The most dangerous moment in a road debris crash is often the one where nothing hits you. A recent AAA Foundation study found that road debris was likely a factor in more than 319,000 crashes between 2018 and 2023, causing over 32,000 injuries and 433 deaths. While nearly 90 percent of those crashes involved striking…
The auto policy sitting in your glove box may contain a sentence Alabama courts threw out more than fifty years ago. Many policies still say that a hit-and-run claim requires physical contact with the other vehicle. In Alabama, that clause is contrary to the state’s uninsured motorist statute and cannot be enforced. That matters enormously…
Motor vehicle crashes are the leading cause of work-related deaths in the United States. Between 2011 and 2022, more than 21,000 workers died in work-related crashes, which accounted for 35 percent of all workplace deaths in the country. Those numbers describe the people behind the wheel. They say nothing about everyone else on the road…
Ask around, and someone will tell you that once a child turns a certain age in Alabama, they get to decide where they live. That belief has ended more parenting arrangements than almost any other, and it is wrong. Alabama sets no age at which a child chooses. Under Section 30-3-152 of the Alabama Code,…
Alabama has a statute that lets grandparents ask a court for visitation in defined circumstances. It has no equivalent statute for stepparents. A person can pack lunches, sit through surgeries, and coach the team for a decade, and still walk out of a divorce with no legal claim to the child at all. That gap…
Most divorcing parents assume the college fund belongs to their child. It does not. A 529 plan is a financial account owned by one adult, and most plans do not allow joint ownership, which means one parent holds the power to withdraw the money or redirect it to someone else entirely. That single fact reshapes…
Here’s something that surprises most Alabama parents in the middle of a medical dispute. Once a child turns 14, state law lets that child consent to their own medical, dental, and mental health care, and no other person’s consent is required. For younger children, though, the authority sits squarely with the parents, and a custody…
The IRS has measured something that every family court judge already suspects. Wage earners misreport about 1 percent of their income, because an employer reports it for them. For sole proprietors, whose income carries little or no third-party reporting, that figure climbs to roughly 55 percent. That gap explains why an Alabama judge rarely stops…
Most American adults are on social media, with 71% using Facebook alone, and for someone with an open injury claim that ordinary habit carries an unusual risk. The same posts that keep you connected can land in a claims adjuster’s file, right next to the public records from your divorce or custody case. Insurance companies…
Nearly half of parents say they have read through their teenager’s text messages and call records, and about one in six use tools to track a child’s location. Inside a single household, that’s ordinary parenting. When two parents share custody, the same phone turns into one of the most contested objects in the case. A…