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There are advantages and disadvantages to doing this, so let’s start with the advantages. One of the advantages, at least at the beginning is that you are potentially going to save on attorney fees. You don’t have to pay an upfront retainer. You can just go into court and you can just take your chances as to what the judge is going to do. It’s possible that works out to your benefit. It’s also certainly possible that it doesn’t. However, one of the most common advantages is you can potentially save money.

Now let’s talk about some of the disadvantages. One of the disadvantages is that the court system oftentimes moves slower for people who are representing themselves. I can tell you that with most judges that I work with regularly if I can come up with an agreement, and because of my relationship with the judges, sometimes I can get in a little bit quicker with the judges than a person who is representing themselves. The reason for that is because the courts know that it’s likely to be an airtight agreement where all of the kinks have been worked out. So that’s one of the potential advantages if you hire an attorney.

Another potential advantage of having an attorney is that more than likely you are not going to have potential issues in the future. I’ll use this as an example, let’s say that one or both of you have not disclosed a piece of property. That can often be used as a basis for the entire case to be opened up going into the future. Other things can happen that could throw some kinks in there. These kinks may put you back in court in the future if things aren’t done right. So, you might be divorced, but you could still be going back and dealing with issues that you didn’t necessarily anticipate going into the divorce.

The third advantage to having an attorney is simply to get what you’re entitled to at the end of the day. What you can probably expect is that most of the judges are going to do something within the bounds of the law. Now, as we’ve talked about in other videos, courts have what we call discretion in particular family court cases. However, you can count on a high likelihood that the judge is going to do something that’s within the bounds of what the law is when it comes to property, children, and so forth. So that’s the other advantage. You get your day in court and you get to make sure that you get what you are entitled to. It might not always be what you like or want, but it’s most likely going to be what you’re entitled to. So that’s another advantage of hiring an attorney. It’s more likely to happen when you have one.

That consists of today’s topic. If you have any questions at all, feel free to give us a call at (304) 720 4412 or email us at chris@prittlaw.com.

Some of you may or may not be familiar with what that term means, but it’s very important to know in modern divorce. A screenshot is taking a picture of the screen, whether it be your computer or whether it be on your actual phone. I use an iPhone and it’s very simple. You just simply squeeze the two buttons on either side when you’re trying to take a screenshot on an iPhone. Now, I don’t know how it’s done with other kinds of devices, but it’s a skill that’s very important for you to learn how to use if you’re not doing that already. The reason for that is that the screenshots you take can often be utilized in the future.

Let’s say that you are looking at a Facebook page or you’re looking at a text or a shot of somebody dressed inappropriately or provocatively on some sort of dating website. All of those are very, very crucial pieces of evidence that you can potentially use in the future. So that’s one of the things that I want you to know about screenshots. One of the things that you can do with it is you can use it to try to figure out where somebody is going with something. Let’s say you think that a piece of potential evidence is irrelevant. However, if you have even a hunch that you might be able to utilize something that you see somewhere on the internet go ahead and take a screenshot of it. What your attorney can do, if you happen to utilize an attorney or what you can potentially do, if you try to represent yourself in court is you can pull out these screenshots and you can potentially use them.

Some uses of these screenshots may be to cross-examine the other person. You can present them in court to make your case to the judge about why he or she should or should not do something. So again if you don’t know how to do a screenshot, you have to learn how to do it. There’s a lot of instructional videos on YouTube that show you actually how to do screenshots. I would certainly start investigating and looking into that because it’s a very critical skill. I would say that’s the one piece of evidence that lately I’m introducing more often than anything else in court. The great thing about it is that you are preserving something that can be potentially utilized in the future. So please do your best to try to acquire that skill.

So that consists of today’s topic. If you have any questions at all, feel free to give us a call at (304) 720 4412 or email us at chris@prittlaw.com

The number one thing that you need to remember when speaking or working with an attorney that is representing your spouse is that they are there to fully and completely represent the interests of your spouse. So they have absolutely no duty to do anything to help you. Now that’s not to say that they can’t work with you on some level, but just keep in mind that they are working totally to benefit your spouse. Sometimes I have cases where somebody comes to me and they want me to represent both of them. Well, I can’t do that ethically. I am prohibited from representing two people during a divorce in West Virginia as that is considered to be a conflict of interest. So I won’t do it. One of the things I always try to make clear when I’m working with somebody in this capacity is that I represent one person or the other. So that’s very important. You really need to make sure that you’re on top of that.

When speaking with an attorney oftentimes people are able to reach an agreement. I’ve had cases where somebody tells me to draw up an agreement and what to put in there, and that’s what I do. I don’t deviate from that. I oftentimes try to get out of the way of interference with the two people who are trying to reach an agreement. However, at the same time, my job is to represent one person. You do have situations where a person can step in and serve as a mediator. We don’t do this at our office at this time, but you do have people who can function as a mediator. If they are a true mediator their job is to try to facilitate an agreement between the two people. It should be very clear that they are in fact serving in the role of a mediator. Now, if you go into court though, that means they’re not going to be there with you. Each one of you will be representing yourself.

One of the things that we often do is we will represent one person in court and we will go in there. At the same time, again, it comes down to representing solely that person’s interest. So you have to be very understanding of that concept. They are their job. If their client wants them to do everything they can to make sure that you get the least amount possible they will. Now your soon to be former spouse might not take that perspective. He or she may want this to be fair, and I can tell you customarily lawyers, at least around here, do not typically get in the way of that. However, you need to be very, much on guard and you need to make sure that you dot your I’s and cross your T’s. If the other person has an attorney and you don’t have one, it’s a risk. So you just need to be aware of that.

So that consists of today’s topic. If you have any questions at all, feel free to give us a call at (304) 720 4412 or email us at chris@prittlaw.com.

One situation where you can do that is when you file for a domestic violence petition. The procedure in West Virginia is that when you believe that domestic violence has been committed, you go to the magistrate court. When you go to a magistrate court generally speaking you do not have to notify the other person. Especially if you believe that would potentially result in harm to you. What will happen at that point is that in the event that the magistrate court thinks there’s a pretty good basis for awarding the domestic violence petition the case is heard in the family court within supposedly 10 days. There are also ways for you to get around that particular provision.

Another way is if you establish in the context of a West Virginia divorce what we call immediate and irreparable harm. So what that means is if you think that there’s going to be some sort of harm to you. It’s going to be irreparable, meaning that it can not be undone going into the future and it cannot be remedied. Then you can file for what we call ex parte relief. Now that’s a fancy term, but it basically means going to the court without the other person being notified and making your case to the judge without the other person being notified. West Virginia code outlines a few situations where that’s described as situations where it could be permitted. One of those situations are involving some sort of physical harm. So if you believe that you are going to be physically harmed you can go to the family court and you can get some relief. Of course, you can also get that relief pursuant to the domestic violence petition in the event that you meet the requirements under that statute.

Another situation that is specifically cited in the code, where you can potentially get some relief is when the other person is going to be leaving the state with the children. If that’s the case, then you might have a case to make there. Also, if you believe that the other person, your soon to be former spouse, is attempting to transfer property of some sort.

So those are situations that are going to be covered, but again, the legal standard is immediate and irreparable harm. It is generally very difficult to meet that standard, but it happens quite a bit in family court. You just need to be aware of that and just be aware of what the legal standard is if you’re wanting to make your case in front of the judge without the other person being present. So that’s some basics about it and there’s more to it in many instances, but those are the general rules of thumb. That’s what the legal standard is.

So that consists of today’s topic. If you have any questions at all, feel free to give us a call at (304) 720 4412 or email us at chris@prittlaw.com.

Just because you have a final divorce order in your hand does not necessarily mean that there are other things that don’t need to be addressed. For example, let’s start with a situation where there’s what we call a bifurcated divorce order. If there’s a bifurcated divorce order, there’s a whole lot that needs to happen after the divorce has been finalized. This is because a bifurcated divorce is when the court will allow people to get divorced, but at the same time, other issues are going to be reserved to be addressed in the future. So an example of that would be property division or spousal support, or even parenting. All of those can sometimes be addressed after a bifurcated divorce order. What typically happens is people are divorced and everything is finalized. All the issues are finalized all at once and you do not have a bifurcated divorce order. However, if people really, really want to get divorced and they still have a lot of issues outstanding, the court will sometimes save that for later on.

In your typical divorce, there are usually a lot of things that need to be done after the divorce has been finalized. Even if there’s not a bifurcated divorce order. For example, there might need to be drafted what we call qualified domestic relations orders. These are specialized court orders that divide a retirement. Also if one person or the other got a certain piece of property, there would have to be a new deed drawn up. So, that will be something else that has to be done after the divorce has been finalized. There could also be documents to take each other off of each other’s wills or power of attorney. Something else that you often have to do after a divorce has been finalized and you received your final order is that you need to have new titles done for the vehicles. That’s a little bit simpler than some of the other things, but it’s still something that needs to be done after the divorce.

So I just wanted to go over all of those with you and talk to you about some things that need to be done after the divorce. Remember just because you have your divorce order in hand doesn’t mean that there are not still things that have to be done to get everything sorted out. I will say though typically those things are fairly routine. They’re not really hard to do, but it does take a little bit of time.

So that consists of today’s topic. If you have any questions at all, feel free to give us a call at (304) 720 4412 or email us at chris@prittlaw.com.

Let’s say that you file your petition for divorce and you site your grounds as irreconcilable differences. Then let’s say later on you decide that you want to file on additional grounds. What you can do is amend the pleadings. Now the process is a little bit different based on the timing of it. If it’s within a relatively short period and the other person has not responded, then you can do it without leave of court or what we call without permission from the courts. So, if that’s the case, you don’t even have to get permission from the court. You go and you file what we call amended pleadings. Now, if a certain amount of time has passed, then you have to go and get permission from the court. So that’s one of the things that you can do in many instances if you want to add grounds for divorce or let’s say you want to take one away.

Another example of this would be in addition to irreconcilable differences let’s say you want to file for cruel and inhuman treatment. Also, maybe later on let’s say that you discover that your soon-to-be former spouse has committed adultery. That’s what you would cite in the motion. If you go to get leave of court if you’re not within that specified timeframe and you have to get permission from the court, you file a motion with the court and you ask for permission from the court to amend your pleadings. That’s the process that you do.

So after you go and you amend your pleadings at that point, what happens is the court is going to decide on that. I can tell you as a practice, most of the time, the courts will allow you to amend your pleadings. In many instances, the other side will not dispute it because they’re not admitting to anything by allowing you to amend the pleadings. It’s just they’re not disputing the fact that you have good grounds for amending the pleadings. The court will sometimes do this and require a hearing. I’ve also seen situations where you just file the motion with the court and the court makes a decision and you get an order in the mail that grants you permission to change up your pleadings or amended them as we say.

So, that’s just one of the things that you might want to do from time to time. It doesn’t come up that often. One instance where it does come up sometimes is when people are in a real hurry to file their divorce petition and they’re not thinking through all of the different grounds. That’s kind of a situation where I see it a little bit more.

So that consists of today’s topic. If you have any questions feel free to give us a call at (304) 720 4412 or email me at chris@prittlaw.com.

One situation where I don’t think this is advisable is if the police at any point in time in the past have been called regarding anything between you and your soon to be former spouse. So let’s say there was a heated argument of some sort and the neighbors called the police, or let’s say that one of you called the police on the other. That would be a situation where if you are going through a divorce I do not think it’s a good idea to discuss things in person. The reason for that is because if you get to that point where things escalate and you’re going through a divorce, in many instances, it makes the process a lot harder. If there has been ever any domestic violence involved between you and your spouse, then there’s a very good chance that could happen again. So what I would do is if the other person tries to bring up anything about the divorce and you’re in person just go ahead and leave and discuss it over the phone. I’m talking about a situation where two people are still living together, and that in many instances is the case. The people have not moved out so they’re still living together and so forth. So, if you are going to continue to live together then just have it as a rule that you leave the residence and the two of you are going to do things over the phone in terms of discussing how the divorce should proceed.

Now, whether you should even be discussing anything regarding the divorce is a completely separate matter. I understand though that in many instances, people need to discuss things. They need to be talking about who’s going to cover what bills, what you’re going to be doing with the children, how you’re going to divide up finances, and so forth. I understand that sometimes things just have to be discussed before retaining an attorney or filing if you’re not going to be using an attorney. It just makes things a lot less contentious and things are a lot less likely to go bad if you’re having discussions over the phone rather than in person. So the reason for that is there could be a legitimate domestic violence situation that arrives that otherwise could have been avoided. There could also be, false allegations of domestic violence that arise that could have been avoided. So, there are very good reasons why you do not want to discuss things face to face.

So that consists of today’s discussion topic. If you have any questions feel free to give us a call at (304) 720 4412 or email us at chris@prittlaw.com.

This is something that you need to be thinking about, whether you’re filing on your own or whether you’re going to be filing with an attorney. Either way, these are some documents that you need to be thinking about rounding up. Some of those documents include your past few tax returns. That’s something that you will often need to get ahold of in particular if you were the person who is filing the initial filings.  It’s not quite as important because in the instance of, let’s say filling an answer because then you don’t have to worry about getting those. After all, they’re going to be already provided to you.

The other document you need to think about getting a hold of is your past few pay stubs. I would recommend at least going back six months, depending on the issues that are involved in the case. You don’t necessarily have to file all of those, but just get a hold of them. The reason for that is when it comes to child support and spousal support how much you’ve been making could be a huge factor. More specifically with overtime pay because there are sometimes calculations you do with overtime. Also, if you are in business for yourself, getting a hold of your spreadsheets, showing income, profits, and losses, and so forth. So the court can have a pretty good idea as to what you have coming in.

Other documents you need to be thinking about getting are debts that you’ve acquired for things such as credit cards and mortgages or secured debts. Secured debts are things like a mortgage or a debt that’s associated with a vehicle. Those are considered to be secured debts. Basically, anything showing debts, whether it’s you or your spouse, you should be rounding those up.

Furthermore, you should be rounding up titles to property. That’s something else that’s going to be very, very important to get. Also, get statements for your bank accounts and retirement accounts. That is going to be a big factor in terms of equitable distribution, which we’ve talked about in prior videos. So getting ahold of those records as well is going to be very important.

Now sometimes for whatever reason, people don’t have access to all of these records, the best piece of advice I can give you on that is just do your best to get those records. So you don’t necessarily need all of these records to file, but try to have them on reserve just in case something becomes an issue because there going to be very, very helpful. Oftentimes the other side will go through what’s called discovery where they can request those documents and you can do the same thing. A couple of other things you may want to be getting ahold of would be marriage certificates and your children’s social security cards as well as your own. Those are some basics in terms of documents to be thinking about rounding up.

This consists of today’s discussion. As always, if you have any questions feel free to give us a call at (304) 720 4412 or email us at chris@prittlaw.com.

Hello everyone. It’s Chris, Pritt back again with a new topic in West Virginia divorce. Today, we’re going to be talking about whether you should put your spouse, or soon to be spouse, on the property that may or may not be considered marital property.

To begin, let’s say, for example, you have a piece of property that you received by way of inheritance. Or maybe you have a piece of property that was yours before the marriage. Oftentimes this is going to happen in marriages of short duration. However, there can be instances where even in marriages of longer durations that there is a property that could be considered to be separate.

Now whether your name and that other person’s name is or is not on the piece of property is not necessarily a final determinate as to whether it’s going to be considered marital property. There’s somewhat of a process used to evaluate whether it’s going to be separate or marital property. With that being said, the number one piece of advice I can give to you with regards to that is if you are contemplating going through a divorce, or if you’re going through a rough spell, whatever you do, don’t put the property in a joint name. Now that’s not to say that it’s not necessarily going to protect the property from being considered to be marital property. However, once you do that at that point, generally speaking, unless there is a major exception such as fraud and so forth, you’re probably not going to be able to argue that that piece of property is separate property. So just be very, very careful about that.

We’ve talked in other videos about how to characterize something as marital property or non-marital property. However, if you get to the point where it’s jointly titled, which means you take that person’s name and you put their name on the deed or both of your names, at that point, it’s probably game over. That piece of property is probably going to be considered to be marital property at that point. So, if this is going to be a situation where you’re thinking about divorce or approaching divorce just be thinking about that when you’re deciding whether to put that person’s name on the property.

In many instances, if you’re getting close to filing for divorce you might be pressured to put that person’s name on the property. That’s actually a red flag you might be looking at too. For example, let’s say you’re going through a rough spell, and all of a sudden they start talking to you and trying to put some pressure on you to put their name on a piece of property. That could be a potential red flag that you need to be looking out for.

So that consists of today’s video. As always, if you have any questions feel free to give me a call at (304) 720 4412 or email me at chris@prittlaw.com.

You may have heard of a settlement conference before, or it may be an entirely new term. A settlement conference is a time where everybody gets together and attempts to resolve the case. Now, it’s a little bit different than mediation, which we’ve talked about in some other discussions. Mediation is where for example, let’s say you go and you have a court-appointed or an agreed-upon mediator whose job it is to facilitate an agreement. Whereas, a settlement conference is a conference in which you have the parties get together along with their lawyers if they have lawyers. You may be in a room or you may be in separate rooms in terms of the people, the parties, who are involved in the case. Then you attempt to facilitate some sort of agreement. Often it’s in this format because of the tension. The people involved might be in separate rooms and the attorney’s talk, but that’s really what a settlement conference is. Sometimes a settlement conference will be ordered to happen by the court. However, sometimes it will be the people who decide that they want to get together and try to resolve the case.

Now, one thing to always keep in mind is that if there’s any kind of settlement conference that happens, at least in West Virginia, this includes discussions between the attorneys, letters that go back and forth, anything like that, there would be nothing that happens within that unless it’s agreed upon it’s supposed to come up in court. The reason behind that is because we want to try to encourage people to try to reach an agreement. So, if people aren’t being open and honest, they’re less likely to agree.

So what you do is you have this settlement conference. In many instances, it will be conducted at the courthouse. I have seen some family court judges that will order the parties to appear in the courthouse. They come to the courthouse and it might be shortly before the final or the temporary hearing, and the court will order that the people try to get together and resolve the case. I find that’s very helpful. It’s helpful to have a time where everybody can get together and at least try to hash out what the issues are.

Another positive thing that comes from settlement conferences is sometimes you can at least narrow the issues. We recently did another video on whether you can reach partial agreements, and this is something that often happens at a settlement conference. People can reach some sort of partial agreement.

So that consists of today’s topic on settlement conferences. If you have any questions at all, feel free to give me a call at (304) 720 4412. You can also email me at chris@prittlaw.com. Have a good day!