Author name: Larry Sarezky

What your divorce lawyer’s hourly rate doesn’t tell you

Q: When does a 3-minute call from a divorce lawyer who charges $300 per hour cost MORE than the same call from a lawyer who charges $400/hr.?

A: When the $300/hr. lawyer charges in increments of 2/10 of an hour, and the $400/hr. lawyer charges in 1/10 increments.

Wait… WHAT?

The great majority of divorce lawyers charge by the hour, or portions (“increments”) thereof. Hourly rates depend on factors such as expertise, reputation, geographical location… and maybe how much they’re shelling out for their kids’ college educations.

Clients correctly consider hourly rates a key consideration in choosing a divorce lawyer. The problem is that hourly rates don’t tell the whole story.

Based solely on their hourly rates in the above example, you would expect “Attorney 300” to charge you $15.00 for that 3-minute call, and “Attorney 400” to charge $20.00.

But they won’t.

Why? Because neither of those lawyers charge for the actual minutes spent. Instead, “Attorney 400” charges in increments of 1/10 (.1) of an hour (6 minutes), and “Attorney 300” uses increments of 2/10 (.2) of an hour (12 minutes). And what makes incremental billing so expensive is that when lawyers bill in 6 or 12-minute increments, those increments are minimum charges. A lawyer using .1 increments charges a minimum of 6 minutes for anything she does on your case—even if it only takes 2 or 3 minutes. And a lawyer using .2 increments bills even more in extra fees—a minimum of 12 minutes!

While your heartbeat is receding from atrial fibrillation, remember that minimum increments impact only to tasks that take less than 6 minutes for .1 increment billers, and less than 12 minutes for .2 increment billers. Nevertheless, minimum charges add up. While they won’t make Attorney 400 cheaper than Attorney 300 over the course of a divorce, they substantially narrow the difference between Attorney 300 and a lawyer charging say, $350.00/hr., making Attorney 350 a more attractive option than would initially appear to be the case.

Read more about saving legal fees in divorce in Divorce, Simply Stated.

Using Mindful Parenting to Respond to Children’s Greatest Needs

Among the most frequently asked questions by new divorce clients is: “Will my kids be okay?”

The answer is that whether the children do well or poorly depends largely upon whether the adults act appropriately.   
Easy to say; not so easy for the adults to accomplish.

Good, mindful divorce parenting requires you to conscientiously and thoughtfully address your kids’ needs at a time when their world has been turned upside down. The problem is that your world is in turmoil as well.

So how do you protect your kids with all that swirling around you? 

First, identify the four principal needs that are shared by just about all kids in divorce: They are:

1. An end to their parents’ fighting
2. An end to uncertainty about where and with whom they will be living
3. A return to some degree of normalcy in their lives 
4. Security in knowing that their parents will continue to love and care for them

Then, try to keep those four needs in mind as you deal with your children and your co-parent. If you find acronyms helpful, try one that is particularly inappropriate to the very un-fun divorce experience (and thus easy to remember), FUNS:

Fighting
Uncertainty
Normalcy
Security

You can measure your (and your co-parent’s) parenting by the extent to which it meets, or fails to meet, those four needs.  If you find that you and your co-parent are falling short, give thought to how the parenting can be adjusted to be more responsive to the children in ways that may not be immediately apparent.

That may require a higher level of introspection than you’re used to. For example, if you’re avoiding quarrels in front of the kids, that’s great. But there’s more to it than that. Kids can also be upset by the animosity they sense between you and your co-parent that might be left over from an argument you had outside their presence. That means that you have to work on not provoking, or being provoked into unnecessary arguments at ANY time, so that the children won’t have to deal with the resulting tension. Like I say, mindful parenting during divorce is easy to talk about, not as easy to do.

This is the final myth David & Laura Sherwood voice to rationalize their custody case in the custody film Talk to Strangers. They are about to learn that for their kids, everything about the custody case IS bad.

In the “exit interview,” with the fictional filmmaker, Laura dials back her initial confidence, conceding that the custody evaluation process was “a little more difficult than I expected” (19:56). The demands of that process interfere with the kids’ activities such as nine-year-old Nick’s football practice (04:47) and twelve-year-old Emily’s participation in an advanced ballet class that she fears will be jeopardized by a conflicting appointment with the psychological evaluator (8:09; 09:56).

Lawyers don’t negotiate parenting plans “behind closed doors.” In fact, most matrimonial lawyers would prefer that the parents work out child-related matters by themselves. And that’s as it should be because the most successful parenting plans result from parents putting aside their emotions in order to plan for the co-parenting that will continue for years after the divorce.