Riverside Family Law Blog

Does the summer heat tend to make you surly after a while If so, you aren't alone. Studies have long noted that hot weather seems to coincide with aggressive behavior. Just about every type of criminal activity tends to rise, including assaults, robberies and murders. Science has also discovered that people are just less friendly and more disinclined to be nice to others when the temperatures rise.

If you're living with a spouse who has problems controlling their emotions, the summer heat can literally bring tensions to a boil. However, the heat is not entirely to blame. Aside from the heat, other seasonal factors that may increase the likelihood of domestic violence include:

• Family pressures, including too much "togetherness" while the kids are home from school or everyone is on a vacation
• Social drinking, which tends to rise during the summer months as people spend more time relaxing in their yards or with friends
• Financial frustrations, especially if a family overspends on their vacation or other recreational activities and then runs into a money crisis later

Your finances are a little different now that you're divorced. While you'd love to give your child the sun, the moon and the stars on a platter, you can only afford so much. Your child support payments already take a pretty hefty chunk out of your paycheck every month.

That makes the bill you just received from your ex-spouse a big shock. They want to your child to participate in a remote-learning "e-camp" or some kind of extended-stay camp this year so that they stay occupied over the summer -- and you're being asked to pay half the cost.

When parents split up, child support often becomes a hard-fought issue. The paying parent may feel financially drained, while the receiving parent may feel like they don't get enough.

The tensions that exist between parents over child support can be aggravated because of misunderstandings about how that support can be used. Whether you're paying or receiving child support, here's what you need to know.

You've always been an art lover -- and so has your spouse. You've amassed a significant collection of pieces in your life together. Now that your marriage is ending, however, you have to find a way to split the collection fairly.

This is a common problem that can pertain to just about any kind of collection that you have. Even something that you thought of as entirely "your thing" can become part of an ugly battle for the marital assets. For example, your spouse may never have so much as left a fingerprint on your coin collection but will now claim that half of its contents (or value) is really theirs.