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How can a child custody lawyer in Houston help you?

One of the age-old questions in the law is: do I need an attorney before I file a lawsuit or respond to a case that has been filed against me? Lawyers do not have an excellent reputation in our society. Whether or not that reputation is deserved or not, I will leave it up to you. Regardless, I think most people would prefer not to have to interact much with lawyers- that is until you need their help in some regard. I get the impression that many people are surprised after meeting one of our attorneys that we are regular people, just like they are.

So, the question remains as you begin your family law case: do you need an attorney to represent you? Whether yours is a divorce, a child custody case, a modification, enforcement, or a grandparent’s rights case, you need to know what your options are as far as representation. Can you adequately represent yourself in one of these cases, or if you described yourself, would you have a fool for a client (as the old saying goes)?

Prose divorce: Can you handle it?

First, you do not need to be represented by an attorney to file any family law case. You are legally able to express yourself in one of these cases. If you choose to move forward without counsel, you would be known as a pro se party. Remember that you are not given any assistance by the judge, the clerk, or anyone else because you have no attorney. The legal bar is not going to be lowered just because you have no attorney.

Some people file for divorce without a lawyer. In some cases, you and your spouse may have made a promise to one another that you would not be filing for divorce and then hiring lawyers. Your divorce would be amicable and straightforward. No need to hire lawyers to complicate things or add costs to an already costly process, you figure. This sounds ideal, but the devil is buried in the details as it so often is.

For instance, I can tell you from experience that many of the family law clients that our office is fortunate enough to represent in their cases initially began their patients by expressing themselves. After a while of self-representation, they find, however, that their lives and the difficulty of their circumstances make it impossible for them to advocate for themselves properly. This is understandable given that these folks (like you) have their jobs and own lives to worry about on top of their divorce or child custody case.

The result is that you spend time, money, and effort in an attempt to represent yourself in a legal case only to find out that you need to hire a lawyer anyway. This can be a bitter pill to swallow and one that tastes awful on the way down. While very few errors cannot be undone, sometimes the fact that you have used up a lot of time needlessly at the beginning of a case is enough to make you roll your eyes in disgust.

That would be my first point: hiring a child custody lawyer would allow you to save time, minimize mistakes, and avoid costly errors at the beginning of your case. Now, on to my second point of this blog post.

Child custody is complicated: how invested will be you be in learning Texas family law?

In case you haven’t noticed, most lawyers on television are filmed in front of a bunch of law books. In 2020, there isn’t much need to search through legal reference guides for information given that we have the internet. However, lawyers like to give off the impression that we are highly learned and scholarly- which, to a degree, we are.

Do not let our attempts to emphasize our braininess cover up the fact that we do a lot of research, reading, and analysis as a part of representing clients just like you in courtrooms across the state of Texas. It would help if you were prepared to do the same amount of work to prepare for these hearings and trials- and then work a lot more on top of that. Keep in mind that your lawyer does this for a living. She doesn’t also teach school, sell computer equipment, or do anything else. She is an attorney, and you are not.

Texas family law cases are a mixture of law and fact-based analysis. The Texas Family Code provides lawyers and judges with the basis to make decisions and argues cases. Judges know the code backward and forwards and expect anyone in their courtroom to possess a similar amount of knowledge. Since you and I have already established that you will not get any special treatment because you are not an attorney, I recommend many nights reading the family code.

The other thing you need to keep an eye on is that family court judges are given a great deal of authority to decide cases based on their judgments about a topic. They can use their experiences and judge the specific facts that you are presenting to them. The family code is essential, but the judge can make their impressions for the most part.

This is one area that you can spend all night reading up on, but you cannot reproduce. It would help if you were in family courtrooms for a long time to learn how a family court judge is likely to view a set of circumstances. There is no substitute for experience. You would likely say the same thing about whatever line of work you find yourself in. The same can be said for family attorneys. We have a great deal more experience than you do when it comes to being inside a courtroom. How will you make up for this if you decide to represent yourself?

Negotiations with your opposing party are where an attorney can make a real difference.

Many people are led to believe that their case is likely to be decided in a trial. I think television and movies make it seem inevitable that a judge will bang their gavel, issue some tersely worded decisions and then leave you and your opposing party to make sense of what was said. While this makes for good courtroom drama, the reality is that you may never see the inside of a courtroom due to your family law case.

You earn your money as an attorney during the long stages of negotiation between any trips you need to make to the courtroom. Courtrooms are where you may picture your attorney doing most of their work, but the reality is far from that. Yes, family law attorneys are in the courtroom often. However, when they get back to the office and engage the opposing attorney with phone calls, emails, and the like, your case moves closer to being resolved.

For instance, did you know that your family law case increases its chances of being settled dramatically by attending mediation? If you don’t believe me, find out from your judge how many times you will be made to participate in mediation before ever being allowed inside their courtroom for a temporary orders mediation or final trial. The simple truth is that mediation allows you and your opposing party to negotiate with one another in an atmosphere the lends itself to settlements.

However, a settlement is not automatic, even in mediation. Your attorney will do a tremendous amount of preparation to help you get to the point where a payment is possible. About your kids, your attorney will come up with multiple ways to negotiate custody arrangements, visitation agreements, and even child support figures to be used to push your opposing party to a position that is favorable to you. Your attorney will also have a plan in place to introduce evidence in court should settlement negotiations not result in the finalization of your case in mediation.

That experience that your attorney has, which we just mentioned, will pay dividends in mediation. They will see your situation, fall back on similar experiences that she has had, and then help you to settle your case with proposals that you would never have been able to come up with due to your inexperience in the area of family law. This is nothing to be ashamed about, but it is something for you to consider. Do not let a chance to save yourself from a trial happen because you were unwilling to hire an attorney to help you. Think of it as a short-term investment towards your child’s long-term betterment.

Child custody lawyers help you close out your case and protect your future.

Suppose that you have been able to successfully avoid going to a trial in your child custody case. You have now negotiated a full-fledged settlement on every issue in your case. You may feel like the wind is at your back- which it is. However, there is still work to be done in the form of getting those agreements into writing. An order will need to be drafted that sums up the arrangements you and your opposing party arrived at.

You will either be the party in charge of coming up with the initial draft of that order, or you will need to be the reviewer of this document. Either way, it pays to have an attorney at your side, no matter which side of the ledger you fall on. Allow me to explain why.

If you are in charge of drafting an order, you will need to take all your settlement agreements and break them down into a format that is fit for a judge to sign. Your mediated settlement agreement will not be written in order format. It is up to you to create the language for the order. This is important given that the judge not only will have to sign them to complete your child custody case but will have to enforce those orders at a future date if you or your opposing party violate the orders.

An order is unenforceable if it is not clear and does not lay out the parties’ responsibilities. You would be left with demands that are not worth the paper that they are printed on. All of your hard work in getting your case to its end could be wasted if your court orders do not reflect the mediated settlement agreement.

On the other hand, if you are the party who is responsible for reviewing the order drafted by your opposing party, you need to make sure that they are not trying to pull a fast one on you by slipping language into the final orders that were not agreed upon in mediation. If you sign the agreement, then you have agreed to be bound by it. Having a child custody attorney means that you will have someone with legal knowledge who can review the language, negotiate on alternative language, and eventually have an order fit for signature ready to be presented to you.

Questions about hiring an attorney? Contact the Law Office of Bryan Fagan

If you have any questions about the material presented in today’s family law blog, please do not hesitate to contact the Law Office of Bryan Fagan. Our licensed family law attorneys offer free-of-charge consultations six days a week here in our office. These consultations are an excellent opportunity to ask questions and receive direct feedback about your particular circumstances.

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Other Articles you may be interested in:

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  3. Do I Have to Pay Child Support if I Have Joint Custody of My Child in Texas?
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  5. Are Dads at a Disadvantage when trying to win 50/50 custody in a Texas Divorce?
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  7. Help!! My Ex-Spouse Kidnapped my Child
  8. How Much Will My Texas Child Custody Case Cost?
  9. When Can a Minor Child Weigh in on Custody Decisions in Texas?
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Law Office of Bryan Fagan, PLLC | Houston, Texas Child Custody Lawyers

The Law Office of Bryan Fagan, PLLC, routinely handles matters that affect children and families. If you have questions regarding child custody, it’s essential to speak with one of our Houston, TX, child custody lawyers right away to protect your rights.

Our child custody lawyers in Houston, TX, are skilled at listening to your goals during this trying process and developing a strategy to meet those goals. Contact the Law Office of Bryan Fagan, PLLC by calling (281) 810-9760 or submit your contact information in our online form. The Law Office of Bryan Fagan, PLLC, handles child custody cases in Houston, Texas, Cypress, Klein, Humble, Kingwood, Tomball, The Woodlands, Houston, the FM 1960 area, or surrounding areas, including Harris County, Montgomery County, Liberty County, Chambers County, Galveston County, Brazoria County, Fort Bend County, and Waller County.

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At the Law Office of Bryan Fagan, PLLC, the firm wants to get to know your case before they commit to work with you. They offer all potential clients a no-obligation, free consultation where you can discuss your case under the client-attorney privilege. This means that everything you say will be kept private and the firm will respectfully advise you at no charge. You can learn more about Texas divorce law and get a good idea of how you want to proceed with your case.

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