Reducing Family Law ATttorney Fees
Family law attorneys may not charge an initial consultation fee, advertise as offering a free consultation for divorce, but the total costs lawyer fees and costs of divorce or child support and custody issues are significant to most people and their already strained budgets. If you are smart, you can control major factors contributing to high legal fees and costs in your divorce settlement.
What may begin as a small retainer fee can easily build into a high legal bill if you do not understand the factors you can control in keeping those costs down. The reality is, even your attorney cannot quote you a total cost of a divorce proceeding with absolute certainty. Far too many factors affect how your legal bill can escalate in a very short time. In realty, you and your spouse will generate high legal fees all on your own if you are not prepared! Understand that by fighting or disagreeing on every single divorce issue you will be contributing to billable hours. Fighting over petty things will immediately necessitate a response from your hired divorce lawyer! Parties allow negative emotions to rule their reasoning during a divorce or child custody proceeding rather than being active in resolving issues with the least amount of interaction between the parties’ divorce lawyers. Resolve to be proactive in a manner that helps your attorney realize your goal without financially straining you more than necessary.
Remember, you can eliminate a large portion of billable hours by cooperating with your family law attorney whenever possible, as a result you can effectively us reduce your divorce or custody legal fees. There are three simple ways you can reduce your divorce lawyer fees:
1. Provide complete, organized financial documents. A cost effective way to lower lawyer fees is to focus on assisting your attorney with the preparation of your financial discovery. Florida statutes require each party to disclose very detailed financial information during a divorce, child custody or child support proceeding. The financial disclosure is mandatory and not optional. When your divorce attorney gives you the opposing parties’ request for production list, understand that your participation in collecting those documents is a necessity. You can reduce billable hours by being cooperative, organizing your financial documents, and certainly by adhering to deadlines! And rightly so, if you drop off your financial documents to your attorney in a box of unorganized mess you can be certain that the billable hours required to organize your documents will add significantly to the costs of your divorce!!
2. Adhere to deadlines. As your divorce lawyer will tell you, failure to provide financial information by the deadline exposes you to possible contempt of court charges. You may end up paying for the opposing parties legal fees and costs for your mistake of not assisting your attorney with the financial discovery! If your divorce lawyer gives you a deadline for providing documents to his law office, then by all means provide your documents on time. Again, billable hours will increase your divorce costs significantly if you fail to cooperate with your attorney.
3. Eliminate UNNECESSARY PHONE CALLS Self-explanatory. Petty phone calls to your lawyer that are irrelevant to the outcome of your divorce case will also increase the billable hours. Attorney’s calendar every minute of their day. Complaining to your divorce attorney about insignificant character flaws of your soon to be ex –spouse occupy his time where the attorney can be more effectively preparing for your court hearings, deadlines or addressing the real issues of your divorce or family law issue. Why waste time on phone call that does not contribute to resolving or finalizing your divorce? You will then question your monthly statement when you see all the calls that were billed to you. Eliminate wasting the lawyer’s time and your money!
In times of economic uncertainty, it is important to understand these simple ways you can effectively reduce the financial costs associated with family law legal matters. Be certain, that your ability and desire to minimize your legal costs can be achieved. You need to stay focused and work with your family law attorney to resolve your divorce in the least expensive way possible.
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