Many of my colleagues immediately flooded the airwaves with Coronovirus Statements.
I was actually out of the state last week teaching a Collaborative Divorce Training with my husband when the dominoes began to fall on this crisis. Up to that point, it still seemed somewhat distant. But by the time we returned home, it was very much a part of all of our immediate world and lives. While I appreciated the announcements from my colleagues, I needed to take a breath and formulate exactly what I wanted to say so that it didn’t just sound like a large firm’s statement or a marketing firm’s drafted generic statement. Like my website and my practice, which are personalized by me, I wanted my statement about this situation to also have my personal stamp.
My hope for you is that somehow in the midst of this crisis, if you and your spouse have problems, you are able to find your way back to why you first got together.
I hope the blessing that you find in this is more time with your children and family and the appreciation for each day that sometimes our busy lives steal from us. Often, when a crisis like 9/11 or the 2008 financial crisis hit, people who are contemplating a divorce decide to wait until they better know what their future will look like. You may be able to talk to a counselor together during this time in person or by Zoom when you just couldn’t find the time before. If that is what is best for you and your family, I hope that happens and you are able to return to a happy relationship thanks to this short pause from our usual hectic lives.
If you are not able to find your way back to a happy marriage, or if you just have family law questions you want to talk with me about, we are equipped to schedule and do a Zoom conference with you or even just a telephone conference, if that would work better for you and your situation.
If you decide you are ready to file and move forward with your case before this crisis is over, we can meet by Zoom, e-file your case, negotiate with the other person and/or their lawyer in the case, prepare the documents and present them to the Court for signature by “submission,” which means without an appearance.
Most of the work I do is not in Court anyway, so it will not be impacted by the Courts’ current limitations. I regularly meet with a client, file their divorce, prepare Agreed Divorce Decrees, and present them to the Court without any more than a 5-minute hearing. If you think your case is going to need a little more help than just reaching an agreement on your own with your spouse, Collaborative Divorce is divorce process uniquely qualified to handle family law matters during this time. A divorce, pre-marital agreement, or any other family law matter can be handled in the Collaborative Divorce process with Zoom meetings because Collaborative Divorce, by definition, is managed outside Court. We can do all our meetings to gather information and negotiate your case by Zoom, draft the decree, send it back and forth electronically for revisions and signature, then submit it to the Court for the Judge’s signature, which finalizes your case.
We are here for you and want to continue to serve you. And while our Courts are basically closed except for emergency-type hearings and some hearings by Zoom, we will continue to work on your cases that are already in progress and finalize them just as we would have before (except without a personal appearance at Court).
If you are unsure about using Zoom, here is a short and easy to understand video that can help to make this process easy for you.
