Specifically divorce lawyers, and preferably ones who practice in Maryland.
No,** Typo Knig** and I are NOT the ones in need of this service, thankfully.
However, a family friend is, and we promised we’d ask around to see if we could come up with names.
If you have any recommendations, please PM or email me.
I live in Maryland, and even though the state is small, it usually makes sense to try and find a divorce attorney reasonably close to the divorcing parties to prevent hours of travel time. You may want to specify a town or city you would prefer the attorney to be near.
You may also want to specify whether you are looking for a deal maker or a super aggressive attorney. Super aggressive divorce attorneys tend to be expensive tools used for specific purposes and might not be the best choices if both parties are middle class re economic status and there is not some valuable bone of contention to fight over.
I don’t know the parties involved… their parents are close friends of **Typo Knig’**s parents so I don’t know what sort (shark vs. mediator etc.) would be best. I know the parents are concerned that the son might be taken advantage of. They asked if we could help get some names for the son to meet with (as a marginal improvement over looking in the yellow pages, I guess). As we live in Virginia and the only lawyer we know is the fellow who did our wills, we’re not a LOT better than the yellow pages but hey, any port in a storm.
Good point on “where” - I know they’re in Montgomery County Maryland but not one of the closer-in 'burbs such as Bethesda.
Another point to consider is that if the parties are middle class with minor kids a very large portion of how the divorce is to be settled is already laid out in the law and in various child support income ratio formulas. A lot of people think they need a pitbull type attorney to go after the assets of the other party, when in fact a lot of how “middle class with kids” divorces are going to be settled is based on various cookbook state guideline formulas and recommendations.
A point to remember is that very aggressive attorneys tend to be very expensive and if there is a defined pool of assets to be fought over, paying someone 200-400 dollars an hour to punish the other party is, in practical terms, going to cost both parties in the end.
The above assumes rational people who just don’t want to be married anymore. If drugs and crazy/irrational people are involved a more militant stance may be required.
I had someone tell me once jokingly that the reason that he and his ex-wife were so reasonable about the property settlement is that they spent all their money on counseling instead of a divorce attorney.
All kidding aside, a pit bull of a divorce attorney usually isn’t necessary and tends to make things worse.