Depending upon whether you and your spouse are confident enough to draft up your own divorce agreement, you will be able to limit your use and an save on the expense of an attorney. If you and your spouse are able to compromise and find a agreement within a drafted up divorce agreement than you can limited the use of an attorney to initial advice, quick information, final evaluation, and feedback. Instead of using a attorney from start to finis, which most likely is always more costly to do. Either way, whether you choose to use a attorney from start to finish or on a very limited bases, it is wise to have one but to what extent you use the attorney is up to you.
When you do hire a attorney, you should take more time into besides just running your finger through the yellow pages until you spot the word "divorce" or simply hiring a lawyer who helped you in the past negotiate your office lease or draw up your will. You need to hire a attorney that is experienced in family law. "In some states, attorneys can be board-certified in family law. These lawyers specialize in divorce cases and other kinds of family law issues. To be certified, they must have significant trial experience and pass a rigorous test. To maintain their certification, they must receive substantial continuing education in family law each year, generally twice the amount of required continuing education of non-board certified family law attorneys (Divorce, 2005)." These type of attorneys do tend to be quite pricey and demand higher retainers to begin a family law case than those who are not board-certified, but they are usually more experienced.
The attorney you use should be able to talk with you in plain English or in other words, not legalese. This person should be someone that your able to trust and feel comfortable with because you may have to reveal highly personal information about yourself and your marriage. If you do have young children, that you should pick a divorce lawyer who keeps your children's needs first and that he or she will not purse an outrageous amount of child support or help you pursue vindictive child custody and visitation arrangements. And last but not least, your attorney should be affordable.
References:
Ventura J., & Reed, M. (2005). Divorce for Dummies, 2nd ed. New York, NY: Wiley Publishers.
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1 comment:
Is the source you use in the blog (Divorce 2005) the Ventura and Reed source? If it is, you'll want to cite it like this: (Ventura and Reed, 2005).
Do you think you're going to go into law? You have offered a lot of data/advice on divorce procedures in this blog. What do you *think* about the state of divorce?
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