California Divorce and Family Law

Picking the right divorce lawyer can help make the split less painful

Approximately half of all people who get married will end up getting divorced. A divorce can be a stressful and traumatic experience for men, women, children and for members of the extended family who are also impacted by the break up of a marriage.

Having the right attorney can alleviate some of the emotional sting and reduce some of the stress which are integral parts of the divorce process. Conversely, having the wrong kind of legal representation, can make an already painful experience significantly worse for you and for your loved ones.

Since I have counseled many people who are considering a divorce or who are going through a divorce, and because I have interacted with many attorneys who handle martial matters, I thought a few suggestions on finding the right divorce lawyer could be helpful to my readers:

1. Select an attorney who specializes in family law.

If you choose this kind of lawyer, it is likely that his or her office is set up to deal with the forms and paper work which are part of the divorce process. A law office which is automated to deal with divorces will streamline the experience and save you time, money and stress.

2. Decide if you are more comfortable with a male or female attorney.

This is a personal choice, but I believe it is an important one for a person who is about to end his or her marriage.

3. Interview three or four lawyers and decide who seems most competent and determine who you feel most comfortable with.

Bring a list of questions to your initial consultation and get a sense of the lawyer's knowledge and his or her communication style. Check out their websites before you meet with them. This should give you a sense as to what their practice is like. You may also want to visit www.martindale.com to get some more background information on lawyers and law firms.

4. Choose an attorney who has practiced in the county where your case will be heard.

You want a lawyer who knows the judges and the opposing attorney. If your attorney has a good relationship with the other players, you can benefit from their ability to work together.

5. Determine if you are more comfortable with a law firm or with an individual practitioner.

There are pros can cons to both.

6. Find an attorney who tries to settle things, but who is not reluctant to fight for you if things get nasty.

7. Talk to people who have been divorced.

See who they recommend. It is unlikely that you will find someone who thoroughly enjoyed the experience. However, you probably will find someone who feels that their case was handled in an effective and a pleasant manner. This is the kind of representation you want when you are dissolving your marriage.

8. Negotiate with your lawyer and see if he or she will handle the entire process for a flat fee.

Some lawyers will work in this manner.

9. Don't spend money on battles that you cannot win, just to get back at your spouse.

10. If you feel you have made a mistake and hired the wrong lawyer, don't be afraid to switch attorneys.

This can be cumbersome, but sometimes it is in your best interest to change counsel, if you are not getting along well and if the process is going poorly.

Originally from divorce360.com and printed in SanLuisObispo.com.

Nation's Leading Divorce Lawyers Finding More Cases Settled Before Trial

     A majority of the respondents to a recent poll of American 
Academy of Matrimonial Lawyer (AAML) members cited an increase 
in divorce cases being settled before trial. In all, 58% of the
attorneys said that they have seen more cases being resolved 
without trial during the past five years.

    "A growing number of couples are having more success negotiating
settlements with the assistance of their lawyers," said Gaetano "Guy"
Ferro, president of the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers.
"Negotiated settlement gives the spouses more input into their divorce
judgment than does letting a judge decide the issues. It affords the
opportunity for more creative resolutions which can minimize adverse tax
consequences. Settlement is almost always less stressful for the spouses
than trial and, where there are children, makes it more likely that the
parties will be able to effectively co-parent."

    The number of attorneys who noted an increase in the number of divorces
being resolved without a trial during the past five years was significantly
greater than those who felt there were fewer negotiated settlements taking
place. Only 12% of the respondents reported fewer cases being settled
before trial.

From PRNewswire. 

Law Firms Pitch Themselves As the Divorced Guy's Guys

One recent winter evening, 35 mostly middle-aged and graying men gathered in a plush carpeted hotel conference room here. They listened intently, some taking notes, as a lawyer ticked off advice for handling a divorce: Have a friend videotape you with the kids to prove you play with them. Don't move out of the house until you're forced to by a court. And don't let your wife goad you into revealing your strategy for winning custody of the kids. "You should never confide in anyone who is trying to take all your money and your children," lectured the lawyer, Scott Trout.

DadsDivorce.com and DadsLaw.com feature law firms that cater to divorced fathers. Mr. Trout is managing partner of Cordell & Cordell P.C., a domestic litigation firm that specializes in representing men -- or, as firm co-founder Joseph E. Cordell prefers, "guys." Cordell & Cordell is among the most ambitious of a breed of law firms that has emerged to capitalize on the fathers' rights movement, which believes that courts slight men in divorce and especially in child-custody cases.

Even though laws in most states now decree that courts base such decisions on the child's "best interest," rather than giving preference to mothers, fathers' rights groups contend that outdated notions about the role of fathers in child care -- and what they see as the outsized influence of women's advocacy groups -- can still stack the deck against dads. Men, Mr. Cordell explains on his firm's Web site, need advocates to counter "influential organizations outside the mainstream of society and their insistence on women's interests to the utter exclusion of the merits of a given case."

National lawyers' associations don't track the number of family law firms that specialize by gender, but at least one father-focused firm can now be found in most of the biggest U.S. cities. Such outfits include Jeffery Leving and his Dadsrights.com Web site, in Chicago; Lang, Berman & Lebit on Long Island in New York, which hosts the "nyfathersrights.com" Web site; and Dadslaw Inc. in Orange, Calif., near Los Angeles.

To be sure, there are firms and nonprofit organizations that focus on representing women in divorce cases, particularly those involving domestic violence. They include networks such as Divorce Attorneys for Women, or DAWN, in Grand Rapids, Mich., which maintains the www.dawnforwomen.com site.

Some legal observers say firms focusing on either men or women can foster confrontation between parents, rather than negotiation of an amicable settlement. "They fuel the gender wars, which is not in the best interest of the children," says Andrew Schepard, a family law professor at Hofstra University School of Law in Hempstead, N.Y. Mr. Cordell says it's reasonable for men to advocate for themselves: "Guys often have to work a little harder to be awarded primary custody. When you're disadvantaged, you'll continue to be so unless you do what you can to help yourself."

Mr. Cordell, 48, says his firm is not a political vehicle, even though his firm's Web site links to groups such as Washington-based American Coalition for Fathers and Children, which lobbies, for example, for laws that would require courts to adopt joint legal and physical custody of children as the presumed standard. "Our guys... don't have the time to invest in legislative or social movements," he says. "They're fighting for their families, not a cause."

Women's legal advocates scoff at the notion that men are underdogs in most divorce cases. Despite economic advances by women, men still tend to make more money, giving them greater resources to use in court. "One third of the calls we get are mothers who are desperate because the court is considering or has already given custody to an abusive father," says Kathy Rodgers, president of New York-based nonprofit Legal Momentum, which advocates for women.

Reliable national statistics on outcomes of child-custody disputes are scant. A 1997 study in the Family Law Quarterly examined appeals court cases over a span of 70 years and found that despite changes in the law, mothers and fathers have been favored roughly equally in child-custody disputes. Mr. Cordell earned his law degree from the University of Texas in 1989 and shortly afterward started a law firm in St. Louis with his second wife, Yvonne, whom he married in 1991. (Mr. Cordell and his first wife divorced in 1983; the couple had no children and the experience wasn't a factor in his decision to represent men in divorce cases, he says. His first wife couldn't be reached for comment.)

Read it all at The Wall Street Journal (subscription required).

 

How to deal with a divorce lawyer

Q: My wife and I are contemplating divorce. I have gotten all kinds of advice from family and friends about dealing with my wife and divorce lawyer, but all the advice has been different. I have found tips on the Internet about how to deal with some of the problems that face me, but not about how to deal with a divorce lawyer. Are there any secrets?

A: Dealing with divorce and divorce lawyers is not much different than taking a trip without first plotting out the route. If you go to a matrimonial lawyer without specific objectives or goals in mind, and think he or she can fix it for you, you'll be disappointed. Given a specific set of facts, lawyers are trained to apply the law and advise clients about ways to attain specific goals - or at least some of them.

Here are some basic guidelines:

1. Gather as much of your financial and other information as possible before you go to see your lawyer. This includes tax returns and schedules, financial statements, budget documents, and the like from at least the last five years.

2. Make sure your fee arrangement is in writing, that you understand it before you sign, and that everyone understands how you will pay your bill. Generally, lawyers are not allowed to take a percentage of what is recovered for you in a divorce case, so expect to pay by the hour.

3. Since you won't always need to talk to your lawyer when you have questions, meet and get to know the paralegal or secretary so you can give and get information billed at lower rates.

4. Write out your questions, then make an appointment with the lawyer and take notes about what you're told.

5. If there are billing questions, talk to the billing clerk or the secretary who handles this aspect of the business. The lawyer should be the last resort.

6. Photocopies made at the lawyer's office may cost you 25 or more cents per page, sometimes plus the time of the person making the copies. So, for voluminous copies, consider making your own at copy shops to save money.

7. If you don't understand something, ask. And if you have a problem with the way your lawyer is handling your case, also ask. Don't allow the issue to fester.

8. Your lawyer should keep you reasonably informed about the status of your case by sending you copies of what goes out of the office. Then, you'll be less likely to make emergency calls. Remember: spur-of-the-moment calls just to find out what's going on can get expensive.

9. Don't second-guess your lawyer based on the advice of friends and family. But, if you feel strongly about a point, you are perfectly within your rights to seek a second opinion. Let your lawyer know that you feel this way.

10. Remember that your lawyer works for you. After you have been fully informed and have reviewed your options, you and your lawyer should decide upon a course of action suitable to your situation.

11. Don't be surprised if your case takes time to get resolved. Although everyone is in a hurry to complete his/her case, you will have no control over scheduling issues that can keep your case in limbo for a long time.

12. If your lawyer promises or guarantees you a result, get another lawyer.

From the Fort Wayne News Sentinal.