Practice Areas
Arbitration
Mr. Cohen accepts appointments as an Arbitrator.
This work includes private arbitration and appointment by the Sacramento County Superior Court as a Judicial Arbitrator in civil lawsuits.
Breach of Contracts
The firm represents clients in breach of contract matters. These cases generally include small business owners such as janitorial brokers, packaging products, and trade associations.
These cases are brought in state and federal court throughout Northern California.
Child Custody
Child custody is the most important area of family law for most of the firms' clients. Parents are worried about the future of their children, the need to continue to be a major part of their lives, and the need to maintain continuity of family even after the breakup of a relationship.
The firm handles general and complex custody issues including move-aways, domestic violence, drug abuse, and parental alienation.
Child Support
Child support presents many complex issues, especially in today's economy. The basic concept of looking at the incomes of both parents and their timeshare percentage is straight forward. However, accounting for under-employment (imputed income), self-employment (accurate reporting of income and expenses), the impact of taxable and non-taxable income, child tax exemptions, and other issues require the skilled assistance of experienced counsel.
Civil Litigation
The Law Offices of Fredrick S. Cohen handles a variety of civil litigation matters throughout Northern California.
The most common type of cases that the firm handles are Marvin actions (dissolution of relationships where there was no marriage or registered domestic partnership), partition action (division of jointly held real property), and breach of contract actions.
Divorce
The firm recognizes that divorce (dissolution of marriage, dissolution of a registered domestic partnership, or nullity/annulment) cases present complex issues that vary from case to case. A "cookie-cutter" approach to each divorce case rarely results in an appropriate resolution. Every case has its own unique issues that require sensitive, skilled, and efficient handling.
Complex issues include determining the characterization of property (whether an asset is a party's separate property or the couple's community property), the value of property (businesses, real property, and investment accounts), retirement benefits (division and valuation), and many other issues.
The Judicial Council has wisely recognized that family law is the most complex area of the law in California. Beyond family law itself, a good family law attorney must have a working knowledge of a variety of areas including civil law, real estate, contracts, taxation, bankruptcy, immigration, and many other areas.
Family Law
Family Law is a term that covers all areas of domestic relations including divorce, custody, support, property rights, and more.
The Law Offices of Fredrick S. Cohen recognizes that the effective representation of a family law client requires the ability to assist the client in all aspects of family law. Unlike those attorneys that limit themselves to only custody work or only property work, the Law Offices of Fredrick S. Cohen combines its skill set in order to work for its clients in an effective and efficient manner.
Paternity
Paternity cases are where parties have a child outside the bounds of marriage. Although the stigma of a child born out of wedlock is largely gone in California, the law still distinguishes these cases from divorce cases.
Paternity actions are governed by the Uniform Parentage Act (UPA). These files are confidential and not open to the public (except for the final Judgment). In contrast, divorce files are open to the public except for very few sealed documents such as custody recommendations and application for a waiver of the Court's filing fee.
Other than the confidentiality of the court files, paternity actions proceed almost identically to divorce cases in terms of the determination of custody and visitation and the calculation of child support.
Post Divorce Modifications
After a case is over, clients frequently need to have something changed. This can be as simple as modifying child support based on a change in income or timeshare percentage or could be as complicated as a motion to set aside the judgment because of fraud or perjury by the other side.
The firm both brings and defends against post-divorce modifications.
Spousal Support
Spousal Support has several different components, each of which have their own complication.
There is temporary spousal support, which applies before the Court enters a final judgment. Although the Court is permitted to apply a mathematical formula to calculate temporary spousal support, the extent to which the Court imputes income to one spouse or determines custody has a significant impact on the amount of temporary spousal support paid by a party.
There is spousal support at the time of judgment (sometimes called permanent spousal support, even though spousal support is rarely permanent). Unlike temporary spousal support, the Court is not permitted to apply a mathematical formula to calculate the amount owed. The Court must determine spousal support "from the ground up" looking at the parties' marital standard of living, the needs of each party, the impact of the parties' choices during their marriage (whether a party stayed home to take care of children, whether a party worked to put the other spouse through school, whether a party is disabled, whether there was domestic violence in the home, or otherwise).
Spousal support for registered domestic partners raises significant complications. Although the Can can and will order support, there are tax implications that must be addressed. Unlike a marriage between members of the opposite sex, non-marital spousal support (or partner support) is not tax deductible. Accordingly, family law attorneys have to properly calculate partner support without any tax treatment.