Legal Help For Women and family resources. Free articles, podcasts, ebooks and more. There’s good info here
you can use.
Posts Tagged ‘Family’
Legal Help For Women
08
Apr
Do you have any tips for how I can best manage my family law case?
17
Mar
Managing your family law case will be one of the most challenging things you ever do. Organizational skills will come in handy in your role as project manager, but it’s equally important for you to maintain perspective and keep focused on your goal of a positive outcome. You can do this.
Where do I begin?
Your first objective is to define the scope of your project, so you have an overall picture of what you will be required to do as you navigate your case. Block out some time when you won’t be disturbed, grab a pen and some paper, and start by familiarizing yourself with the five stages a family law case typically goes through: (1) filing the initial petition and response; (2) the temporary order process; (3) discovery; (4) the settlement conference; (5) the trial if settlement fails. You can find a breakdown of this process in my post, As A Pro Se Party, You are the Project Manager of Your Family Law Case.
I recommend going through each stage, one at a time, to create action items. Be sure to consider the forms and documents you’ll need to gather, deadlines for filing paperwork, information to compile in support of your case, appointments to make and meetings to attend. Make sure you read more about finding the best family law attorney, that is quite important. At the end of this process, you should have a detailed task checklist for each stage of your case, as well as a project timeline. If you need help with this, Pro Se University offers $5 Roadmaps (several are free) to help you with your family law issue.
Label file folders for each stage of your family law issue, so you’ll have a place to house your checklists and other documents you are likely to collect. Also, buy a large calendar to prominently mark important dates and deadlines.
How can I keep from being overwhelmed by my family law project?
Concentrate on one stage at a time. Simply developing your action plan is a large undertaking, but once it’s in place, executing your to-do lists will seem less daunting. Here are some things you can do to make the work more manageable:
- Create an environment that is conducive to concentrating. This means eliminating distractions and physical clutter. Turn off your phone and television, ignore your doorbell. Your work area should only contain the tools you need in order to work on your case and nothing more. It can be comfortable and accommodating, but cannot be used for anything other than your casework.
- Set aside enough time to get through a few items from your checklist. Don’t try to tackle everything at once, but mix easier tasks with more complicated ones. The energy and ego boost you’ll feel from accomplishing the smaller items will help you power on. People generally underestimate how long it will take to do something, so I recommend doubling your estimate. If you think it will take you half an hour to fill out a form, give yourself an hour. It is better to have extra time on your hands than to miss a deadline.
- If you are stretched thin and your calendar is already full, consider saying no to some of your personal obligations. Effective project managers know how to prioritize. You may need to make some tough decisions if you want to stay focused and on task.
- Be as prepared as you can. If you are working on a computer, constantly back up your files. You don’t want any of your hard work erased. It’s also a good idea to keep a notebook at hand so that you can write down any ideas or questions that come up. Written reminders are important because you will be keeping track of many details, and you don’t want to rely on memory alone. They can also help you quickly pick up where you left off if you are interrupted.
- Above all, take care of yourself during this process. Eat and sleep well, take breaks and cut yourself some slack. It’s perfectly reasonable if other areas of your life fade to the background for a while. Your number one priority is to get through your case and achieve a favorable outcome. Keeping this in mind at all times will be invaluable.
Pro Se University offers affordable legal help for individuals living in King County who are not able to afford an attorney. If you need guidance along the way, contact us or attend a free 30-minute appointment. We will help you get on track and through your family law issue.
Photo by Andy Ciordia
Should I ask my friend for advice about my divorce?
04
Mar
Should I change my hair? What car should I buy? What movie should I go see this weekend? What gym should I join? What should I do about this issue I’m having at work?
We seek advice from our friends and family to learn how to approach a new situation. Our goal is to go from knowing “nothing” to knowing “something.” And who better to prepare us for this than a group of people we already know and trust?
I know I have a group of friends I lean on for advice. But there are some situations when one needs to evaluate if our friends are the appropriate and qualified source of information about important life issues that vary from person to person, based on their own experience.
Take divorce for example.
Why should I be careful when seeking a friend’s advice about divorce?
Author Susan Pease Gadoua wrote a great article on this subject titled, Beware When Seeking A Friend’s Advice About Divorce, for the Huffington Post. She says that you shouldn’t learn about divorce from someone like a friend, family member, neighbor, or co-worker, and this group of people alone. They should not be your only source for learning about everything that can happen as you move through the often-confusing legal process.
Gadoua cites three main reasons to support her claim:
- You are learning about divorce through someone who may not fully understand what happened or why.
- Your friend/acquaintance may not tell you about special circumstances in his case that may have influenced a particular outcome.
- Everything about you and your case is different from anyone else’s case or circumstances.
Everyone reaches out to his or her network to seek advice and learn from the experiences of their peers. That’s okay. But your peers’ lives and situations are completely different from what you are going through right now.
For example, if you are reading this, you are considering or have already decided to represent yourself and are looking for ways to “do-it-yourself” and learn how to do it right. You know that you need help and are looking to team up with someone to get the help you need, when you need it.
How can I learn more about divorce, if not from my friends?
I’m not saying that you shouldn’t ask your friends for advice about what they went through with their divorce, but keep in mind that what they are telling you is different from your situation and there are details they may be omitting from the story that you’re unaware of.
So what can you do to learn more about the divorce and legal process? I recommend that you learn as much as you can, and books by accredited lawyers are a great resource. Here are a few to get you started:
- Nolo’s Essential Guide to Divorce by Attorney Emily Doskow
- Contemplating Divorce: A Step-by-Step Guide to Deciding Whether to Stay or Go by Susan Pease Gadoua
Once you have educated yourself as much as you can, build the list of questions that those books have not answered and schedule an appointment with a professional who knows the intricacies of the law specific to the court system where you live.
We are here to help – you can sign up for the next free 30-minute Attorney Appointment, register for a Pro Se University Workshop, or look into other services that match what you’re looking for.
Just because you don’t know what you don’t know, doesn’t mean you have to go it alone.
Always Consider the Cost of Raising a Child
16
Jan
This is an important post because people who pay child support or may be ordered to pay child support often think they are being asked to pay too much. In reality, the non-custodial parent who pays support rarely pays nearly as much to raise that child as the custodial parent.
There are tons of costs associated with raising a child that often are not thought or. That child will likely need more living space, daycare, you’ll have to buy more groceries,on clothing more than others as they grow up so fast,if you are looking for comfortable clothing or accessories check the alpaca line for winter.
Now remember the toys, bigger car, education expenses, recreation expenses, health care, toys and added utility expenses. I’m sure there are other expenses not listed here.
The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) surveys the average costs. You can find the 2009 report here. You can see that the costs vary depending on the income of the household, the number of children, and the age of the child/children. A single-parent one child family usually pays about $9,000-12,000 annually to raise a child. So, if for example, you are ordered to pay $300/mo., you would only be paying $3,600 towards that amount. As a side note, most people who actually have kids say that the USDA figures are far too low.
So if you have a support order you think needs modified, I would encourage you to use this USDA Cost of Raising a Child Calculator to determine if the amount really is unfair. Also if you are in a divorce or custody battle and you think you would save money by winning custody, think again. You most likely would actually save money by paying child support. Haven’t had kids yet? Use the calculator to make sure you can afford them before you do.
AM I ANTI-SEMITIC?
August 11, 2006
People have often asked me this question. They say "Look what the Jews did to you, Judge Arnold Gold put you in prison the day before you had to appear in court to start defending in your case, then kicked you out of your house to sell it and pay for the fees of opposing counsel (who sued you in the first place) who were 1. your wife’s killer attorney Emily Shappell Edelman, whose killer tactics no doubt helped kill her client, who is Jewish, and 2. Nicolette Hannah’s killer attorney, James R. Eliaser, whose killer tactics deprived a small boy of his father, who is Jewish – who I discovered the concealed fact that he used to be an employee of the judge’s law firm. By ordering these attorney’s wishes, the judge effectively created the loss of my small son to me and me to him, and the exodus of the entire Clark family, less me, to the East Coast, and the fracture of the Redgrave brand.
Then there was Family Court Supervising Judge Aviva Bobb, who I believe is Jewish, who backed Gold up, kept awarding new fees to Eliaser, and then refused to let me buy my guest house so that I could continue to live in Topanga, keep my dogs, and not store my belongings and not live in a trailer. Just a reminder here of my expectations that celebrity pandering could not happen in Hollywood’s hallowed halls of justice since we read this on their mission statement.
An Appeal to the Second Circuit got me a negative review from Justice Miriam Vogel, also Jewish.
An Appeal to the Supreme Court, after I had written to Chief Justice Ronald George, who I believe is also Jewish, was turned down.
And the media, which wouldn’t stop, appeared to get more fodder from the site of Hebrew University, where one of their professors made me the anecdotal target setting out to prove her totally inapposite use of me in a legal paper. Her name was Hila Keren, and to this day, I have received no response from her.
And then of course, there was Lew Wasserman, the top Jew in Hollywood, from the old House Calls case.
Well, my answer to this all-important question is that far from being anti-Semitic, I am, perhaps surprisingly, PRO-Semitic, and HUGELY ENVIOUS of them.
I have always respected the culture of the Jews, and their education, which certainly exceeds mine. I look up to them, and their low numbers among the world’s population has always astonished me. Always an outsider, I even believe I have the soul of a Jew. I have made a point of making close friends with Jewish people. (In fact, more than one of my girlfriends was Jewish.)
I WANT TO BECOME JEWISH, so that I could be completely like them, recognizably the same, but without their religious beliefs, a secular Jew.
I believe that there is the APPEARANCE of networking and mutual backscratching taking place. Of course, business is all about mutual backscratching, nothing wrong with that, but if I am right, I want to be a part of THAT network.
It is absolutely no coincidence that I believe I could then enter the places where Jewish mingling and socializing take place. Clubs, temples, agents’ offices and so forth, where right now I would be unwelcome and refused entry. Perhaps because I am no longer attached to a celebrity.
It was Adolph Zukor, that originator of things Hollywood, founder of Paramount Pictures, who ages ago gave this deathless advice to newcomers to the Hollywood scene: "Talk British but think Yiddish!" That was right up my tree.
To this end, I have entertained the thought of taking a hint from Careen Johnson, a struggling black bricklayer and funeral parlor assistant who, dying to become successful as an actress, changed her name to Whoopee Goldberg. She was smart, it got her an Emmy, an Oscar, a Tony and a Grammy. And of course she had the great talent to back it up.
Now me, I could change my name to Clarkstein or Clarkberg, but would it help? Not bloody likely! If I became a Jew aspiring to become successful as an actor or a celebrity, I would surely be advised to change it back to Clark.
Don’t think so? Look at Emmanuel Goldenberg, Muni Weisenfreund, Julius Garfinkle, David Kaminsky, Bernard Schwartz, Jacob Cohen, Joyce Frankenberg, Aaron Chwatt and Ephraim Goldberg. They changed their monikers to Edward G. Robinson, Paul Muni, John Garfield, Danny Kaye, Tony Curtis, Rodney Dangerfield, Jane Seymour, Red Buttons and Frank Gehry respectively. And then there was Larry King (interesting choice, but what is wrong with "Larry Zeiger Live"?)
No, I’m afraid that that can only be my fantasy.
But getting back to the law, I did make a point of hiring Jewish lawyers, who always keep their original names perhaps as a badge of office, oh, and a Jewish press agent, thinking that would help.
The first to defend me was Melvin S. Goldsman, and Marci Levine, Esqs. of Freid & Goldsman, their names giving them away.
I fired them when I found that my Mel allowed his Jewish adversary to write a time sensitive stipulation to Nicolette that could have led to the cessation of hostilities, didn’t read it because he was out of the office and there’s no money in ceased hostilities, and told his secretary to tell me to sign it, which I did. Boy, was I green at the beginning. Perhaps they were old friends. Perhaps they performed regularly for the Beverly Hills Bar Association.
My next was Steve Mindell, Esq. I fired him because he was about as aggressive as my little son’s kindergarten teacher. When I asked him to get Lynn to open a joint bank account with me so that she could pay her share of the upkeep of our joint property during the three years of my lone occupation, he simply told me she wouldn’t agree. When I asked him to get our joint stock portfolo released from the freeze put on it at the height of the dotcom bubble so we could cash out, again, he wouldn’t do it. It would have meant getting a court order, and he wouldn’t go to court for it. Nothing appeared to be happening, other than his endless bills.
So then I hired hit man Mike Kelly, Esq., a referral from a Topanga millionaire divorcee lady friend. Of course, he’s Irish, (the worst kind, I hear someone shout – but that’s a joke).
My last lawyer (apart from my Appeal lawyers, also Jewish) was a Cy Schaffer (also a Jew), to whom I paid $50,000. In court, Judge Gold said he had made an order that I was not to use funds from a tax refund to pay this lawyer, and he should immediately refund it to me. Schaffer protested. Gold hunted for his order, then said he couldn’t find it, and told him he could keep the money.
I fired Mike Kelly after stretched out months when he alleged I was trying to get Nicolette evicted from her little house by not paying the property taxes, and it was going to be sold by the taxing authorities. He didn’t read the 1-page notice, which had been sent over to him by her tricky attorney Eliaser, who I’m sure had read it. It wasn’t for me, it belonged to another John Clark, on a foreclosing property in South Central Los Angeles!
So now I was out of lawyers because I stopped believing in them, lost six hundred thousand dollars to them, and had no more money. That’s how I came to represent myself in court, and had to learn what it is to be a PRO SE.
Having wised up, my first appearance before Judge Gold was over the unread by my attorney property tax inquiry. There was Eliaser, sputtering to the judge that I was trying to get his client evicted. I showed the court the 1-page notice showing it didn’t belong to me. Judge Gold just smiled, and thanked me for being smart enough to catch it. I asked for a sanction against Eliaser for wasting the court’s time. Not granted.
As for my Jewish press agent, a gentleman named Michael Levine, a self-styled media expert, I hired him to give me advice on handling the media now that I was suing Larry Zeiger -sorry, King. I got no advice at all; he refused to visit me at my house, but I did find that my money, about thirteen thousand dollars, went towards starting his new wannabe Drudge Report, aimed at bringing down the likes of Mel Gibson and Michael Jackson and maybe me and others who APPEAR to be breaking his moral code (chuckle chuckle). Networking again, is my opinion. But unlike Red Buttons, I did get a dinner, several actually. It wasn’t until after I had dropped him that I discovered that he used to be married to King’s current wife by whom he had a child. I think he should have told me about that before I paid him a penny.
If I ever get as drunk as Mel Gibson, I’m told that I tend to act out my Jewish fantasy while singing the freedom chorus of the Hebrew slaves in their banishment.
But when I sober up, I get to thinking more about what "they" did to me. Here I am, my possessions lost or stolen, alienated by my kids and my family (I face back East to see them), removed from my house and my wealth by quasi-military enforcers, and exiled from Topanga, my Homeland. Then these words come to me.
As long as deep in the heart,
The soul of a Jew yearns,
. . . . . . . . . .
Our hope is not yet lost.
And Barbra comes to my rescue in song.
Posted in COMMENTARY