Going in front of a Texas judge for any family law matter can be a frightening and intimidating experience, especially if you aren’t familiar with the legal process.

However, doing a little homework and working with an experienced family law attorney can go a long way to presenting a persuasive and thorough case to achieve the best possible outcome.

Types of family court matters

A variety of circumstances exist where one or both parents, children, grandparents or others may be called before a family court judge. These include:

When a spouse exhibits hostile feelings toward their partner, children are often caught in the middle. This can lead to feelings of anger, fear or resentment towards one parent by the children. This is often referred to a parental alienation.

Parental alienation is a common syndrome in many divorces. This can result in children refusing to see or even talk to an alienated parent. This attitude can even influence Texas child conservatorship decisions.

What are the signs of parental alienation?

In a perfect world, divorcing parents put the needs of their children first, and many do. However, others driven by anger and bitterness against a spouse may lose sight of that and manipulate a child usingguilt or even direct disparaging remarks to damage the other parent's credibility. Signs of parental alienation include:

When spouses begin the divorce process, emotions typically run high, making it extremely difficult for both parties to share the same space. A contentious split may lead one spouse to move out of the family home to avoid confrontations.

However, from a strategic point of view, the spouse who leaves can be at a disadvantage in the divorce case, and that disparity can be even more significant if the other spouse remains in the home with their children.

Staying in the home has two important upsides

While moving out of the family home technically doesn’t mean you forfeit any legal rights, there are strategic and legal incentives for staying, such as:

A new survey shows a radical shift in the economic structure of families in the United States as more women say they are outearning their husbands than ever before.

The research by TD Ameritrade says nearly half of the women who took part in the survey say they make as much or more than their partners. That's a seismic change from 1960 when only 3.8% of women were the chief breadwinners, according to the Pew Research Center. Women now comprise more than half of the workforce in the country, and the percentage of those becoming the primary wage earner is expected to rise.

Marital strife over changing roles

Researchers found clear signs of a generational shift as millennial women are nearly twice as likely as their baby boomer counterparts to earn as much or more than their partners. But this often leads to conflict between couples. More than one in five millennials say their relationships feel more strained because one partner earns more than the other, while only one out of every 10 baby boomers say the disparity in earning status causes friction.

Fear the Cloud

Today, people are texting more and talking less, with today's average adult spending 23 hours a week texting. According to a recent study, Americans exchange twice as many texts as they do phone calls. With that in mind, you would think that we would take a little more care in what we send via text message, but for whatever reason, the social etiquette we show on social media, in person, and on the phone all goes out the window when we text. From lewd photos to incriminating confessions, people will say just about anything via text, all the while mistakenly believing that no one else is watching (or reading). But this could not be further from the truth.

Not many of us understand the “cloud”. That great database in the sky. But rest assured, anything you write or send via text message is stored there and can be accessed at any time—yes, even deleted messages. Because of this, it is extremely important that you refrain from saying anything incriminating or potentially harmful to your character via text message. Especially if you are going through divorce.