activities, from the mundane drafting of deeds and filing of liens, to handling boundary and zoning disputes and even assisting families in court when threatened with foreclosure. Copyright HG.org

http://www.hg.org/realest.html

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