It's My Party, And I'll Cry If I Want To

I had all kinds of good intentions about what to write here tonight.  Life, sometimes, has other ideas.  Tomorrow will mark the one year anniversary of the death of our dear Office Testosterone.  Truth be told, it's all I can think about today.  It seems like just yesterday he was with us, buoying our spirits with his magic hugs and his positive attitude.  On the other hand, it feels like forever since we saw him, spoke to him, texted with him or Facebook chatted.  Those of us who loved him are having a difficult time this week, as our memories of him collide with the feelings of sadness and dread we felt a year ago this week, and a loss that is so raw that the thought of him makes our eyes well up with tears and our voices catch.  Our Office T was a special friend who touched all of our lives so deeply.  His loss is still overwhelming.  I find myself stalking his Facebook page and re-reading all the private chats between us, just to retain that connection.
As I think of Office T, I'm reminded of what he would want us all to do.  Office T was all about relationships.  To him, they were more important than anything else in the world.  He nurtured his relationships and encouraged his friends.  Even when he was dying, he was more concerned about how his friends were handling his death than about himself.  He consoled and comforted everyone, and encouraged them all to gather with him and his family to give the latter support and so that his last memories of us and us of him were of laughter, good friends and love.  The greatest thing we can all do to honor his memory is to show those near to us how much they mean.   People always love to know they're appreciated, and they in turn, pass it along.  Help us honor our dear Curtis by being kind to those near and dear to you.  Thank you from here in the Trenches.

How Much Is Going to Trial Worth?

One of our Domestic Relations Masters in Frederick County has a very effective way of breaking impasse at settlement conferences.  For those of you not familiar with the way the judicial process works in family law, a settlement conference is a date for everyone to come to court to try to settle their case, with the aid and input of a Domestic Relations Master.  The settlement conference is usually set after most of the discovery in the case has been completed, after the initial court appearance, after a temporary support or child access hearing, and after 2-3 hours of court-ordered mediation.  If the case hasn't settled by the time of the settlement conference, it is either almost settled, or so far from settled that the attorneys have begun to despair that it will settle.  These latter folks are headed to trial, and usually the report to the Domestic Relations Master at the end of the settlement conference is that there is no settlement.  That's when this particular Master kicks it into high gear.  If you'd like to follow along, grab a piece of paper and a pen.  The Master tells each party to take out a piece of paper and a pen.  Then he says:

• On the first line, write down the amount of attorney's fees and costs you have incurred before today.
• On the next line, multiply your attorney's hourly rate by three, and that's how much you spent today.
• On the next line, multiply your attorney's hourly rate by eight, and that's how much you can reasonable estimate you will spend on the depositions that are going to be set because you didn't settle.
• On the next line, multiply your attorney's hourly rate by four, because your attorney has to prepare for the depositions.  Don't forget to factor in your lost wages for the time you need to take off work to prepare for those depositions.
• Transcribing depositions testimony costs money, so write down $1500 for the transcripts of the depositions.
• You're going to trial, so on the next line,  multiply your attorney's hourly rate by 7 and then multiply by the number of days of trial.  That's the cost for your attorney during trial.  Don't forget your lost wages here again.
• You don't expect your attorney to show up for trial without being prepared, do you?  Of course not, so multiply your attorney's hourly rate by 16 and then multiply by the number of days of trial.  That's how much it will cost you to have your excellent attorney be prepared for trial.  Don't forget your lost wages because the attorney has to prepare you for trial.
• You're required to update your discovery responses until day of trial.  Add another $1700 in cost for that.
• Your attorney needs to issue subpoenas for witnesses and do other miscellaneous tasks before trial.  Add another $1500 for that.
• Did you know the Assignment Office regularly overbooks us?  They do, so your case might not go to trial on the scheduled date.  That means your attorney will have to spend some time re-acclimating herself with your case for the date it is reset.  Add another $2500.
• Oh, you weren't happy with the judge's decision and you want to appeal?  Add $8,000 for the appeal.
• Now add all of those numbers together and write that sum at the bottom of the page.
• Turn the paper over and write down your children's names and dates of birth.  Think about all of the things you want to do for them, like send them to camp and college, all of which cost money which you just spent on your divorce.  Your attorneys and your children would rather you spent the sum of money you wrote on this paper on your children and not your attorney.. Now, go on out and try again to settle.

Would you be surprised to know that his settlement rate is well over 80%?  I'm not.  What this Master doesn't add in are the non-financial costs of going to trial:  the emotional costs of having to appear in a courtroom and testify in open court; the relationship cost of an adversarial proceeding on the ability to co-parent; the relationship cost of asking friends, family and co-workers to appear in court for you.  All those costs are potentially higher than any economic one.  Sure, sometimes people settle for less than they might get in court, but is what they will get in court worth the cost of the litigation?  It's a question you need to ask - here in the Trenches.

Mountains and Mountains of....Debt

Repeat after me:  Just because I have available credit, doesn't mean I should use it.  This statement is remarkably similar to:  Simply because I have checks in my checkbook doesn't mean I have money in the bank.  Thank you for indulging me.  Here in the Trenches, more often than not we are not arguing about who gets to keep what they own, but rather who has to keep what they owe.  The amount of debt some people have managed to amass is truly mind boggling.  If I had the debt of some of my clients, I don't think I could sleep at night.  Here's the scoop on debt here in Maryland.  If it's in your name, it's yours.  Unless you used the credit to purchase your house, pay for renovations to the house, or buy a car or a boat or that Picasso over the fireplace, the court can't do anything about the debt.  Sure, the court can take it into account when fashioning an equitable division of the assets, but chances are, it won't do much about it unless one party did something truly dastardly to obtain or use that credit.  Moral of the story is to be very careful when you open or use credit, or when you give anyone permission to use your credit.  Today's happy marriage could be tomorrow's divorce, and do you really want the result of your spouse's spending habits to be your parting gift from your marriage?  After all, who wants a bankruptcy to start off the next phase of their life?  Here in the Trenches.

Slow Down, You Move Too Fast

Sometimes, the best way to move forward is to move backward.  Sounds counterintuitive, I know, but it's true.  Think about it.  How many times have you known you're too tired to do something, but try to do it anyway?  Nine times out of ten, it doesn't end well.  Whatever it is, you don't do it very well, or you feel just darn awful afterward.  I know when I go out for a run when I don't feel like it, I never quite get the pace, I feel winded, and it's always slower than I'd like.  It would have been so much better if I'd have just curled up with a good book and run another day.  That's kind of how it is here in the Trenches.  Sometimes, you set meetings, and the day before something happens.  You talk to your client, and they're feeling nervous, emotional and dreading the meeting.  You could push ahead with the meeting, but usually that means that much of the progress you've made in the case stops, and in fact,  you regress.  Sometimes, your clients want to make decisions - NOW, even though they are in a raw state, unable to talk to their spouse without yelling, and lacking even the basic information necessary.  What did grandma say?  Oh yes, act in haste; repent at leisure.  Isn't it the truth.  At times, you need to slow down to move fast, and there's nothing wrong with that.  Here in the Trenches.

It's the Little Things

There are days when everything goes wrong, and then there are days when everything goes right.  Today was one of the latter.  They are so few and far between, that you just have to savor it.  First, last week I had a wee bit of a fender bender last week in the rental car I had while my own ancient chariot was in the shop.  I thought I was going to have to pay the deductible, but this morning my insurance company called and told me I have rental insurance, so it's all covered.  Wow!  Then, I finally remembered to send a photo of a piece of furniture in the office I wanted to donate to Second Chance (a great organization with a wonderful purpose), and lo and behold, they have a truck out in the area tomorrow morning.  Then, we had been going round and round gathering all the documents to finish up one of my client's cases, and today, with one five minute phone call and a quick email, we got the last one.  I had been struggling with the wording of one last clause to finish an agreement, and I woke up this morning, and it was suddenly in my head (and then down on the paper).  Sometimes, it's just the little things that make a day great.  Today was a great day.  Here in the Trenches.

Roll the Dice, Try the Case

I know I've said this before, but it's worth saying again.  When you try a case, the law is whatever the judge says it is.  It doesn't matter if the judge is dead wrong on the law, and will absolutely be reversed on appeal.  What happens in the courtroom is directly related to what the judge says the law is.  Let's go  with an example.  Today, I tried a custody case.  In an absolutely unusual situation, there was a statute that definitively supported  my client's position.  There was no question of interpretation - the law was clear.  The judge didn't care; the law didn't support what he wanted to do, so he interpreted it so it would.  I argued until my face turned blue; it didn't matter.  That meant we had two choices.  First, we could build a record for appeal, which I started to do.  Of course, we knew a few things:  first, that the chance that the court would postpone enactment of any custody order while the appellate court decided the appeal is slim.  Appeals can take anywhere from 6 to 12 months to decide, and during that time, the judge's order stands.  Second, we knew that at that point the judge's custody order would be the status quo, and even if the appellate court reversed the trial judge, the chance of the trial judge then deciding to change custody to what it should have been after the children had been living under the other custody order, was slim.  So, that left the second choice, which was to settle the case.  We had no other choice, if we had any chance of crafting a custody arrangement that in any small way met the needs of the children and the parents.  Settle we did.  It was annoying in that we had tried for months to settle the case, but the other side refused to negotiate.  In the long run, it was better for all that we settled, but it still rankles.  It makes you wonder why we work so hard to prepare for trial and know the law, when it doesn't necessarily matter.  All that time and money for nothing - it's not just the clients who get annoyed with that.  Here in the Trenches.

The Trust Account

I  have to admit that I'm a sucker for self-help books.  I love them.  I love the quick chapters, the kernels of common sense , the positive outlook.  One of my first favorites was Stephen Covey.  I loved his  books.  I think I read  every one of them.  He said so many things that apply to the Trenches.  One thing he discussed was trust.  He talked about trust like making deposits in a bank.  In a relationship, we are continually making deposits and withdrawals from the relationship trust bank.  The funny thing about the trust bank is that each deposit is small, and so the balance in the account adds up slowly.  Then people make withdrawals, when they do things that destroy trust, the withdrawals are huge. It takes far less time to destroy trust than to build it.  Trust, once destroyed, is hard to regain.  Isn't that the truth?  So much of what we see here in the Trenches can be traced back to the trust bank account of the relationship.  By the time our clients reach us, the balance in the account is low, the desire to make deposits is low, but the need to work together to survive going forward is high.  Not a good combination.  That's when another of Covey's quotations springs to mind:   “It is one thing to make a mistake, and quite another thing not to admit it. People will forgive mistakes, because mistakes are usually of the mind, mistakes of judgment. But people will not easily forgive the mistakes of the heart, the ill intention, the bad motives, the prideful justifying cover-up of the first mistake.”   A sincere apology goes a long way toward rebuilding trust.  A apology is all the more powerful at a time in which it is the most difficult to say, such as during a divorce or other legal dispute.  Apologies are hard - it is not easy to admit you were wrong, especially when that admission could be used against you.  It takes a brave person to make a sincere apology during a legal dispute.  The effect is priceless.  Are you brave enough to say you're sorry and really mean it?  I hope so.  Here in the Trenches.