Mark Ashton

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The county where I do most of my work has been “live” (mostly) since early June 2020.  That presents issues in its own right, but I have avoided the new trend toward “Zoom” proceedings until very recently.  Meanwhile, the legal continuing education community has devoted a lot of time to courses about how “Trial by…

These are difficult times.  Some parts of the economy have responded well to the pandemic crisis.  Others, especially those in the travel, leisure, and entertainment industries have experienced enormous financial challenges.  Sadly, this sometimes prompts desperate measures.  You should not become an unwary victim of desperate measures.  You are the best person to protect yourself…

This will be short, for once.  Divorce often involves one spouse buying out another from the marital residence.  Best advice was, and still is, home values are such that paying for an appraisal can be useful.  But of course, then there are all of the computer programs like Zillow that try to do it for…

Just about every divorce case involves a house and its corresponding mortgage.  In a small number of cases parties agree that dissolution of the marriage is also an opportune time to downsize the residence, but in most situations, at least one of the parties wants to keep the residence, even if just, “for a while.”…

We have heard about the data.  In 2015, the Labor Department’s Bureau of Labor Statistics published a study indicating that the average worker could expect to hold 12 jobs during his/her career.  More recently, another study indicates that among younger workers (ages 25-35), job changes are occurring once every 2.8 years.

Many of these jobs…

Imagine being a kid; any age over four.  Unless you are well north of age 100, you have never seen anything like this.  Adults fighting about everything and demonstrating some levels of rudeness not seen since the school bussing controversy in the 1970s where people fought in the streets over whether or how to promote…

Family law blogs are usually not fertile grounds to write about criminal law.  Yet even family lawyers are not immune from situations where our specialty crosses paths with the dark side.  We have previously written about Pennsylvania’s tightly wound wiretap law, which requires that both parties consent before sound is electronically recorded.  Failure to get…