What Do I Want, What Do I NEED in a Divorce Attorney?

If you find yourself facing a divorce from your spouse, you essentially have four options as to how to deal with it: 1) represent yourself in court; 2) hire the meanest, “junk-yard dog” attorney you can find; 3) hire an experienced Fresno divorce attorney who will help you through the process; 4) quit your job, sell everything you own at a garage sale, and move to a secluded beach in Mexico (or some other foreign country where your spouse can’t find you).

Let’s look at each option in detail.

Representing yourself. If you and your soon-to-be ex-spouse can agree on everything (child support, child custody, child visitation, spousal support (alimony), division or retirement and/or pension accounts, division of debts, etc., etc.), then you probably don’t need an attorney. However, if your spouse gets his/her own attorney and tries to convince you that their attorney can handle the matter for both of you – you better run the other way!

Hire the meanest, junk-yard dog attorney you can find. If you are so angry with your spouse that you could just kill him/her, you want to make their life a living hell, money is not an issue, and you are willing to take a scorched-earth approach, then hiring a “junk yard dog” attorney is just what you need. However, be prepared to spend endless days sitting in court fighting over issues that were not a fight to begin with, and writing checks to the attorney for tens and tens of thousands of dollars. But who cares, right? So long as you can make the ex’s life miserable, you don’t care if your life (and those of your children) are in constant turmoil for a year or two.

Hire a Compassionate, Experienced Divorce Attorney in Fresno. Divorce is usually one of the most traumatic events a person will go through in their lives. It makes absolutely NO sense to make it more difficult than it needs to be. So, you should look for an attorney who will stand up for your rights, but at the same time be reasonable in trying to get your Fresno divorce resolved as quickly and painlessly (both emotionally and financially) as possible. When I wrote Win Your Divorce: Financially, Emotionally & Socially (which quickly reach the Best Seller List on Amazon.com), my goal was to share my more than a decade of experience as both a mediator and attorney to show readers that dissolution of a marriage, while never stress-free, needn’t be difficult, expensive, and filled with animosity. I share how divorcing couples should abandon the “win-at-all-costs” methods in favor of tactics and strategies that promote “friendly” divorce, allowing those involved to save loads of time, trouble, and money.

Quit your job, sell everything you own at a garage sale, and move to a secluded beach in Mexico. Although I say this in jest, I have been involved in a couple of cases over the years where it actually happened this way. The problem is, after lying on the beach drinking margaritas all day for a few months, you’ll eventually get bored and want to come back home. However, needless to say, the divorce judge will have probably have made a lot of decisions in your absence that will haunt you for the rest of your life. To schedule a no obligation consultation, call (559)222-4891.

Adios for now.

Rick