When dealing with the reality of a divorce, one of the first questions many litigants deal with is whether
or not they should incur the expense of hiring a skilled and experienced divorce attorney. It may come across a self-serving, my answer is almost always “yes”
While the allure of using low cost on the line resources or one of the heavily advertised strip mall divorce centers is understandable, I would caution everyone about the unforeseen consequences of this approach.
Recently The Durst Firm was hired by someone who used one of these low-cost options do not provide individualized legal services to address a wide range of post judgement issues. Once we started addressing the issues, became clear that the underlying documents offered little guidance in how these subsequent issues should be resolved. A properly drafted settlement agreement will set forth not only the resolutions, but also the factual underpinnings of served to lead to those results. In this recent case, no such information was provided and the result was that the judge was compelled to order a time-consuming and expensive plenary hearing. This all could have been avoided, or at least greatly minimized, if the job was done right the first time.
