Loftness Law Office, P.A.

04/21/2025

Everyone please be aware that, effective July 1, 2025, the law in Minnesota changes to allow lane splitting and lane filtering by motorcycles. Lane splitting is when you have 2 or more lanes traveling in the same direction, and a motorcycle passes in your same lane (so long as they are moving 25 mph or less). Lane filtering is when you have 2 or more lanes travelling in the same direction, but traffic is at a stop (usually for a red light), and a motorcycle passes you in your same lane, up to the point where the stopped traffic originates. Remember these changes before you engage in road rage over a motorcycle rider passing you in these situations!

08/08/2024

We're now a little over a week into the recent changes to the spousal maintenance laws in Minnesota. If you are interested in learning more about these changes, check out my blog from last month!

The issue of spousal maintenance (also referred to as “alimony” or “spousal support”) is often the most difficult issue to resolve in divorce cases. Why? There are several reasons, but in my opinion, one of the biggest reasons is that historically there has not been much guidance provided in...

02/19/2024

Are you going through a divorce and looking for some tips on how to divide your personal property in a way that's fair and equitable while minimizing (or avoiding) attorney fees? Check out my blog here for a few suggestions!

First, see how many items (if any at all) can be divided fairly between you without much discussion/debate. Remember, it’s about the overall value, not the total number of items. You need to do this in such a way that you can call it “fair” as to what has been divided thus far. Then

02/08/2024

The Supreme Court of the State of Hawaii has ruled that a man can be prosecuted for carrying a gun in public without a permit. This decision overturned the state’s lower court ruling that doing so would violate his Second Amendment rights. The defendant, Christopher Wilson, had been arrested back in December 2017, when he was found in possession of a handgun with a loaded magazine in the West Maui Mountains. Mr. Wilson argued that it was for self-defense.

The defendant filed a motion to dismiss the charges and cited in support of his motion a decision made by SCOTUS in June 2022 (New York State Rifle & Pistol Ass’n, Inc. v. Bruen (2022)). Hawaii’s lower court granted the defendant’s motion to dismiss. The state appealed, and Hawaii’s supreme court reversed the lower court’s decision, rejecting the constitutional arguments made by Mr. Wilson. The court made reference to the Second Amendment’s use of “military language” (i.e., the reference to “a well regulated Militia”), and interpreted that language to limit the use of deadly weapons to serving a military purpose. It went on to state that, “there are no words that mention a personal right to possess lethal weapons in public places for possible self-defense.” The court further reasoned that life in contemporary society is different, and that it makes no sense to pledge allegiance to the founding era’s understanding of the Constitution.

This is the first time in over 15 years that a state’s highest court has made a distinction between guns used for military purposes and those used for private defense, when applying the Second Amendment. Indeed, this decision is in stark contrast to the decisions made by SCOTUS in the aforementioned Bruen case, as well as District of Columbia v. Heller (2008), in which SCOTUS upheld an appellate court ruling that the city’s total ban on handguns, as well as its requirement that fi****ms in the home be kept nonfunctional even when necessary for self-defense, violated the Second Amendment.

If the supreme court of Hawaii’s decision in the Wilson case is appealed to SCOTUS, and if SCOTUS agrees to hear the case, will the Hawaii decision be upheld, or will it be reversed? Can we interpret this recent decision as the first step toward a very different application of the Second Amendment in the future, or will the conservative SCOTUS keep things status quo? We’ll have to wait and see how this plays out.

01/25/2024

Just finished the long-overdue process of updating my firm's website. Lots of general information can be found there, including some references to changes in the law that have occurred over the recent years. My plan is to start blogging as well when time permits, so stay tuned for even more focused information on my website in the near future regarding the practice areas of family law and criminal justice.

01/24/2019

We are now about six months into the change to the statutory Minnesota Child Support Guidelines calculation. Specifically, the change relates to the method of calculating an adjustment to the respective parents’ incomes used for calculating support, referred to as the “parenting expense adjustment.” The idea is that parents living separately (whether divorced or never married) generally incur the costs of raising children while the children are in their care, and those costs are taken into consideration in the form of a reduction to the parents’ respective incomes used to calculate the support obligation. As a practical matter, the more time children spend in your care, the more costs you are going to incur. Pretty straightforward, right? The concept itself is not new to the statute.

However, the child support calculation previously recognized only three categorical ranges of court ordered parenting time, and assigned adjustments to the parents’ incomes based on the range that corresponded with the percentage of the total parenting time that was ordered for that parent. The three ranges, and their corresponding adjustments to the parent’s income, were as follows: (1) Less than 10% of the time = no adjustment; (2) 10% - 45% of the time = 12% adjustment; and, (3) greater than 45% of the time = substantial adjustment (not a fixed %). There were multiple problems with this method. The first, and perhaps most obvious, was that the ranges were just too broad. So, for example, a parent with only 15% of the total parenting time was receiving the same adjustment to his/her income as a parent with 40% of the total parenting time. Arguably, that undermined the very purpose of the parenting expense adjustment, as it was treating parents with significantly more parenting time the same in terms of the support calculation as it treated parents with much less parenting time, so long as they were within the same categorical range of parenting time. Another problem was that there was a substantially lower support obligation calculated for a parent that had more than 45% of the total parenting time. This was often described as a mathematical “cliff” in the calculation, which had the effect of increased parenting time litigation, as some parents found themselves in disputes over parenting time that would not have otherwise been disputed. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard parents say, “My kids need to be with me at least 45% of the time.” Clearly, that parent was aware of the method of support calculation, and wanted to get over the cliff. In fact, any time someone expressed a preference for parenting time in terms of a percentage, I suspected it was pretext for the support issue.

The change made to the support statute in August 2018 was an attempt to remedy these problems. The legislature jettisoned the three broad parenting time ranges, and replaced them with many, smaller ranges. This is a fair and more appropriate method of calculating the adjustment and, in theory, will significantly reduce the amount of litigation in which parents fight for a certain percentage of parenting time based on the resulting support calculation.

Unfortunately, this method comes with its own setbacks. First of all, the calculation is now a complex algorithm. It is not one that can be easily done without using a support calculator. Fortunately, there is a support calculator available online for anyone to use, and it will do the calculation for you.

The other problem is that the calculation focuses much more on the issue of how to measure total parenting time. In most cases, this will be done by adding the total number of overnights each parent has with the children during the year. So it becomes a process of looking closely at the schedule, and counting the nights. This process can become complicated if schedules are different during the summer from what they are during the school year, or if time spent on holidays or vacations is not the same with each parent. Note that there are some parenting schedules in which it would be unfair to use this method of determining the total parenting time, as a parent may have a significant amount of time that does not include overnights. For those rare situations, the statute recognizes that “overnight equivalents” may be used in determining the total amount of parenting time. But in most cases, the parents will look to the total number of overnights, and this could potentially take us right back to the same problem we had previously, in that parents will find themselves fighting over how many overnights the children will spend with each of them. In the first six months of this new method of calculating support, I’ve not yet seen this problem emerge, at least not with any frequency.

There is no method to calculate support that fits perfectly with the many different family dynamics of our modern society, but this method should be the best fit for a long time to come. If you should need assistance with determining parenting time or calculating child support, don’t hesitate to contact me and schedule a consultation.

03/16/2016

President Obama has nominated Merrick Garland for the vacant seat in the U.S. Supreme Court left by former Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. A Chicago native and graduate of Harvard Law, Garland is currently the Chief Judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals, D.C. Circuit. He is regarded as a moderate judge who is admired by both Democrats and Republicans alike. However, his exemplary record could have little affect on the Republican Senate's expressed intention to block any SCOTUS nomination made by President Obama.

02/15/2016

The longest seated current member of the United States Supreme Court, Justice Antonin Scalia, passed away of natural causes on Saturday while on a hunting trip in Texas. He has served more than three decades on the Supreme Court, and was widely regarded as one of the most conservative justices on the bench. Even when I disagreed with his opinions, I found them very well-conceived, and I would occasionally even read some of his dissenting opinions on major constitutional issues. The appointment of his replacement will likely be a topic of discussion in the upcoming months, as a more liberal justice would significantly affect Supreme Court decisions in the future.

06/26/2015

Today marks a historic decision and a nationwide victory for gay rights advocates. The United States Supreme Court ruled today that gay marriage is a constitutional right for the entire country. This decision will effectively strike down bans against gay marriage that still existed in 14 states. Following the decision, President Obama addressed the nation, stating "Our nation was founded on a bedrock principle, we are all created equal…".

06/18/2015

The factors considered by the courts in determining what is in the best interests of children when deciding issues of child custody have changed substantially, after remaining virtually unchanged for decades. Following many years of debate over the subject of changing the legal presumptions associated with child custody (which resulted in very little change), the custody statute itself has finally been revamped. This overhaul has come after many years of the statute being scrutinized as being outdated and a poor reflection of modern social views and current family dynamics.

The new statute takes a more child-focused approach to determining what serves the best interests of children. It includes a factor specifically dedicated to examining proposed custody arrangements for children with special needs, which was not addressed at all in the previous statute. It also includes a factor dedicated to examining any physical, psychological, or chemical health issues of the parents. Again, this was not specifically made part of the previous statute. Perhaps the most interesting new factor is one that considers "the benefit to the child in maximizing parenting time with both parents, and the detriment to the child in limiting parenting time with either parent." This suggests that the courts should give strong consideration to maximizing parenting time with both parents, although it does not go so far as to create a presumption of equal parenting time. I imagine this factor will have to be very carefully examined on a case-by-case basis, and will likely be the factor that generates the most debate among families going through custody proceedings.

Some family court practitioners, including me, foresee a day where the custody labels are abandoned altogether, and the focus is placed more on the parenting time schedule and specific decision-making responsibilities. We've not yet reached that point, but I think it is fair to say that the overhaul to the statutory factors in the custody statute is a major step in that direction, and was long overdue in any event.

If you have a custody or parenting time issue and would like legal representation, please don't hesitate to contact me to discuss it.

http://www.loftnesslaw.com/

Contact Jeffrey L. Loftness, a Shakopee, Minnesota, criminal defense and family law attorney today at 952-641-7485. Free consultations.