Not Everybody Needs a Divorce Attorney
Let’s start at the extreme end of the spectrum where the parents are getting along. It is absolutely true that some parents of children can talk to each other and they can decide amongst each other exactly what the visitation schedules are gonna be, which parent the child’s gonna generally live with, and where they’re gonna go to school. They’re able to work out holiday schedules together, everybody gets along and they might even be able to discuss how much child support mom or dad needs or whatever, and how much they can afford. They work together to figure out how much child support is going to be paid every month, and then maybe even one month money is super tight and mom can only afford half the child support, but dad doesn’t take her to court immediately and mom makes it up on the next month or in the next couple of months, you know, whatever. These are the kind of things that some parents of children can work this stuff out together. Those parents do not need an attorney. It’s true. However, understand that that’s pretty rare, that’s not always the case.
Let’s take the next group of people. The next group of people I would describe as people that are able to work together most of the time, but really don’t have a one hundred percent trust in the other parent. Those types of parents might want to contact a Family Law attorney and get some legal advice to determine what a proper visitation or custodial schedule should look like relative to their work schedule, what the proper amount of child support that you should receive or that you should pay is before having a conversation with the other parent.
Then let’s take the next group of people. I’m gonna say the next group of people are parents that really don’t get along with each other and they want to make sure that they have a custodial schedule or court orders for exactly how much child support is owed. They don’t trust the other side so they want to make sure that they get court orders for exactly what the state of California would order the other parent to pay/receive. Those are the kind of people that need to hire an attorney and consult about your situation. For those clients we would file some paperwork with the court and we’ll just go into court just to get custody orders or child support or spousal support orders and just be done with it. It’s pretty straightforward. The parents don’t hate each other. They just want to make sure that we get court orders saying exactly what we should have in place.
Then the last group of people I would suggest are parents or parties that just do not like each other. They’re never gonna trust each other. They can’t even sit down together and have a discussion. Maybe even one parent is so angry or both parents are so angry with each other that they want to go to court, that they want to hurt each other. These are not good situations, and we will not take a client whose sole purpose is to hurt the other party. Because really all they are gonna do is spend a ton of money on Attorney’s Fees and they may not even be happy in the end because really all they want to do is hurt the other side.
I don’t like these situations, but I can tell you that this comes up a lot. And if you feel like you’re in this kind of situation or if you feel like you’re going against a parent that is so angry that they just can’t even have a discussion with you, give us a call if you are in Orange County, or anywhere in California.
We will absolutely talk to you and we’d be happy to represent you against somebody like that on the other side.
We will keep in mind that there’s always room for discussion. Even if you guys hate each other, we can always hop on the phone and say, “look, this is just not making sense. We need to do something that makes sense, or we need to come up with a number for child support or spouse support that’ll work for us temporarily while we duke it out in court?”
This is what litigation is about. It’s not the best for the kids. It’s not even the best for the parents. But in some circumstances, one parent is just so angry that we absolutely need to go to court and fight it out. And that’s what we do at Pinkham & Associates. We go to court and we fight for you.
Litigation is not a bad word. Sometimes when one parent is just flat out unreasonable and you just can’t work with them, you don’t have any other choice. You have to go to court. In the end, there’s only two ways to get something done. Either you’re gonna agree on that outside of court, or we’re gonna have to fight about it inside of court. And that’s what litigation is. Sometimes we go to court because you need to fight for your rights. Sometimes we go to court because the other side is just so unreasonable that you need to go in and get something done that benefits your kids and that’s what we do. We will help you fight for the best interest of your kids and yours.
