“ Child custody comes in two parts, physical custody and legal custody.” ONE of the most emotional aspect of a marital dissolution case is dealing with Child custody issues. Sadly enough, this is an area where most parents play games with each other trying their best to deprive the other parents of their right to…
President Rodrigo Duterte has been invited by President Donald Trump to the United States. I seem to have seen this scene before. A case of déjà vu. In September 1982, President Ferdinand Marcos made a state visit to the US, during the incumbency President Ronald Reagan, amid circumstances uncomfortably similar in many ways to that…
OVER the weekend, leaders from the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) convened in Manila for the 30th ASEAN Summit with the theme “Partnering for Change, Engaging the World.” The 10-member countries also marked the regional bloc’s 50th anniversary, from starting as a loosely constructed regional association at the height of the Cold War to…
DEAR Atty. Gurfinkel: Before I was 16 years old, I was adopted and petitioned by my aunt, and got my green card through her petition. I am now a US citizen, and would like to petition my biological mother. Is that possible? Very truly yours, B.N. Dear B.N.: When a child is adopted before their…
Everyone pretty much agrees that if you exercise and eat right and don’t smoke or drink or annoy a cop, you’ll never die. I have been told that by my internist, cardiologist, psychiatrist and all of their nurses, receptionists and building custodians. Over the weekend, I was invited for cocktails by a group of excruciatingly…
“ The words of Jesus at the end of Matthew’s Gospel are the promise of Christ’s abiding love for us through His Spirit present in the world. “And behold, I am with you always until the end of times.” IF you want to see an inspiring Christian movie that is still showing in some theaters,…
Living ‘beautiful lives’ means living with passion, dedication and sacrifice. And these four amazing women of the Filipino-American community tell us how they do it. Meet the Queen of Queens of The Beautiful Life Celebration 2017. Lourdes Garcia With a dual Masters Degree in Nursing and Healthcare Administration from University of Phoenix in California, Lourdes’…
FIRST client is 45 and single. His gross income last year was $98K, which is good. It reached $98K because of bonus. Without bonus, his gross income is $72K. This year started out for him with nothing to expect by way of bonus. So his last four months gross income was $6K a month, net…
CYNTHIA Begazo, then 53 years old, was hired in March 2015, as the Human Resources Director at Passages Malibu, an addiction treatment center in Malibu, CA. Shortly after starting work, she learned that some workers were not being paid overtime and were not provided meal and rest breaks. She reported this to the CEO, Pax…
QUESTION: I have been outside the United States for eight months and have friends who went back to the country and were forced to give up their green cards and then enter on a B2 Visitor Visa. Will that happen to me? Answer: If there is an absence of intent to permanently reside in the…
HERE are proposed tax changes that could affect individuals like you and me. Individual Tax Rates: President Trump plans to simplify the tax code by condensing the current seven rates into three – 12%, 25%, and 33%. Most Americans will go down in bracket but a few will go up to a higher tax rate….
ARE you seriously in debt and don’t know what to do about your situation? Are you afraid that unless you do something about it, thing will just continue to get worse every day? When people are going through financial difficulty and are unable to pay their bills, their first reaction is often to ignore their…
Living life to its fullest is one exceptional privilege denied to many while being surrounded and cared by loved ones upon achieving a full-cycled existence is, undeniably, a rewardingly gratifying bonus. Centenarians (those who reached 100 years) and supercentenarians (those who have reached 110 years and beyond) are already cases of paucity these days. These…
The usual skeptics have dismissed as pie-in-the-sky the recent announcement concerning the “infrastructure boom” that the administration of President Rodrigo Duterte plans to undertake. According to them, it is wishful thinking to expect the “build, build, build” objective of “Dutertenomics” to get much farther than “plan, plan, plan” by the time Duterte’s term expires in…
There are no hard and fast rules to follow during interviews to obtain a visa from any U.S. embassy amongst the almost 294 around the world. The basic creed to follow is to tell the truth. If you don’t, the lie will haunt not only you but your family too, maybe for the rest of…
IT is quite alarming that 45 to 50 percent of men and women in the United States have an HPV—genital Human Papillomavirus (HPV)—infection. This information was recently reported by the Center for Disease Control’s National Center for Health. It is, indeed, the most common sexually transmitted disease in the country. Here are the details, which…
“Neither of us would ever die of love, we will grieve, part and separate. For we were not meant to be tragedians. We were meant to be comedians.” – Graham Green, “The Comedians” I have always wanted to write something that will make Graham Green laugh. Much of today’s laughter is tickled by comic situation, punning…
FOR a couple of hours, congress attendees and guests take a break to eat a carefully curated themed ad festive lunch showcasing the diversity of Filipino cuisine and the sustainability of the native ingredients. This is where seasoned Filipino chefs such as Margarita Fores, JP Anglo and Claude Tayag prepare their dishes based on a…
HOW do you determine if the person visiting you either at your business or at home or calling you are not an IRS imposter? Look for two forms of credentials. IRS Knocks At Your Door – Why It Happens And What You Need To Do When It Happens: 1. Reasons why an IRS visits you…
WITH bilateral relations between China and the Philippines blossoming in multiple fronts, the territorial dispute in the South China Sea or West Philippine Sea is an issue the two countries cannot simply dance around anymore. Over the weekend, Beijing protested the visit by Manila’s defense and military chiefs to Pag-Asa, or Thitu Island, a disputed…
THE operating room could be likened to a theater — cupboards held tanks of oxygen, refrigerators filled with bags of blood, and a table for one. Beside it lay steel cutlery of unimaginable versatility. While it is on this table where bodies are stroked or penetrated (for all the pageantry), no love is ever made….
LAST Thursday night was quite a treat for me. I had dinner with Fr. Seraphim Michalenko, MIC, the former Rector of the National Shrine of The Divine Mercy in Stockbridge, Massachusetts and the Vice-Postulator for North American for the Canonization Cause of Sister Maria Faustina Kowalska. I had met him several times before at Puri…
FIRST client is 45 and single. His gross income last year was $98K, which is good. It reached $98K because of bonus. Without bonus, his gross income is $72K. This year started out for him with nothing to expect by way of bonus. So his last four months gross income was $6K a month, net…
“ Courts have recognized two types of sexual harassment. One is called quid pro quo harassment, which exists when to a sexual conduct is made a condition of employment benefits, such as a promotion, a pay increase, or a job itself. The second type involves harassment created by a “hostile environment.” This claim may arise…
QUESTION: I have a roommate who left an abusive relationship. She actually filed a temporary restraining order (TRO) against this person. Court was yesterday. She went to court to testify in front of the judge so that he would rule in her favor and her abuser would not come within 100 yards from her and…
Estate Tax: AMERICANS pay taxes throughout their lives, then pay again after death. This is wrong. The death tax itself should be terminated. Yes, there are two things we can’t avoid – death and taxes. But it should not mean that taxes paid during our lives resurrect to haunt us again… after death. Alternative Minimum…
THE current deadly “game of chicken” being undertaken by the U.S., under President Donald Trump, and by North Korea, under its Supreme Leader, Kim Jong-un, isn’t the first time that the world has teetered on the brink of nuclear war. For 13 days, from October 16 to 28, 1962, U.S. President John F. Kennedy, and…
EACH month, the Visa Office of the State Department publishes, in the Visa Bulletin, the priority dates for that particular month, for the various family and employment based categories. A priority date is a person’s “place in line” for a visa, meaning immigrant visas (or green cards) would be available for persons whose priority date…
THE silent killer of the 1970s, high blood pressure, is now replaced by metabolic syndrome, a cluster of three or more risk factors like abdominal obesity, high blood pressure, high triglycerides, abnormal lipids, and insulin resistance (pre-diabetes type 2). The expanding waistlines of Americans (and Filipinos as well) in the past several decades have been…
They consist in running bits of metal through the flesh of men — large, small, pointed, square, round splintered — that tear and kill. It is not metal in its natural state, but metal fashioned by the intelligence of man. For some bullet, just one is enough to kill a man. The first time I…
