Lawyers and the Legal Process

Abstract

Throughout the book, I have spoken of divorce as a period of transition for the family. When there are children, you and your former spouse still have legal, economic, and emotional ties to each other. In the book Divorcing Families Connie Ahrons states that you uncouple, you don’t “unfamily.” Many separated couples work hard to create a decent relationship with the other parent. Yet we are all aware of how stresses can intensify and conflicts can escalate when you begin to deal with legal matters. Once a personal matter becomes “legalized,” the description of the issues is often translated—literally—into a foreign language. The divorce process is lost in the thicket of “pleadings,” “interrogatories,” and “depositions.” When decisions need to be funneled through the bureaucracies of attorneys’ offices, the completeness and accuracy of the communications from client to lawyer and lawyer to lawyer and spouse to spouse may become the first casualties.

It is not what a lawyer tells me I may do; but what humanity, reason, and justice tell me I ought to do.

Edmund Burke