What you should expect in an attorney who’s representing you that is going to be there when you need them the most? This is absolutely critical, especially in those cases where children are involved, a lawyer who represents you in any of these matters and has the kind of experience that the court certainly is going to recognize is an overriding factor. This is not a situation where you want to skimp on paying for an attorney. This is a situation where you want to get the best lawyer that you can. Most people who come to see me tell me that they’ve never had any experience with the legal system and that they’re scared to death of what’s going to happen and what the outcome is going to be.

There’s a lot of uncertainties. What’s going to happen with child support? What’s going to happen with visitation? What’s going to happen with the holidays? And people are scared. So when I’m representing somebody, I want to be able to sit down with them, look at their financial situation with their sworn financial statements and their other financial documents and start to map out a legal strategy.

A legal strategy is one where the attorney and client discuss how to get from point A to point Z. And point Z may be many months away. In doing this, you have to keep in mind that your communication with the lawyer and your ability to convey your thoughts and what your goals are are critical to an attorney’s ability to go into court and to fight for you. Because ultimately these kinds of decisions are going to be made by a judge and they’re going to have long range implications.

What does it mean when an attorney is called litigious? I want to talk to you a little bit about some the practices of attorneys in the Family Law arena. How they represent their clients and what does it mean when a lawyer has the reputation for being litigious.

A litigious lawyer is a lawyer who may have the goal of taking every case to a hearing or to trial. This is an attorney who will file lots of motions, ask the court to hold a lot of hearings or status conferences. They will encourage their client to follow along as they do all kinds of things that in many situations can be considered disruptive.

An example of that is an attorney who files a lot of motions, conducts a lot of hearings, may take depositions or sworn testimony of witnesses. May ask for lots of financial documents that they otherwise may not be entitled to. What does this mean for you as a client? Well, this usually translates into one of the parties paying the lawyer who’s litigious, a lot of money because of the nature of the conflict.

And the party who is on the other side, having to hire a lawyer to fight and object to all of the motions and the hearings that this other lawyer is involved in. Family Law is really not the proper arena to have a lot of infighting or litigious action. Because it always in my opinion, adversely effects the client and if there are children involved, the children are going to be witness to the tension, anxiety, and stress from an attorney who is overly litigious.

In Colorado civil unions have the same procedure as the civil divorce statutes. That means that same sex couples who have children or who do not have children are going to be treated the same way as heterosexual couples going through a divorce.

They’re going to be given the same rights and the same responsibilities as any other couple in custody actions or divorce actions. So when there’s been a civil union or a marriage involving same sex couples and a year or two years go by or into the future those couples wish to get divorced in Colorado they’re going to be given the same rights and responsibilities under the law to terminate or end their marriage as any other parties would be.

It’s always important to consult with an attorney when you’re going through this process who’s familiar with the civil union laws and how those may have different kinds of aspects to them than other cases but they are going to be treated by the court in a fair way just as every other type of family law matter.

What happens when a grandchild of a grandparent is in a situation where a biological parent has passed away? Does that grandparent have rights to custody or visitation? There is a statute in Colorado that deals with grandparent visitation that’s different than the grandparents’ rights to file for custody rights.

Visitation is where the grandparent is before the court by the filing of a petition that says that the grandparents’ child has passed away and that there are grandchildren that that grandparent wants to be able to see or have visitation rights with. A court still must determine the best interest of the statute of the child, and that’s per the statute and the law in Colorado, and whether or not it is in the best interest of the children to see that grandparent.

Ultimately that decision will be made by a judge. A lot of times grandparents and the surviving parent, can reach an agreement because the other parent recognizes that having grandparents involved in their children’s lives is significant and important to the children. In many other cases, a surviving parent may say to the grandparents, “I don’t feel that your involvement with the children is in the children’s best interest, that you’re disruptive, that you’re causing them stress and anxiety.” And the court has to make that decision. Based upon a number of cases that have come out over the years, a parent ultimately has a fundamental liberty interest as to the care, custody, and control of their children.

So when it becomes a contest as to whether or not a parent is acting in a child’s best interest, a court has to weigh that presumption in favor of a parent’s decisions over that of a grandparent’s decision. It’s important to talk to an experienced attorney that deals with grandparents’ rights when you are thinking about filing one of these kinds of cases to maintain contact with a grandchild or grandchildren after the passing of a parent.

Experienced lawyers, who exclusively practice Family Law, know that clients can become their own worst enemy. These kinds of behaviors may not be intentional, but nonetheless, actions that seem harmless can become much more harmful while in the “divorce court.”

Do not rely on your spouse for information or for you to be treated in an honest fashion once the divorce or custody action commences. As an example, many folks do not have written signed agreements and operate by trusting each other to be, “fair and honest”. It is my experience, that once a Family Law case makes its way into the court system, parties tend to take positions and postures that are like prized fighters before the main event. The information you once had no problem accessing, may be cut off. Confusion as to what to do and how to get that kind of information may become a real challenge. In a recent case, when the wife filed for divorce and custody of the parties’ children, she decided that because she had always paid all of the bills and had all of the banking information, that it was no longer necessary for her to share that information with her husband. In effect, the husband was cut off from the banking information that was held jointly because the wife had changed all of the essential passwords. Whenever the client was told he had to pay a bill that was due, he immediately suspected that his wife was not being honest with him and refused to give her access to the monies she had always had to pay the monthly bills. It is easy to see how this kind of thing can escalate quickly and cause more stress and friction than necessary. To get ahead of this problem, before a divorce is filed, the parties should talk and discuss their monthly bills and expenses in advance and figure out what is needed to keep those bills current. It is a good idea to have a list of the monthly bills and the amounts due before you and your spouse get into any “heated exchanges.”

Do not use Social Media, of any kind, while you and your spouse are in the process of any pending Family Law matters. It is not good idea for you or your spouse to allow the public or your spouse or the parent of your children to have access to recent Facebook postings or other social media sites. A client of mine sent me copies of postings that showed his wife with her new boyfriend on their recent cruise. His wife told him that she was going away with her sister for a wedding, only to find out that this was an untruth. He figured if she is lying about a relationship, she really could not be trusted about anything else and demanded full custody of the child, because he believed it showed that she was unfaithful and a liar. Things in this case quickly got out of hand for both parties.

You must be certain to get the best legal advice possible! This is no time for you to try to handle your Family Law case on your own. Every Divorce and Every Child Custody case is different. If you rely on a friend for advice because that friend went through what you are going through, you are going to get, “BAD ADVICE”. The specific factual details of your case are not going to be the same as your friend’s case, and the strategies that your friend used, most likely will not work in your case. I have had clients come to me and tell me that before I was hired, they received advice from family, from their hair salon, from their co-workers, and a variety of other sources. Getting advice from anyone other than a respected extremely qualified Family Law Attorney, is a very bad idea, and can jeopardize your case.
Do not rely on the Internet for legal advice. There may be hundreds of articles regarding cases similar to yours, but keep in mind, general information from any website is not the kind of information that will prove helpful to you during a Family Law litigation. The websites that provide the public with information may not even be authored by a lawyer and in most situations could be misleading or confusing.

When you are considering any action in a Family Law matter, keep detailed records and notes. Do not discard important text and email communications with your partner that may be found to be helpful in the future. Do not allow the records or your notes to be shared with anyone but your lawyer. If you allow friends or your romantic interests to have access to these kinds or records you may destroy the “confidentiality” provisions of the Attorney/Client privilege. You may be able to preserve invaluable evidence that proves your theory of the case, or can be used to impeach the other party, by carefully keeping and not deleting communications. An experienced lawyer should always be looking towards the day when the lawyer must appear in court and assemble the kind of evidence that supports a client’s claim or defense. Lawyers who are trial litigators, in Family Law, understand the value of critical evidence and will know how to introduce and use the evidence in court that you may not understand.

If you have children and you and your spouse or former spouse are moving through the legal process with a custody matter or a modification issue, do not involve the children in any way. Children are meant to be shielded from their parent’s legal disputes. Judges do not appreciate hearing that parents have shared with the children, the facts or important events in the legal proceeding. These kinds of communications, with children, can result in a judge believing that the only purpose of involving the children was to negatively impact the other parent. An example of this occurred when my client’s ex-husband consistently told the children that the reason he was out of money was because their mother was always taking him back to court for more child support. Involving kids in their parent’s legal disputes is NEVER a good idea.

By obtaining advice from the right kind of Family Law Attorney, you can avoid stepping on the minefields that may result in sabotaging your case, now and in the future!