Litigation is the use of court intervention to resolve a dispute that arises between parties. This court action can be an original divorce action or can be the filing of post-decree motions to enforce a prior court order or to modify an order of parental rights, child support or spousal support. In a more perfect world, we would seek to reach amicable resolutions and not need have any court make rulings regarding the most private aspects of family life. Yet there are many times that someone must seek court intervention. It takes two parties to cooperate and many times your spouse may simply be too unreasonable to reach a resolution in advance of filing for court action. Other times, threats of domestic violence or domestic violence accusation make such a negotiation impossible in advance of filing. The reality is that about 60% of family law matter result in "having to go to court".
What does it mean to "go to court"? The simple answer is... there is none. Most contested divorce cases (about 85%) that are filed with court ultimately resolve themselves prior to trial. Yet many of these settled cases had litigated aspects of the case prior to settlement. For example, the major issue could be that of what is the appropriate amount of spousal or child support to be paid. The parties may have litigated that issue early in the case in temporary orders and once decided by the court, the parties then resolve all the issues by private negotiation.
Clients are often fixated on their day in court. However, your day in court may well been the various pre-trial conferences leading up to the actual trial date. The reason is very simple. There are no juries in domestic relations court or in juvenile custody cases. You are conducting the pre-trials in front of the person who will ultimately decide the case. Many times, the parties are waiting outside while the attorneys meet with the magistrate or judge for the pre-trial. By the time the day of trial has come around, the person who will decide your case (the magistrate or judge) may have met with the attorneys at least once and in many instances more than a couple of occasions and already have discussed the major issues. Thus, if you are not prepared for pre-trials in your case then you are already putting yourself at a disadvantage. Courts do everything they can to get people to settle. Thus, more often than not, you have done much of the work to formulate the judge's or magistrate's opinion well prior to trial.
Please look over the different areas of litigation and see if we can help. We strongly encourage you to look at the Resources section. We have included a divorce guide authored by preeminent Tennessee attorney Larry Rice. The guide is geared to Tennessee law but about 90% is relevant to an Ohio family law matter and is a great starting point for your journey into this foreign area. So that you can have some background in Ohio law, we have links to relevant Ohio family law statutes. The best thing about reviewing the guide and looking over the statutes is that it is free and will definitely give you a basic background in this area of law.
Litigation is about preparation. The more prepared you are the more likely to achieve a positive result. Consult with us and we can prepare you for Litigation and see you through the process with aggressive and compassionate representation.
