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I would say the divorce process starts
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the minute that someone walks into my
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office for a consultation now sometimes
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they do it by Zoom since we’ve been
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through covid and sometimes they may
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even do it by phone but it’s the minute
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that we have that first meeting that the
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divorce process starts because that’s
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the time I’m going to learn about you
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and your family and I’m going to
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understand what hopefully you know about
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assets liabilities the finances in
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general what your relationship is with
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your children what the other party’s
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relationship with your children is also
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so who is for example the primary
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caregiver who takes the children to the
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doctor or goes to the parent teacher
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conferences or works with you know the
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other parents to organize play dates
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does the homework with the children
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picks up the children from school gets
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the children to the bus maybe in the
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morning I’m going to learn about that
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during that first consultation I’m going
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to learn about how you co-parent what is
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the demeanor in the household is
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everyone just frankly yelling and
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screaming at each other or is it calm
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and and very civilized how are you
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co-parenting with the other parent I’m
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also going to learn about what the
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income is of each of you and so I
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usually ask what are the assets what are
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the liabilities what is the income what
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does it all look like and then we go
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through the process of what will it look
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like later and obviously I don’t have
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that crystal ball if I did it would be
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great but I don’t have that crystal ball
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to say what absolutely will happen but I
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can give a range usually of what will
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happen in a particular matter based upon
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experience and based upon you know what
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I know in terms of case law and what
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area you may be in which county you may
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be in what certain judges may think Etc
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and then we will finish the consult and
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either someone will retain me or not at
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that point or go and think about it and
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have other consultations if the person
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retains me then we get started and we
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get started as if we are preparing for
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two things simultaneously settlement or
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if it’s not settled litigation and by
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the way just because we’re going into
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litigation doesn’t mean that there may
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not be a settlement at some point during
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the litigation and we will be preparing
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the case as if we’re doing both which
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means we will be gathering the documents
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from you and from your spouse we will be
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sending out Discovery demands we will be
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taking a deposition perhaps we will be
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putting together a settlement proposal
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depending upon whether we know enough to
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do that whether you as the client know
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enough to do that that’s the big
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question always we want to put together
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a settlement proposal that takes into
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account that you know what the assets
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liabilities the support that you’ll need
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the support that actually supports your
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lifestyle just to some degree and so we
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put all of that together and we get
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ready for either a settlement or
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litigation and we take it all the way
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until there’s a settlement that means
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doing the discovery sending out the
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notices doing the net worth statement
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sending out deposition demands doing a
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deposition perhaps having conferences in
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court perhaps having settlement
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conferences doing all of those types of
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things and then hopefully we reach a
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resolution and it’s so important to
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reach that resolution because trial is
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an expensive process and so we try to
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reach a resolution in many of our cases
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and in many we succeed but in the ones
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that we don’t succeed in reaching
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resolution we move forward to prepare
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for a trial We Gather our exhibits we
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outline Our Testimony we work with our
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client we prepare our client for what
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they’re going to feel like in that
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courtroom and then we actually conduct
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the trial if necessary