Opinions abound about the effect of the current economic crisis (let’s not say the “d” word, although by my lights, we’re skidding pretty close to it) on troubled or divorcing families.  Here’s a link to an article that offers a pretty sound analysis of what’s really happening out there: http://divorcesupport.about.com/od/isdivorcethesolution/a/economydivorce.htm.The article concludes with a very important thought.  Ms. Brown suggests that the combination of a troubled marriage and the current economic crisis should make everyone considering divorce seriously evaluate what is most valuable to them.  It also suggests a lot of trendy ideas that most folks struggling with troubled marriages and the economy can’t afford, such as financial analysts, marriage counselors, coaches, etc.You don’t need any of these to evaluate what is most valuable to you.  If you think your marriage is in trouble, the first thing you need to do is sit down with yourself and make a list of the pro’s and con’s of your partnership.  Only you can do that.  If you think there is a way to leverage the “pro” side of the equation, by all means, take every step possible to do so.  But remember, it takes two willing partners to make this work.  You need to evaluate the historical facts of your relationship and the willingness of both you and your spouse to change for the benefit of the marriage.  If either of you can’t or won’t do so, there’s no point in dumping money into counseling.  At this point, it’s often helpful to seek independent, objective, outside help.  If you can’t afford a counselor, most religious communities offer counseling for little or no cost.  You don’t necessarily have to be a “believer” to take advantage of them, but do remember that many religious traditions have specific belief traditions about marriage.  Be sure to take that into consideration when making your selection.  If you don’t have a personal faith tradition, you may want to look into a local Unitarian congregation.  Buddhism is making a huge impact in many large communities and sometimes their religious leaders are willing to discuss personal issues with outsiders.  Of course, if you have a faith tradition of your own, you can always find help from the leaders of your local church community, synagogue or mosque.  Also, many larger communities have resources for troubled families at the local government level.  If all else fails, rely on a trusted, objective member of your family or community.  It doesn’t have to cost money and it can help you begin to build a stronger relationship with your community or extended family.Once you’ve made your decision, proceed accordingly.  If you think you want to try to make the marriage work and both you and your spouse will work for it, the connections you made to make the decision are there for you.  If not, be aware that you do not have to “fight” to get divorced.  Mediators are helpful, but without a lawyer to guide you through the process, their best help will be to get you to reach agreement.  What they will not do is let you know what you are and are not entitled to claim, nor will they be able to guide you to an agreement that respects your interests as well as your rights.  Most people think of lawyers first as advocates, fighting for “rights,” but they too often forget our other duty, as “counselors at law.”At Maryland Family Law Firm  we can help you construct a written separation agreement that fully covers all aspects of the dissolution of your marriage.  We can sometimes provide this help by simple negotiation, as well as in the context of mediation.  We provide this help either as a “one-time” service for self-represented litigants, or in a full-service capacity.Once an agreement is reached, we can guide you through the process of getting an uncontested divorce in Maryland, or will represent you at your final hearing.  If you’ve decided your best option is to divorce, contact us today to learn how we can help you dissolve your marriage safely at a reasonable cost.  Dawn Elaine Bowie, Esq.

Recent political and legal activity in California may be ushering in major changes in family law.  If same sex couples are allowed to legally marry, then many new issues about custody, healthcare, property, and of course divorce will crop up in the homosexual community.Here is an Onion humorous response to the gay marriage movement and where we go from here.(the Onion is a satyrical news program and newspaper)

For people living in loveless marriages, you don’t have to stay there.  If you want out, cost does not have to be a concern.  If you want out, but the cost scares you, check out our self represented services.  Yes, you can afford it.

Our goal at Maryland Family Law Firm, L.L.C. is to select clients we know we can help. Now, instead of a single initial office conference, we use the Case Assessment process as the initial step in the client selection process.The Initial Office Conference is the first part of the Assessment. The charge for the Conference is included in the Case Assessment fee, which is set based on the details of each case. We give each potential client a detailed online questionnaire and set the fee for the Case Assessment based on his or her answers. Once we determine the individual fee, we send potential clients an invoice, and they pay the fixed Case Assessment fee using the Pay Pal option on their personal homepage. We ask potential clients to pay this fee before the Initial Office Conference takes place, but do not process their PayPal payment into our bank account until after we deliver the Case Assessment.At the Initial Office Conference, we conduct an in-depth interview and discuss and answer any immediate questions potential clients have. We sometimes ask potential clients to sign Releases if we need to get further information from third parties about the case.After the Initial Office Conference, we ask potential clients to sign a Limited Services Engagement Agreement, which we upload to the potential client’s personal homepage on our Virtual Law Office. We don’t schedule Initial Office Conferences without a client’s prior written agreement allowing us to conduct a full Case Assessment.At the Initial Office Conference, we decide on a delivery date for the Case Assessment that best meets the needs of the potential client.The Case Assessment allows us to fully investigate a possible case and ensure that our services are most likely to meet the needs of each potential client. The Case Assessment is a written document that includes the following components:

(1) A detailed history of the facts of each case; 
(2) The substantive and procedural law that applies to each case;
(3) A statement of the potential client’s objectives; 
(4) The legal implications and options available to each potential client in reaching his or her objectives;
( 5) The steps we propose to take to help the potential client to reach his or her objectives; 
(6) Two to three pricing options, based on the information each potential client provides to us;
 (7) A reading list that will help potential clients to better resolve their legal problems, tailored to the needs and objectives of each case; and
 (8) An informational gift to help potential clients understand the legal process and law that is usually involved in Maryland family law cases.Our Case Assessment process is constantly evolving to better meet the needs of potential clients. We are constantly working to improve it, so we will probably add and change the way we offer it and the things it includes as time goes on. However it evolves, we are proud to say that we’ve found a better way to provide exceptional legal services.

Fortunately we don’t have to know because in today’s legal arena you can split time.  That’s what Judge Graydon S. McKee III (retired), sitting on the Circuit Court for Calvert County, has recently done.One of the difficult issues in any divorce is how to split up the property.  It is almost always better to come to an agreement for the court to approve.  If the parties don’t agree on how to divide a piece of marital property, then the court usually orders the property sold and the proceeds split equitably.  What about the family dog?In Maryland, pets are considered property.  If the parties can’t agree who gets to keep the pet, the court can order it sold and the money split.  The reality is that people don’t consider their pets just like other property.  In the recent case of Meyers v. Meyers, Judge McKee did not think that was a good solution, so in an unprecedented move he ordered Craig Meyers have possession of the dog 6 months out of the year and Gayle Meyers have possession the other 6 months.This was a possibly risky move in a precarious area of the law.  Pets are more and more being considered part of the family, but the law still considers them property.  If this case were to be appealed the decision could easily be thrown out.  Then again, if it were a part of a negotiated separation agreement it would not.  That is more reason why coming to an agreement with each other is better than having a decision thrust on you by the court.  Not every judge will be as innovative as Judge McKee.

As of April 2010, Maryland has a “new” law on child support.  The only problem with it is, it isn’t very new.  Basically, all they did was change the numbers.  Upward.  And that is not good for struggling families in Maryland.

Dawn Elaine Bowie, Esq.  ©

Last year, some of the nation’s top divorce lawyers made a statement that people delay divorce when economic times are tough.  As recently as March 22, 2010, the Washington Post featured an article repeating the same, tired, sad myth.  Their article featured only attorneys who offer a billable hour/retainer fee structure to clients and failed to include what Maryland court statistics are saying about the reality of the effect of the economic downturn on divorcing Maryland citizens. In Maryland and D.C., more and more divorcing couples are representing themselves.  One study found that in 2007, 85% of family law cases filed in Baltimore City were filed by individuals referred to as “self-represented litigants.”  In the District of Columbia, the figure was 90% and in Montgomery County, one judge made an off-the-cuff estimate of around 60%. 

Basically, divorcing couples in Maryland have three options.  The first is private representation.  Because most local family law practices are clinging to the old billable-hour/retainer model, this option is indeed less and less an alternative.  However, Maryland Family Law Firm, L.L.C. is the first family-only boutique practice that has thrown out the billable hour model.  We now offer income-sensitive value pricing to clients.  Tailored to the needs of each client, this model gives lawyers the incentive to be problem-solvers instead of profit-centers. Most people whose cases involve family law issues such as divorce or custody would be better off with full-service representation, but more and more people can’t afford it.  Maryland Family Law Firm has initiated value-pricing to allow us to serve a wider range of divorcing clients.  Value pricing is the only comprehensive and sensible option for divorcing families struggling with a family law case in the current economy.

 The second option is for family law litigants to do it themselves, an option selected by an increasing number of Maryland citizens.  The Maryland Access to Justice Commission recently issued a report and is currently engaged in a comprehensive study to improve the services offered to self-represented family law litigants in Maryland.  You can find their report here: http://www.courts.state.md.us/mdatjc/. 

 However, “DIY” in Maryland’s family courts is creating confusion for the litigants and the courts.  Self-represented litigants reduce the efficiency of court proceedings, confuse and overload court dockets, and frustrate judges. Self-represented litigants have access to free, online forms at the Maryland Judiciary website, as well as at all of the Circuit Courts, but the forms are confusing to non-lawyers.  To help self-represented litigants all of the Circuit Courts in Maryland offer some kind of self-help clinic, but these clinics are overloaded and understaffed.  Another alternative for self-represented litigants is web-based forms-filling companies that are national in scope.  However, these firms usually fail to offer personalized advice and counseling from licensed Maryland attorneys. Maryland Family Law Firm, L.L.C., a Rockville-based family law firm, is one of the first law firms in Maryland to offer limited engagement services tailored to help self-represented family law clients in Maryland.  We are the first law firm to use Virtual Law Office (VLO) technology to offer these services.

The new services offered by Maryland Family Law Firm help self-represented litigants and the courts by ensuring that the forms filed by self-represented litigants are complete and legally sound and that the litigants have the benefit of legal counseling if they feel they need it.

Here’s how it works:

• Clients register on our secure online Virtual Law Office.
• We send them detailed online questionnaires that give our lawyers the information to assess which court forms the client needs and to help us thoroughly complete the court forms.
• As part of the fee, client and lawyer have two, one-hour telephone meetings, one after the client finishes the questionnaire(s), another prior to delivery of the final documents. Additional meetings are available if needed, and we offer a monthly subscription service that provides clients with unlimited correspondence contact with our attorneys.  Clients pay using Pay Pal before the completed forms are delivered.
• Clients are advised when their case needs full-service representation.

The final option mentioned by the Washington Post article, waiting it out, is a dangerous one for many couples.  As economic problems deepen, couples who elect to wait it out are more likely to be at risk for increased family violence, the abusive and unwarranted use of domestic violence laws to get rid of an unwanted spouse, abandonment of families, and worst of all, tense, conflict-ridden home environments that are toxic to the children living in those homes. 

We submit that suggesting that families in crisis should wait to get divorced is irresponsible and even dangerous.  We think the current economic crisis is the best thing that ever happened to family law attorneys.  The future will never look the same as the past.  For family law attorneys whose primary commitment is to truly serving families, the time for change is now, and the change needed is a complete re-thinking of how we charge for our services.  Not only is the old, billable-hour broken and unworkable beyond repair, it just isn’t fair to families.

We respectfully submit that attorneys who cling to the idea that the economic future means things going back to the way they were one, two or five years ago, when they could charge divorcing clients in the Washington, D.C. metro area between $80,000.00 and $200,000.00 for a fully litigated family case are likely to suffer serious disappointment.  Those days are gone, and good riddance to them!  The billable hour creates an incentive for lawyers to litigate.  By its very nature it creates a conflict between lawyer and client because the incentive for the lawyer is, first and foremost, to bill as much time as possible, at the highest supportable hourly rate.  Charging a lower hourly rate doesn’t solve that problem, especially when the opposing counsel has a higher hourly rate and more incentive to litigate.  This model is in direct opposition to what all family-law clients need from their lawyer, to solve their problems with professionalism, skill, and efficiency.

 Value-pricing is the wave of the future for family law attorneys who want to stay in business.  It offers a variety of payment solutions for clients, including fixed-fee pricing, performance bonus incentives, and a cap on total fees charged.  We’ve found support for this approach from colleagues around the United States, including Mark Chinn, Esq., of Mississippi, a leading family law attorney with the Family Section of the American Bar Association who has published numerous books and articles on constructive divorce and value pricing (http://www.chinnandassociates.com/firm.html) and Lee Rosen, Esq., a leader in the family bar in North Carolina (http://www.rosen.com/).

As more and more attorneys adopt value pricing, the effects will ripple out into the entire divorce process, with multiple benefits.  First and foremost, the total cost of divorce should decrease.  If both attorneys in a case are committed first to resolving the problems of their clients, they will be encouraged to use litigation less and constructive problem-solving and dispute resolution more.  That result should mean both economic and social benefits to family law clients. 

By reducing the use of litigation, families will avoid the destructive effects that so often result when a family case is tried.  When a trial is necessary, lawyers will be encouraged to use appropriate skills and effective means to reduce what is often unnecessary pretrial mechanisms and more cases will be resolved on the courthouse steps in ways that truly meet clients needs. 

Civility and courtesy among counsel will be enhanced because lawyers using value-pricing will have an incentive to avoid the often harsh and discourteous tactics that increasingly characterize family law litigation.  If they don’t get paid for fighting, they’ll have to think a lot more carefully before upping the ante without a good reason. 

 Finally, a look at Lee Rosen’s website will show what value pricing can do for local employment.  As the incentive for high-dollar, low-volume practices decreases, the need for more capable, competent young lawyers to assist in resolving family cases will increase, and the pool of talent used by family law firms committed first to resolving problems will attract lawyers with the necessary commitment to the work they do, not the amount they get paid.

Wait to get divorced until you can pay a huge retainer fee?  Not the only option.   Dawn Elaine Bowie, Esq. ©

This final of three posts about alimony in Maryland, I’m explaining old style alimony . . . the kind that goes on almost forever. We call it “indefinite alimony.” Some states make no allowances for alimony that goes on without an end in sight. Should it exist at all? The law in Maryland is that if a spouse can’t become self-supporting because of his or her age or if the spouse is ill or disabled OR (and here’s the kicker!) if the “respective standards of living” will be “unconscionably disparate” even after the spouse has made as much progress as they can to becoming self- sufficient, the court can award indefinite alimony.

That’s enough to scare anybody! Especially when the judge has absolute discretion (subject only to abusing it) to make the award. Before making an award, the judge has to “consider” the following:

o ability to be wholly or partly self-supporting;
o time needed for the spouse to get the training or education needed to be self-supporting;
o standard of living established during marriage;
o duration of the marriage;
o monetary and non-monetary contributions made by both spouses during the marriage (more on this later);
o the reason for the divorce (more on this later as well);
o age of each spouse;
o physical and mental condition of each spouse;
o ability of the person who has to pay to do that and meet his or her own needs;
o an agreement (even a pre-nup!!! — everyone should have one) between the spouses;
o financial needs and resources of both spouses; and
o whether paying alimony would cause a spouse who lives in a nursing home to need medical assistance sooner than would otherwise be the case.

But that’s it. If the judge talks about it, if he or she goes down the list on the record, he or she is virtually free to make the award based on the “weight of the evidence.” And no matter how well a lawyer makes or defends a case, there is no way to predict the value a judge will assign to any of these factors.

It seems draconian if you are the paying spouse, but I have to say if you are the receiving spouse, and you are sick or old or disabled, and IF the law is applied equally to husbands and wives, it probably needs to be available. A couple of tweaks would make the law more predictable and fair. First, a formula or set of mandatory guidelines and second, a way to assign a value for each of the factors the judge has to consider. Say, a total score of X points, with each factor having a possible X number of points. Make the judge tell everyone how many points he or she is giving for each factor. Less wiggle room for emotional decision-making, seems to me.

Some folks think it doesn’t matter much why a person does things the way they do them. In fact, it’s the most important thing of all. Especially if someone has made it a point to Pay Attention. Think about what matters. And why. And try to live that way. Don’t get me wrong. Even when this happens, more often than not, the well-intentioned actor gets it wrong. Or falls down. Or makes the inevitable misstep. But the intention is there, which is what really matters. At least that’s what I think.

I’m very lucky to have a friend who featured a little bit of what matters to me in my practice in her blog the other day. Susan Cartier Liebel teaches law students to be sole practitioners and consults to sole practitioner lawyers all over the United States. Check it out. And feel free to tell me what you think. Build A Solo Practice, LLC

“How much do I have to pay?”

That’s the question I hear over and over when a husband and father talks to me about spousal support, or alimony.

Maryland has three basic kinds of alimony, or spousal support

• temporary (or, “pendente lite,” a complicated word that just means “during litigation”);
• rehabilitative (or statutory); or
• permanent

Over the next few weeks, I’ll be posting a series about each one, as well as some philosophical meandering about why we have such a thing and whether it can apply to you, as husband and father.

Unfortunately, the one thing you won’t find in any of my posts is an answer to the question, “How much!!??”

The reason for that is that Maryland does not have any standard formula for setting an amount of alimony. Not for any of the three types. Some states have a formula for figuring out how much alimony has to be paid, but Maryland is not one of them.

The fact is, the amount you have to pay (or get) can be as different as the judge who hears your case and the quality of the lawyer who represents you. Because of that, the answer I always give clients who ask the question, “How much?” is, “I don’t know.”

Come back often in the next few weeks to learn more about how Maryland law deals with alimony.

Q: My wife and I divorced a couple of years ago. We agreed to joint legal custody and the paper says “liberal” visitation, but it isn’t working that way. She always has something for the kids to do when I want liberal visitation. The kids are in elementary school and we live close together so there’s no reason they can’t spend more time with me, but it seems like I get less and less. And she just quit her full time job to work part-time so she can “be with the kids” more. Now she wants more child support. To make up for her lost wages, I have to work overtime, so there’s even less time to be with the kids. What do I do?

A: That’s a lot of questions, but they are pretty common.

First, it’s really important to get a specific, enforceable parenting agreement (separately or as part of a marital settlement agreement) BEFORE you get divorced. If you wait until later, it’s much harder to change an agreement (check out this link giving helpful legal information on “modification of custody”: People’s Law Library: Custody)

Second, too often, mediators who are not lawyers put together “parenting agreements” that are full of promises and good intentions and that make good emotional sense, but are useless in court. A parenting agreement is a contract, and it has to have all the legal pieces of a contract for a court to enforce it. That’s why it makes sense to use a lawyer to help you draw up a parenting (or marital separation agreement) in the first place, BEFORE you divorce. I try to be sure that once my clients are finished with divorce, their agreements are clear, comprehensive, and stand up to future attack without the need to go to court.

Third, in Maryland, child support is calculated in two ways. If you have your children with you 128 days or more in a given year, you fall under what is known as “shared custody guidelines support.” Less than that means your support is calculated on “sole custody guidelines support.” Check out this link for one of the best resources available for child support issues: Laura Morgan: Support Guidelines.com. The bottom line for you is that your wife is holding your children hostage in order to squeeze more child support money out of you.

Finally, what you can do is first, try to work it out with her directly. If that doesn’t work and your income is already limited, go to your local child support enforcement office, legal aid or pro bono clinic and talk to them. Ask the court to review your child support situation. If your wife has gone to part-time work, your case could meet the standard for a modification of child support.

What you should NOT do is try to hire a private attorney solely for purposes of child support defense or modification. If you can’t pay the support, how are you going to pay a lawyer? I don’t take cases like this because it takes advantage of already struggling families.