How long to give her lawyer to return calls.

In My Humble Opinion
21

[QUOTE=ZipperJJ]
Speaking not as a lawyer but as a busy business person…I want to reiterate what acsenray said about calling someone and not leaving a message with a stated purpose, or emailing saying “call me.” Of course, I don’t know that that’s what you did…

But it does drive us nuts. If I know I have 15 minutes free and I know your call will take 15 minutes, I’ll call. If I have no idea what you want then I don’t know how long your call will take and I can’t possibly call you unless I have an hour or two to spare (which is unusual) in case your call takes that long. Open-ended messages and emails end up at the bottom “oops, sorry missed your message last week, it’s been nuts around here tee hee” pile.

Just sayin…
[/QUOTE]
No - phone message had brief details and my email had even more.

I asked for two things:

Intentions: were they just responding to my motion to enforce or were they getting ready to file their own motion to modify the decree?

Child support change (due to custody & income changes): Stipulation or Motion (cooperative or adverserial)?

The answers, so far, anyway are “responding” and “stipulated”.

This is all good by me.

22

[QUOTE=ZipperJJ]
Speaking not as a lawyer but as a busy business person…I want to reiterate what acsenray said about calling someone and not leaving a message with a stated purpose, or emailing saying “call me.” Of course, I don’t know that that’s what you did…

But it does drive us nuts. If I know I have 15 minutes free and I know your call will take 15 minutes, I’ll call. If I have no idea what you want then I don’t know how long your call will take and I can’t possibly call you unless I have an hour or two to spare (which is unusual) in case your call takes that long. Open-ended messages and emails end up at the bottom “oops, sorry missed your message last week, it’s been nuts around here tee hee” pile.

Just sayin…
[/QUOTE]

Agreed. If you have a specific question, perhaps ask it in your voice mail. That way, even if you cannot answer when the attorney calls you back, the attorney can leave the answer to the question on your voice mail. You might even provide your email address so the attorney can write back to you.

23

[QUOTE=Belrix]
What’s a reasonable response time? I was actually feeling kinda positive about my ex getting a lawyer - at least, I thought, I was going to be able to work with a sane person.
[/QUOTE]
Four words; Certified Return Receipt Mail. That way you know and have proof that a letter has been delivered, and you have a record of your statements on paper.

Your wife’s lawyer has no responsibility to return your phone calls in a timely manner, or indeed at all, except insofar as it serves her client’s legal needs. She doesn’t work for you, you don’t pay her fees, and while returning your call and having a discussion with you may technically be billable time for her, she may decide that it is an inappropriate use of her client’s money, especially if you ramble on with her the way you do here. Sending her a clearly and concisely written letter which conveys your interests and positions, on the other hand, not only maintains an affirmative record of claims, statements of fact, and agreements between parties, it also permits her to decide how to best use her time without squandering it on undocumented, open-ended verbal exchanges. This is the way well-run businesses conduct official communications, and you should treat this the same way as you would any other business exchange.

As for retaining a lawyer, while you persist in the notion that this is going to cost you money, you neglect to consider how much time and effort a lawyer will save, especially in regard to the nuances of custody law and the details of a divorce agreement. [thread=456366]How much time have you pissed away, and how many unknown loopholes exist in your divorce and custody agreements because you’ve insisted on ham-fistedly doing it all yourself, despite a lack of any legal training whatsoever?[/thread] Do you insist on owning your own dairy cow in order to have milk? Heck, it’s clear already from your posts that a good lawyer, if hired earlier in the process, like [post=8112391]a year ago when people started suggesting it to you[/post], would have already saved you a lot of money and aggravation. A good divorce lawyer is going to have the routine down like a Laurel & Hardy sketch; if he’s dealing with opposing counsel who is malicious, nefarious, or incompetent, he’ll save you time and money spent dealing with that and ramifications therefrom; if wife’s counsel is competent and equitable (and you listen to him) he’ll save you time and money by knowing the dance steps and walking you through the boilerplate. While divorce lawyers no doubt make a lot of money on clients who insist on spending tens of thousands arguing over a $500 sofa, they’re never for lack of work and would just as soon make a quick, clean job of it, collect their fees, and go play a round of golf. And a good lawyer can stand back from the situation and be emotionally detached (which you clearly aren’t and couldn’t reasonably expect to be) and thus determine the options that are least bad for everyone involved and will ultimately cost you the least.

So stop whining on a message board about how your wife’s counsel won’t call you back, go hire an attorney who will vigorously but equitably defend your interests and those of your children from an objective standpoint, and move on with the business of dealing with all of the manifest emotional problems that led you not dealing with the situation effectively to begin with.

Stranger

24

[QUOTE=Stranger On A Train]

Your wife’s lawyer has no responsibility to return your phone calls in a timely manner, or indeed at all, except insofar as it serves her client’s legal needs.
Stranger
[/QUOTE]

This isn’t true, at least in my jurisdiction. It would be a breach of professional responsibility to fail to return phone calls from the party opposite you in a proceeding.

25

[QUOTE=kathmandu]
This isn’t true, at least in my jurisdiction. It would be a breach of professional responsibility to fail to return phone calls from the party opposite you in a proceeding.
[/QUOTE]
Well, I’ll defer to the jurists on the board on the issue; certainly, if you call a lawyer and leave a message saying, “I wish to discuss blah-blah motion that I’m going to submit on Friday,” the recipient has an ethical duty both to his client and the court to respond and minimize disagreement before it gets in the paws of the court’s clerk and wastes the time of all parties over a point everyone materially agrees upon. The lawyer in question, however, does not have an obligation, except insofar as dictated by the court, to respond in the arbitrary timeframe of the requester, nor would he be obligated to respond to a blanket request for a return call. In many cases, especially if the relationship between parties is acrimonious, counsel might insist that all communications be performed via written or e-mail correspondence, especially if the parties are unable to agree on basic terms or if verbal communication is unproductive and wasteful.

One of the advantage of both parties being represented by attorneys is that the lawyers are at least nominally professional and not emotionally invested in the situation except as it pertains to defending the objective interests of the client, and thus, may be willing to take quick informal call from each other that aren’t (as) prone to devolving into an illogical shouting match. I realize that this is an ideal, and there are plenty of lawyers who are needlessly petty or combative, but as a client you have the choice of picking a lawyer who will provide you with objective, grounded advice over a teat-sucking leech or a passive-aggressive imbecile; and if your opposing counsel isn’t of the same caliber, at least you don’t have to deal with this person, and a good lawyer will have more experience in coping and/or working around such inanity without exposing you to problems down the road.

In any case, the o.p. is fussing about how his wife’s lawyer isn’t responding to him after 2-3 business days. It is entirely possible that she simply hasn’t had or seen fit to take the time to call him back, especially for what amounts to an informational call that doesn’t benefit her client one bit.

Stranger

26

[QUOTE=Stranger On A Train]

In any case, the o.p. is fussing about how his wife’s lawyer isn’t responding to him after 2-3 business days. It is entirely possible that she simply hasn’t had or seen fit to take the time to call him back, especially for what amounts to an informational call that doesn’t benefit her client one bit.
Stranger
[/QUOTE]
I did state the reason for a callback and, if you read above, it was to decide between two filing methods for CS changes - one reasonably easy or the other that brings more trouble and expense for my ex.

I’d argue the answer has a direct bearing on her client.

As the change in physical custody is imminent, the change in CS needed a timely answer, too. Am I a little late coming to this change? Yes. Admitted. However, up until about a month ago, conversations between my ex and I were relatively peaceful, we were being cooperative, and the need to formalize all contact wasn’t necessary. Something, or, I believe, someone has convinced her that there’s more water in the well than she’s been dipping out and she’s recently gotten greedy.

Yes, the first link you point out a couple posts back asks a tax question. Being the rules are federal tax law, I don’t think a divorce agreement can alter that law. Any formalized division of dependents for child tax credit purposes would be on the wrong side of the “legal” line it seems - though the chances of the IRS detecting it are probably small.

I’ve since done more homework and found that the state CS formula takes the fact that only one parent can claim the child tax credit into account and the “non-custodial parent” receives a break in their CS payment roughly equal to the value of the tax credit. I’ve verified this through a tax professional, too.

This seems the only ham-fisted “mistake” in the agreement - the rest of this has been a matter of my ex not following the court order - a behavior not caused by any mistakes in the order itself.

I involve the pre-paid legal service to review documents I write. I’ve consulted them already on issues related the stipulation of new CS amounts and consulted them on the correctness of going to my ex’s attorney’s office to draw up the changed papers.

I’ve got a friend who’s a lawyer, though not a family lawyer, I bounce questions off of occasionally. There’s lawyers on this board who tell me that my methods are decently safe if everybody is being ethical and who are telling you that you’re flat out wrong in some of your statements.

Perhaps it’s best if you calm down a bit.

27

[QUOTE=Stranger On A Train]
Four words; Certified Return Receipt Mail. That way you know and have proof that a letter has been delivered, and you have a record of your statements on paper.

[/QUOTE]

I would disagree with this when dealing with the lawyer. I don’t think that I have ever used certified mail, return receipt with a lawyer. For one thing, attorneys tend to be good about responding and receiving mail and wouldn’t be that stupid. If I send anything certified mail return receipt, I also send a copy of it by regular mail. A fair number of people refuse to open those and they tend to come back to the office. Unless I am sending some sort of notice of default or something similar, I don’t bother. If I am hopeful that I can get some sort of resolution, I send a letter regular mail. If they don’t do anything with it, then I do something else.

I want proof that I responded to opposing counsel, I send it by fax and save the confirmation page.

28

[QUOTE=Caffeine.addict]
I would disagree with this when dealing with the lawyer. I don’t think that I have ever used certified mail, return receipt with a lawyer.
[/QUOTE]

Yeah - regular mail is fine.

29

[QUOTE=Belrix]
Geesh - I have a call in to legal services, OK? Let’s see what I hear first.

You guys are really quick to rack up expenses for me.
[/QUOTE]

Speaking as a child of divorced parents, whose father subpoenaed her in post-decree litigation over who was going to pay for college expenses (among other things), GET A LAWYER. I don’t care whether it’s from Legal Services, but keep in mind that sometimes saving a few bucks on a lawyer is a false economy.

My mom hired a crummy lawyer who couldn’t keep the facts of the case straight even the day before the hearing (I know; I met with her to review my proposed testimony, and she couldn’t remember what was going on in the case 5 minutes after we’d gone over it). Mom got screwed, just like she had in the original decree, which stated that “both parents shall contribute to the children’s higher education, according to their ability to pay,” but nothing about how said ability to pay was to be determined. Needless to say, though Dad’s income was several times greater than Mom’s (even without counting my stepmother’s income, which was more than his), Dad thought he and Mom should go halvsies on college. You can see the problems with this, no?

30

[QUOTE= Belrix]
I don’t have a lawyer yet. When I find out her lawyer’s intentions, I’ll decide if and what-kind of lawyer I need. Until then, since we all have the right to self representation, I’d think she’d have to talk with me.
[/QUOTE]

Then you are doing exactly the wrong thing.

[QUOTE= Belrix]
I’m thinking the lawyer talked to my Ex and said, “you know, he’s being reasonable and he could’ve had you cited for contempt way before this.” She’s going to end up shelling out for a lawyer who is going to just tell her to follow the existing paperwork. I’m OK with that.
[/QUOTE]

You continue to fail to understand that “your theory about what happened” is not only not law, but not even fact.

[QUOTE= Belrix]
You guys are really quick to rack up expenses for me.
[/QUOTE]

We are offering you advice on how best to proceed. Now, you don’t have to take it, but just because something costs money doesn’t mean it should be avoided. Tires cost money and rocks are free, but you don’t see people driving around with stones glued to their rims, do you?

[QUOTE= Belrix]
They have to answer my motion to enforce with a legal response. If the response doesn’t say the right things, I go to court and argue. It’s not like the phone call means anything. I know to wait for the papers.
[/QUOTE]

Do you know what a proper “legal response” is and what the “right things” are and how to “go to court and argue?”

If only there were people who had, I dunno, gone to school to learn such things, whose job it was to help out people who were unfamiliar with the court system!

[QUOTE= Belrix]
I’ve got a friend who’s a lawyer, though not a family lawyer, I bounce questions off of occasionally. There’s lawyers on this board who tell me that my methods are decently safe if everybody is being ethical and who are telling you that you’re flat out wrong in some of your statements.
[/QUOTE]

He’s not your lawyer (is he a divorce lawyer?). We’re not your lawyers. No one on this board or that is a family friend of yours has a duty to zealously represent your interests.

And what you think “ethical” means is in NO way, shape, form, or fashion even anywhere NEAR synonymous with the strictures of legal ethics and what a lawyer can and cannot do. The words “should,” “may,” and “shall” might mean similar things to you, but they don’t mean similar things at all.

Honestly, your continued insistence that everything will play out in your favor as long as everyone adheres to YOUR code of honesty and recognizes that YOU are in the right, and that the law exists to (and eventually will) justify YOUR position might very well result in yet another one of these threads where a great many responses will be “shoulda gotten a lawyer.”

Your posts indicate to me that you’re a decent enough guy who just wants the right thing to happen. But you are still confusing “your way” with the “right thing” and your blind faith that the law will ensure that if you just explain everything, while at first understandable, is now trainwreckily entertaining.

Everything might just work out in your favor. But I will be unsurprised if it does not.

31

[QUOTE=Belrix]
How about that - she just called…

They’re going to stipulate to the child support changes - no fight !!

They’re going to try to remove my name from the old joint credit card !!

Wow - it’s nice working with sane people.

<emily litella> Never mind </el>
[/QUOTE]

If you are at all concerned you might be blindsided at hearing, just fax over a confirmation letter to lawyer confirming all points discussed and agreed to and end it with something along the lines of ‘if this is not your recollection of our phone conversation, please contact me immediately.’

Attorneys really like the no fuss, less work type stuff when they can get it.

32

[QUOTE=Eva Luna]
Speaking as a child of divorced parents, whose father subpoenaed her in post-decree litigation over who was going to pay for college expenses (among other things), GET A LAWYER. I don’t care whether it’s from Legal Services, but keep in mind that sometimes saving a few bucks on a lawyer is a false economy.

My mom hired a crummy lawyer who couldn’t keep the facts of the case straight even the day before the hearing (I know; I met with her to review my proposed testimony, and she couldn’t remember what was going on in the case 5 minutes after we’d gone over it). Mom got screwed, just like she had in the original decree, which stated that “both parents shall contribute to the children’s higher education, according to their ability to pay,” but nothing about how said ability to pay was to be determined. Needless to say, though Dad’s income was several times greater than Mom’s (even without counting my stepmother’s income, which was more than his), Dad thought he and Mom should go halvsies on college. You can see the problems with this, no?
[/QUOTE]
I do see a problem. The first paragraph tells me to hire a lawyer. The second tells me how ineffective they can be.

Subtext suggests the question: why didn’t you get a student loan and pay part of your mothers “half”?

Perhaps your dad had legitimate additional expenses. Perhaps, like I did, he took on a much greater portion of marital debt and he already thought he compensated for the income differences.

Perhaps you haven’t read to the bottom of the posting where I talk about how I have gotten legal advice.

Perhaps I’m just bashing my head against a wall here.

33

[QUOTE=Belrix]
I do see a problem. The first paragraph tells me to hire a lawyer. The second tells me how ineffective they can be.
[/quote]

I’m saying that you need a competent lawyer who specializes in cases like yours to protect your rights, because lawyers have a greater chance than the general population of knowing what the hell they are doing. Note: not all lawyers are competent, and not all competent lawyers specialize in cases like yours. Mom hired who she thought she could afford; in my opinion, Mom made a mistake in her choice.

Because I already took out substantial student loans, on top of my full-tuition scholarship, plus had a part-time job. In part this was to cover the money that my dad thought my mom should pay, but which she quite simply did not have. I paid the loans off for years after I graduated. My dad’s legal bills alone would have easily paid off my loans. Dad’s household income was about an order of magnitude greater than Mom’s, literally.

If Dad had paid ALL of my college expenses not covered by my full-tuition grant, it would have amounted to about 5 - 6% of his salary, or approximately half that ratio of his household income. As it was, I had to give up offers of admission to Georgetown and the U. of C. because they had his financial information and wanted a contribution of about 5 times what NYU wanted; NYU, in their discretion, decided that if Mom was the custodial parent, they would only consider her income, and would consider Dad’s contribution to be what he had paid in child support (a pittance in comparison to his income).

You don’t know squat about my parents’ situation; I do. There was zero marital debt beyond the mortgage on the house, and my half-brother wasn’t born until after I graduated college. In the divorce decree, Mom got to live in the house, but she also had to make the mortgage payments. Child support was determined with that in mind. When the house was eventually sold, they split the proceeds, though it was quite common at the time my parents were divorced for a wife who had stayed home to raise children (and who continued to have primary physical custody), and whose career had been curtailed accordingly (my mom had to drop out of grad school to take care of us, because Dad traveled frequently for work) to receive the house outright in a divorce.

I have. I have also spent the past 9 years of my career working for law firms, and I know the difference between what happens to people who get piecemeal legal advice and what happens to people who have a competent professional protecting their interests throughout the long, messy legal process. I also think you are projecting the comments of others onto me.

Perhaps, but that’s hardly my fault.

34

-I’m french, which means living in a country where people are reluctant to sue or hire a lawyer

-I never had to go through a divorce, and none of the divorces I witnessed (friends or relatives) turned to be an ugly mess, so I don’t usually equate a divorce wih an ugly legal mess

-I went twice to court, both times without a lawyer.
Nevertheless, when I read your two last threads, my first thought was : “Boy! This guy needs a lawyer. He needs him yesterday!”

So, please, if only for the sake of the Straightdope, so that, during the next 10 years, we won’t have to read your rants about how your ex-wife has completely fucked over your life, has led you to bankrupcy and has prevented you from even having visitation rights, find a fucking lawyer!!!

35

Ah. Well, I apologize. I was wrong about your situation, Eva Luna. Perhaps I didn’t know enough about the facts and the history of your situation to be dispensing advice.

I appreciate everybody’s advice to get a lawyer. The thing to remember is that this is a done deal, the divorce is done. The decree is decreed, the contract is signed, the gavel banged, the blanks are filled in, it’s all official, etc.

If she tries to modify the decree, I’ll get a lawyer to fight it.

All I’m trying to do now is get the decree enforced, since she thinks she can choose what parts are optional, and recalculate the child support according to state guidelines as the law allows. I’m not creating new law here or trying to modify the divorce agreement. A precision instrument shouldn’t really be required.

If she files motions that try to modify the decree or change the custody agreement, I should have enough time to react with bigger (hired) guns.

36

Apology accepted, Belrix. I hope that you will keep in mind, though, that a signed divorce decree by no means signifies that you are “done,” particularly if the decree is not well-drafted. Circumstances change, laws change, and even in the best case, you aren’t “done” until your kids are of age, and maybe longer than that.

37

[QUOTE=Eva Luna]
even in the best case, you aren’t “done” until your kids are of age…
[/QUOTE]

There are no words truer than that.

I know divorce can be hard and I know it is even harder when one is being difficult but the fact comes down to when it is all over the kids are still there. You are tied to her at the very least until the last kid turns eighteen.

When all this legal shit is behind you, let it go. Put it all behind you and try and start fresh. It is hard not to hold those resentments but I am speaking from experience.

I am in the home stretch. Seven more months and our youngest is eighteen. I am not pissed at the last thing he did but the first and the second and the third etc. for almost twenty years. Hell I am still pissed about things he did when we were married.

I should have let go of all that years ago. I should have took one incident, dealt with it and then let it go but I did not and now the hatred I feel for the man sometimes is overwhelming. Maybe after some time it will fade or maybe it will all disappear the day our daughter turns eighteen. I will say that most of it was the lack of his presence as a father. He never went out of his way and his own needs always come first and they still do.

I am in no way saying you are that way. I am just pointing out that the anger you feel towards your ex can snowball and create an unbreakable barrier that ten or twenty years from now is a very sad feeling.

38

[QUOTE=SomeUserName]
I am in no way saying you are that way. I am just pointing out that the anger you feel towards your ex can snowball and create an unbreakable barrier that ten or twenty years from now is a very sad feeling.
[/QUOTE]
You know, I thought I was getting to be OK with this. Really did. I was thinking about inviting her to start attending our church - it’s really close to her house, it’d represent consistency for the children, and I thought we could get along decently enough as long as we didn’t try to play one-big-happy-family games and kept to our own pews.

Then she started this and it reopened the pit. I knew it wasn’t all gone but I did think it was sufficiently under control to try being in the same proximity once a week.

That’s all gone, of course, since she decided to get greedy. I’m not sure what triggered her new behavior but all I want right now is to see her crushed in a bizarre piano accident. Not healthy, I know, but real enough.

This just needs more time to get back to the “stuffed and under control” stage. Before I had somehow morphed most of my anger to amusement and pity. I need to get back to that stage.

39

Reminds me of my divorce. My lawyer showed up 3 hours late (to the hearing), and was confused-he made repeated errors in representing me, and thought (incorrectly) that i owned a house. (He didn’t read my statement of assets). For good measure, he forgot to send me the bill-which was fine-I wasn’t about to pay that dope.
Oh, and he didn’t return phone calls, either.

40

[QUOTE=Belrix]
You know, I thought I was getting to be OK with this. Really did. I was thinking about inviting her to start attending our church - it’s really close to her house, it’d represent consistency for the children, and I thought we could get along decently enough as long as we didn’t try to play one-big-happy-family games and kept to our own pews.

Then she started this and it reopened the pit. I knew it wasn’t all gone but I did think it was sufficiently under control to try being in the same proximity once a week.

That’s all gone, of course, since she decided to get greedy. I’m not sure what triggered her new behavior but all I want right now is to see her crushed in a bizarre piano accident. Not healthy, I know, but real enough.

This just needs more time to get back to the “stuffed and under control” stage. Before I had somehow morphed most of my anger to amusement and pity. I need to get back to that stage.
[/QUOTE]

Why keep to your own pews? That seems like it would just show the children that you are even more seperate than you already are.

Lets go to church with mom but we’ll sit on opposite sides of the church? If it is her weekend are you going to wave at them from across the isle? or if it is yours will she do the waving?

If you really want to show a united front you would sit together. I know that is hard but I had to sit next to my ex a couple times when our son played baseball and our daughter played softball. It was in no way fun for me but it was not about me it was about them.

I could go on now how I attended every fucking game and he showed up for like two or how I took them to practice on the weekends I had them but he was to lazy to drive the ten minutes to take them to the field and sit for an hour so they missed practice every weekend he had them and how I had to pick them up from his house on weekends he had them because they had games so they could you know play because he was to lazy for that too but ya know I am letting all that go…

Sounds kind of dumb huh? Still that pissed off about something that happened over ten years ago.

“Stuffed and under control” is not what I am trying to convey. Let is go and take each issue by itself. This new issue is being piled on the old. That creates the snowball.

You are still pissed about the break up, her new boyfriends, the divorce etc. This is just a new layer of the “pissed off ball”.

A divorce with children is hard. They get to remind you everyday that you created them with “that bitch”. Ten or twenty years of that and you create a very bitter person.