Category: Child Support

How much will my case cost? The Top Four Determining Factors

That may be the number one thing on everyone’s mind that is involved in a divorce, custody, or other family law case. If not, it’s close to the top.

Divorce and Custody attorneys hear it all the time. The follow-up question is: Why can’t you tell me how much this will cost?

The reason is that the cost generally depends upon several factors, none of which your attorney controls. Most attorneys charge an hourly rate and most of the few that don’t have a number of “outs” that allow their “flat fees” to not really end up being flat fees, so these thoughts still apply.

So the bottom line is that an attorney cannot generally tell you what your case will cost because he or she does not know how much of his or her time it will take to handle the case.

Here are a few things that impact the amount of time that a case requires and which then affect how much the case will cost:

1. What your spouse or ex does

Fighting takes time. If your spouse or ex is the type that will fight about things that are insignificant, refuse to answer questions the first time he or she is asked, and generally make things more difficult, your attorney is going to have to spend more time dealing with your case.

2. What your spouse’s or ex’s attorney does

Attorneys can disagree without being disagreeable. The Texas Supreme Court came up with a thing called the Texas Lawyer’s Creed a couple decades ago because the problem of lawyers being so disagreeable had gotten out of hand. The Lawyer’s Creed contains a number of rules, including things like this:

I will not quarrel over matters of form or style, but I will concentrate on matters of substance.

I will readily stipulate to undisputed facts in order to avoid needless costs or inconvenience for any party.

I will refrain from excessive and abusive discovery.

I will comply with all reasonable discovery requests. I will not resist discovery requests which are not objectionable.

I will not make objections nor give instructions to a witness for the purpose of delaying or obstructing the discovery process.

If both your attorney and the opposing attorney will follow these rules, your case will cost less. If not, it will cost more.

3. What the court does

Courts have different rules and different ways of doing things. If your court requires the attorneys to appear in person to tell the judge what the status of the case is, that will cost more than if the attorneys can send an email to the court coordinator. If the court requires a pre-trial hearing to set a case for trial, instead of a call or visit to the court coordinator, the hearing will be more expensive. If the court believes that an Amicus attorney should be appointed to look after the interest of the children in a custody case, that will cost more than if the Amicus was not appointed.

4. The decisions that you make

Finally, you will have a number of choices to make throughout the case. When you are asked a question in discovery, your decision on whether to answer fully and completely on the first request will have an impact on how much the case costs. If you are in a county with associate judges, your decision on whether to appeal the associate judge’s ruling or not will determine whether another hearing is needed. Deciding to appeal may be the right decision, but it will mean preparation for and conducting another hearing – which leads to more attorneys’ fees.

So, why can’t your lawyer tell you how much the case is going to cost? Because neither you nor your attorney know what the future holds. Neither of you knows how much time your attorney is going to have to spend dealing with your case, and without that information, there is no way to know.

There are things you can do to save money. Some of them are found in one of our previous blog posts, Six Ways to Save Money in Your Divorce or Custody Case. One of the biggest is: find a lawyer that you trust and ask questions along the way about the choices that need to be made, and how the decisions will impact both the cost on the front end — the attorneys’ fees — and the cost on the back end — the result.

If you would like to talk to one of the Beal Law Firm attorneys about representation, you can reach us at lawyers@dfwdivorce.com or call us at 817.261.4333 or 214.414.0418. You can always find us at www.dfwdivorce.com

Six Ways to Save Money in Your Divorce or Custody Case

Hiring a competent attorney for any type of case is expensive. This article is written assuming that you are going to hire an attorney for your divorce, custody or other family law case — whether you should is a topic for another day.

Now that you’ve gotten an attorney, here are some ways to save money:

1. Hire a good attorney, then listen to your attorney not your spouse or ex

It is amazing and unfortunate how many people will be in a huge battle with their ex or soon to be ex, yet believe everything the ex tells them, rather than listening to what their attorney says. If you don’t trust your attorney, get a new attorney. If you have an attorney that you trust, listen to him or her. It is highly unlikely that you can rely on what your ex says, if you’re at war.

2. Do what your attorney asks

During the case, your attorney will have a great many tasks for you to do — complete a timeline, answer various questionnaires, fill out an inventory, gather documents, etc. You don’t have to do anything, but if you don’t you are going to cost yourself a great deal of money, and maybe more. At a minimum, your attorney will have to spend time trying to solve the problem another way — without the information that he or she has asked you for. If you’ve been asked for something critical, and you don’t provide it, you could lose your entire case.

3. Send documents, photos, etc. in one email, rather than a bunch of emails

Your attorney will undoubtedly ask you to send him or her documents, photos, videos, etc. If you are providing hard-copies, when you deliver them, have them organized, but not to a crazy degree. If you organize them to the point that they cannot be easily copied, worked with, etc., you are actually costing yourself money. If you are sending the items by email, it will help if you send them in reasonably sized groups. That is, don’t send 1,000 documents in one email, but even more importantly don’t send one each in 1,000 different emails.

4. Don’t have your attorney draft an agreement until an agreement is reached

If you think that you have reached an agreement with your ex, that’s great. But, having your attorney draft a 70 page divorce decree, that then gets substantially changed a number of times, can cost you an unbelievable amount of money. Often, it’s best to bullet point tentative agreements and make sure that there is really a meeting of the minds before incurring the cost of a major drafting project.

5. Don’t fight any more than necessary and don’t fight over things that don’t matter

Fighting is expensive. It takes attorney time, and that’s what attorneys sell — so time is truly money. If something is worth fighting over, the cost may be worth it, but fighting needlessly or over things that really don’t matter is a way to waste an incredible amount of money. Spending $7,500.00 of attorneys’ fees to get a couch that you could replace for $750.00 is probably a really bad expenditure of money.

6. Do not use your attorney as a counselor

Most people know this, but it’s hard to remember it. Attorneys generally cost more than mental health professionals, and no matter how much you like your attorney, if the discussion you are having does not further the cause of your case, you will be far happier at invoice time if you have spent your time counseling with a friend or mental health professional, rather than your attorney.

Finally, remember: there’s saving money on the front end, and saving money on the back end. Any competent attorney can settle your case in a few days, if you are willing to give the other side everything that he or she wants. That may save you some attorneys’ on the front end, but cost you a fortune on the back end. So the bottom line is, look for realistic ways to save money, but be smart.

If you would like to talk to one of the Beal Law Firm attorneys about representation, you can reach us at lawyers@dfwdivorce.com or call us at 817.261.4333 or 214.414.0418. You can always find us at www.dfwdivorce.com.

New Help for Some Non-Deadbeat Child Support Payors

For over 20 years, Texas law has been clear: Moms and Dads are not allowed to modify their own child support orders without court approval.

Up until now, however, the cases have all dealt with situations where child-support payors have attempted to privately agree with the custodial parent to reduce or eliminate the child support owed.

In those situations, the law is clear that the court cannot enforce a private agreement, or rely on it to reduce the amount obligation.

Recently, a case was decided by the Texas Supreme Court with a distinctly different set of facts — the payor paid even more than he owed, he just didn’t pay it the way that the order directed him to.

The Texas Supreme Court noted that it has never said that courts cannot consider evidence of direct payments that are made in a manner that is different than what is ordered in the support order.

Now, in the case of Ochsner v. Ochsner, the Texas Supreme Court has determined that where the payor has made payments that satisfy an obligation incurred by the custodial parent, the court is permitted to consider direct payments when deciding whether the payor has met his or her obligation to pay support.

In Ochsner, the dad paid tuition to his child’s school. The mom had enrolled the child in the school and incurred the obligation. The dad not only paid everything he owed, he paid more than $20,000.00 more than he owed.

The mom sued him anyway, planning to not only keep the benefit of everything the dad had paid, but get even more money.

The Texas Supreme Court, told the mom, “No.”

While this may be good news for some payers of child support, the court warned:

“Our decision today should be confined to the facts presented. It should not be read to hold that tuition payments always qualify as child support. Further, it should not be read to encourage spouses to make direct payments and thereby bypass the registry or other payment mechanisms set forth in the divorce decree. At a minimum such behavior may needlessly complicate proceedings. It carries risks regarding matters of proof, and under different circumstances a trial court might well be within its discretion in refusing to consider such payments.”

If you believe that you have a child support issue and would like to discuss it with the attorneys at the Beal Law Firm, you can reach us at lawyers@dfwdivorce.com or call 817.261.4333 or 214.414.0418. You can also find us at www.dfwdivorce.com.

For the complete story on the cases discussed above, please see the following links:

Williams v. Patton, 821 S.W.2d 141 (Tex. 1991)

Ochsner v. Ochsner, 2016 Tex. LEXIS 569, 59 Tex. Sup. Ct. J. 1359 (Tex. 2016)