So my buddy caught his wife cheating on him last week and they split. They have a 1.5 year old. She has been working while he took care of the kid during the day, and taking night classes in school. He stopped school when he was diagnosed with ADHD. He has been keeping me up to date and apparently his lawyer initially told him it would be 8 grand to go through the divorce, etc. to fight for primary custody. He met with them again today and he told me they said that number went up to 15g, and possibly 30g if it goes to trial, but that he had a "good chance" to get primary custody. He is a good friend, and I just have this fear that he will drop 30-50g on a lawyer, lose, then be stuck paying child support or alimony for the rest of his life on top of the debt and I don't want to see that happen to him. I told him to call another lawyer and make sure he wasn't getting bad advice, but he seemed so stressed I am not sure he was hearing me. Anyone have any good info or resources on this type of stuff?
First of all most states will favor the mother unless shes like a crackhead or something. Secondly she works and has income while he has no way of supporting the kid. The lawyer is jerking your friend around. He has almost zero chance of winning custody.
first thing that popped in my head was 281-freedom lol but good luck man, i have no experience with this
Exactly what I thought, there's no way he gets custody....even if she was/is the one cheating. No judge is going to ever favor the unemployed hubby over the "hard working" mom. He just put his effort into that alimony and call it a day.
Sorry bro wont change amything. Established income is key...just like whem applying for a mortgage. His best bet is to work the alimony angle as leverage to unlimited and unsupervised visitation rights. Maybe he will even get custody on weekend or somethng.
Shouldn't the lawyers fee be based partially on success/failure of custody? Something like $15K minimum + $15K more if your friend is granted full custody.
LOL, that's what I thought...what, suddenly he developed ADHD out of the blue? She was probably tired of him not being able to pull his weight and then finding out that he probably would never be able to with his "sudden" onset of ADHD. The dude had to 'drop out of school'? WTF? School only takes maybe a few hours a WEEK...So he definitely wouldn't be able to hold a job..even part time, that takes 3-4 hours a day. Sorry but your friend sounds a little suspiciously deadbeat. There's a lot of of dudes out there that would be better providers than what he's showing her he can do...I'm sure the judges and lawyers will see that too.
What he needs to do is send a couple of Hard Pipe Hittin' *****s, to go to work on her with a pair of pliers and a blow torch.