AN INTRODUCTION (AND DISCLAIMER)
For a long time, I have been meaning to start writing a blog about what I do and how I do it, so now it’s time to put virtual pen to virtual paper and start. Make no mistake, I am doing this as a marketing tool, but I want it to be informational and I hope that I can make this blog easy to digest to the layperson who I hope will be reading it. I will also try to make it enjoyable and humorous, when I can.
As this is the inaugural entry into what I hope will be a semi regular column, I should start by writing a little bit about myself and what I do. Since you have found this blog on my website you already know that I am an attorney and that my practice is almost exclusively devoted to family and matrimonial law. Basically, I help people deal with issues related to divorce, custody, visitation, child support, maintenance and other issues that people deal with in family court. I practice primarily in the five boroughs of New York City, but I have been known to venture into the far flung lands of Nassau and Suffolk counties.
Before I start, I want to premise everything I say on this blog with a dire warning. This warning boils down to: DO NOT TRY THIS AT HOME. My colleagues and I are professionals. We do this work for a living. I have been doing this for going on 20 years and many of my colleagues have been doing this for as long or longer. New York State has one of the oldest legal traditions in this country and thus the law in New York, as it pertains to almost everything including family law, is somewhat arcane. There are rules, then there are exceptions to those rules and many times there are exceptions to those exceptions. Thus, if you are dealing with a family law issue, any family law issue at all, you need to have an attorney by your side at all times. I cannot tell you how often I have seen people try the DIY approach. More often than not, the consequences to that approach are, at best, not great and at worst, catastrophic. People wind up losing custody of their children, or even losing contact with their children. People end up losing their livelihoods to onerous support orders.
In the worst cases, I have personally witnessed people’s mental health very adversely affected. To be blunt about it, I have seen people, sometimes clients, sometimes adversaries and many times just people I have met during consultations or just met in court, losing their damn minds. Dealing with any legal issue is hard. When that issue involves your spouse, your children or your livelihood, what is hard becomes grueling. The mental toll that takes on certain people, especially people who represent themselves and who (in protracted multi-year litigations), year in and year out do not get anywhere, can break them mentally.
While an attorney cannot protect you completely from these consequences, the odds of you suffering those consequences are lessened significantly when you have a competent attorney on your side.
Wow. I expected that to be a quick one paragraph introduction. I have been told that I talk too much and apparently, I write too much too.
Watch this space for more fun rants.