Tag: divorce and AI

Is January Really Divorce Month

Posted by Ron Kauffman on

Forbes magazine is currently reporting on what’s become a standard topic to start the new year: is January really the “divorce month.” Why does January even have this reputation? Is it because January is when there is a big increase in couples filing for divorce and child custody?

January Divorce

New Year New Start

While the new year brings on resolutions including diets, going “dry” in January, and an uptick in gym memberships, New Year’s resolutions can often include divorce. Some lawyers think that the first working Monday of the year is “Divorce Day.” In 2026, “Divorce Day” is Monday, January 5th.

Many couples stay together – with all the stress the holidays bring – “for the children.” But once New Year’s Day arrives, couples are free to think about fresh starts. Many law firms around the country have begun to call January the “Divorce Month”.

According to some research, divorce filings have peaked in late summer and early spring. Some experts believe that divorce is most likely driven by a domestic ritual calendar that governs family behavior. Often, August is the month for divorce filings following family vacations and right before school starts. The seasonal change of weather in the spring has also been said to cause people to act.

Interestingly, many people see a drop in divorce filings from Thanksgiving until the start of the New Year. Problems that already exist between couples become exacerbated during the Christmas holidays. The stress of spending time with relatives, cooking large elaborate meals, and the expense of buying presents can all be sources of stress and friction between couples.

New Years, under this theory, marks the final straw in an already tumultuous relationship and the resolution that they will not spend another unhappy year together. Inquiries of divorce lawyers can peak during January, but is it really just a comparison to the two months prior that saw a drop in divorce filings?

Florida Divorce

I’ve written about no fault divorce and statistics about divorce – such as the January divorce month phenomenon – before. The no-fault concept in Florida means you no longer have to prove a reason for the divorce, like your husband’s alleged infidelity with a congresswoman. Instead, you just need to state under oath that your marriage is “irretrievably broken.”

The official term for divorce in Florida is “dissolution of marriage”, and you don’t need fault as a ground for divorce. Florida abolished fault as a ground for divorce. Before the no-fault divorce era, people who wanted to get divorce either had to reach agreement in advance with the other spouse that the marriage was over, or throw mud at each other and prove wrongdoing like adultery or abuse.

No-fault laws were the result of trying to change the way divorces played out in court. No fault laws have reduced the number of feuding couples who felt the need to resort to distorted facts, lies, and the need to focus the trial on who did what to whom.

Divorce in January

If you have reached the conclusion that you can’t spend another minute in your marriage, is January the best time for you to file for divorce? Filing for a divorce impacts your children emotionally and psychologically and creates financial stressors.

Living in two separate households is more expensive than living in one home together, and the more children in your marriage, the more costly the two households will be.

A two-bedroom apartment in Miami can range from around $1,900 – $2,500 in some parts of Miami Lakes/West Kendall to as high as $3,500 in the Brickell area. Three bedroom will naturally be more costly and harder to find than a two-bedroom apartment.

In Florida, there is an initial temporary order issued when filing for divorce designed to preserve the status quo. Realistically however, people separating households into two homes is a division which can leave both households with less than the combined previous married household.

So, is January the best month of the year to file? Possibly. Children are often starting the new school term in the new year. They are still home from school and will have enjoyed a holiday with both parents, and are still excited with their presents. Additionally, bonuses are often paid in the beginning of the year.  January is here. Happy new year and new you.

The Forbes article is here.

Using AI and Divorce

Posted by Ron Kauffman on

Lawyers and non-lawyers alike, are increasingly using AI in their divorce cases and ending up in trouble. One Atlanta divorce lawyer who repeatedly cited to phony legal cases in her client’s divorce papers found out that using AI in your divorce can badly harm your case.

AI Divorce Lawyer2

Deus Ex Machina

Generative AI is saving lawyers time and money, but if used improperly, it could cost them their livelihoods. Generative AI is a type of AI model that creates new content, such as text, images, or music, based on large amounts of training data.

Examples for text include OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Microsoft’s Copilot, Google’s Gemini, Meta’s Llama, and Anthropic’s Claude, and for images ChatGPT, Gemini, Adobe and Midjourney. A generative AI model that is text-based is called a large language model.

But here’s the thing. When given a question or prompt, AI uses learned patterns to predict the best outputs, such as your motion or brief. Training a generative AI model takes months because of the enormous amounts of data and the neural network’s process of learning and optimization.

Generative AI is impressive but not perfect. AI predictions are just suggestions, and they can be wrong.

Atlanta divorce lawyer, Diana Lynch, is reported to have drafted an order a judge signed in May 2024 that referenced two cases that don’t exist. Lynch’s client filed for divorce in April 2022 and received a divorce decree in July of that year.

In October 2023, the ex-wife asked the county judge to reopen the case and set aside the divorce decree, claiming she had moved to Texas in 2021 and had not been properly served with the complaint. The judge denied the ex-wife’s request in a three-page order in May 2024.

But then the ex-wife’s appealed, and she pointed out the trial judge relied on two fake cases in her order denying her motion, rendering the order void.

Florida Bar and AI Use

I have written about computer and high tech issues in divorce before. Florida was the first state to issue an ethics opinion regarding the use of AI. To ensure client confidentiality, you should confirm that you maintain ownership of any uploaded data, learn how to delete your data, and review the AI provider’s license terms or representations regarding confidentiality.

Free AI models use your questions and uploaded documents to train future models. To maintain client confidentiality, you will need a paid subscription.

U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts warned in his 2023 report on the judiciary that commonly used AI applications can be prone to “hallucinations,” causing lawyers to submit briefs citing fake cases, the Georgia judges said. Hallucinations arise when an AI model generates incorrect or nonsensical information and they are factually inaccurate.

Her

On appeal. a three judge panel on the court of appeals in Georgia found that Ms. Lynch was not deterred when she was accused by her client’s ex-wife of making up case law references. In fact, she filed a response citing 11 cases that were also either fake or irrelevant.

“The irregularities in these filings suggest that they were drafted using generative AI. We are troubled by the citation of bogus cases in the trial court’s order.”

The judges said it might be the first time a Georgia appeals court has confronted the problems that can flow from a lawyer’s apparent use of artificial intelligence that generates content. They said other courts have tackled the issue. They also said Lynch added insult to injury by requesting attorney fees in relation to the ex-wife’s appeal and even used a phony case to support the request.

The judges imposed the maximum penalty on Lynch for her “frivolous” bid for attorney fees. They sent the case back to the DeKalb County judge to reconsider the ex-wife’s request to set aside the divorce decree. Their opinion references a study by Stanford researchers, who found generative AI models, including ChatGPT, “hallucinate” around 75% of the time when answering questions about a court’s core ruling.

The article is here.