Family Law Practices for Parents of Troubled Teens

Parents of troubled teens sometimes need legal counsel due to the problems associated with the "acting out behavior".  Family law is a practice area that encompasses the legal issues that face families. Parents of troubled teens often turn to attorney's that specialize in issues pretaining to "family law". These issues include:

• divorce
• spousal support
• child support
• custody
• division of assets and liabilities due to divorce
• adoption
• termination of parental rights
• paternity
• dependency and child neglect
• protection from abuse

In family law, you can be more than a lawyer assessing and advising a client on their legal rights. You can help an individual through one of the most stressful experiences in life. It is very rewarding to know you've helped someone through such a difficult time.

While rewarding, it can also be quite difficult to go through these events with your clients. The biggest challenge for me is when one or both parties are set on making the process as difficult as possible in a self-defeating attempt to hurt the other party.

There are no typical tasks, maybe something else I like and hate about the practice. Each day brings a new issue from one of my clients that must be resolved - from a missed custody exchange to a dispute about how to handle custody over a holiday to one party taking money out of a joint account.

New issues arise daily. It can make getting through your to-do list quite challenging. Generally I spend my day returning phone calls, negotiating small issues, drafting correspondence, preparing pleadings for court and going to court for hearings and motions.

In family law you spend a fair amount of time in court for hearings ranging from ten minutes to two hours in length. Occasionally you have trials that can last several days.
Collaborative Law is a structured process that provides divorcing parties and parties involved in other family law disputes an alternative to litigation.

Although developed over 17 years ago, it has yet to reach all areas of the country. Collaborative Law allows the parties to keep control of their destiny by hiring attorneys committed to a process of including the parties, by use of group meetings, in all negotiations and discussions in a collaborative effort to resolve the matter without going to court. The Collaborative Law attorneys agree not to represent the parties in court should either party decide to litigate their differences. This process has successfully achieved satisfactory results for divorcing parties and is much less stressful for the attorney.

Find family law practices.