What Does It Mean When Your Partner Hires an Attorney and Says He/She Is Going to Fight for Custody of the Children? How Likely Is It That They Will Get Sole Custody of the Kids?
Merely hiring an attorney does not give one an automatic advantage in a divorce and/or child custody case.
It can, but it’s not guaranteed. Why? Because some attorneys are incompetent. Being represented by a really bad attorney might even be worse than having no attorney representing you at all.
While there are some attorneys who will do anything to win at all costs for the client (which usually entails billing the client tremendous amounts of money to do so) and who may be able to win custody for a parent who otherwise not win custody that parent not hired the “win at all costs” lawyer, the law does not base child custody award decisions solely or even chiefly on whose lawyer is the more skilled or persuasive.
The purpose of child custody laws and their application is to ensure the child custody award first subserves the best interest of the child without infringing upon the parental rights of either parent any more than may be necessary to subserve the best interest of the child.
How likely a parent is to win sole custody of a child or children can often depend on how ruthless and unscrupulous a parent (and his/her attorney, if represented by ruthless and unscrupulous attorney) are, but fortunately most (most, not all) judges try not to be taken in by sneaky lawyer tricks and sensational stories that have little to no basis in any independently verifiable facts.
That stated, if the other parent hires a skilled attorney or a skilled AND unscrupulous attorney, your odds of succeeding in the case without you also being represented by an attorney who is at least as skilled aren’t good.
Utah Family Law, LC | divorceutah.com | 801-466-9277
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