Sunday, November 13, 2016

Why doing legal paperwork is often a bad idea

On www.avvo.com - another interesting question was posted today.

Avvo is a free website where people can ask attorneys questions.

Today's question involved  a do it yourself divorce question that now has possibly created a huge mess that is going to cost a lot of time and money to fix.

Guy divorces wife with dementia several years ago.  No attorneys involved. Now years later her sisters apply for guardianship over the ex-wife and want husband to "re-divide" the divorce assets.  Of course, since divorce the man has accumulated more assets.

I suspect if he can prove that wife was competent at time of divorce and signed all the papers properly then he's fine.  However, he's going to have to hire a lawyer to go to probate court and defend him.

So here is the bottom line...

Pay a lawyer now a little bit of money to do it right or pay a lawyer a lot of money later to try to "fix" or "minimize" the mess you caused by saving a few bucks.

I am an attorney and I never represent myself in court --- I hire someone to guide me and protect me.  When I'm personally and emotionally involved in a matter then I might not be thinking straight.  I find it much cheaper to do it "right" the first time and avoid head-aches and aggravation later.


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