Why Would I Want to Hire a Divorce Lawyer, Anyway?: A Guide to Hiring an Attorney (or not) - For Women Only (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9798218620127)

To hire a family law attorney or to NOT hire a family law attorney?

That is the question.

I'm under no illusions. You've probably picked up this book hoping to find out that you don't need an attorney after all.

But there's no question that there's also a lot at stake, from custody and visitation of your minor children to division of assets worth tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars - or more.

In Why Would I Want to Hire A Divorce Lawyer, Anyway? Virginia Family Law attorney Katie Wilcox Carter answers some of those 'can't-eat-can't-sleep' up all night questions you have about family law cases, including whether you'll really need to hire a divorce or custody lawyer.

In it, you'll learn:

• How to decide whether you actually need to hire a family law attorney to represent you in your divorce, child custody, or support case depending on the specific type of case you may be facing;
• What alternatives - like mediation, or even the possibility of hiring an attorney pro bono - exist, to hiring an attorney to represent you;
• How family law attorneys handle fees, from the initial consultation to regular billing on your case;
• What to expect when you call into a family law firm's office and go in for an initial consultation, both in terms of preparing for what they'll ask you and also how you'll interview them (after all, the question isn't "Will they take my case?" but instead, "Do I want this attorney to represent me?";
• How to navigate when (not if) you receive advice that you don't like or that runs counter to your intuition; and
• How to find the *right* family law attorney for YOU, without being swayed by fee-generating referral sites or falling victim to an attorney who promises it all but produces very little.

The only person who should decide whether to hire an attorney - and if so, whom - is you. But you might not have all the information at your disposal that you might want to have when faced with such an important (and potentially life altering choice). Why Would I Want to Hire a Divorce Lawyer, Anyway? can help you there.

Katie Wilcox Carter is an attorney at Hofheimer Family Law Firm, a Virginia-based family law firm dedicated to representing women exclusively in divorce, custody, and child support cases.