Whether you are newly separated or you are simply re-visiting an old court order, if you are thinking about filing for custody of your children, you might want to make sure that you are hiring a child custody lawyer. While you might think that you have the ability to represent yourself in such cases, you might find that the benefits that come from hiring a lawyer might just outweigh the small amount of money you would save by working the case on your own. Therefore, you might want to take a moment to reflect on the following ways your skilled child custody lawyer can help you.
Speed Up the Process
Time is not on your side, especially if you feel as though your children are not in the best possible environment for their needs. Therefore, you are going to want to make sure that this case is pushed before the judge as quickly as possible if the other parent is not willing to come to an agreement on the custody issue. Your lawyer can file motions that will indicate to the courts that there is reason for this to be considered an emergency.
Gather Substantial Evidence
If you sit outside of the other parents house all night, that might be considered stalking and that would probably not help your case all that much. However, if there is a real issue going on, your lawyer can enlist the help of a private detective who can sit outside his or her house. They might be able to gather photographic evidence that shows abuse, neglect, or endangerment.
Your lawyer will then take all of that evidence, plus phone records, letters, text messages, or even screen prints of social media pages to help show why the other parent might not be the best parent for the job of raising the children on a daily basis.
Ensure Court Orders Are Followed
If you are able to win your case, you will still want a child custody lawyer on your side as he or she will be able to do a good job at making sure that the custody order is followed. The last thing you want is to find that you have won the case but that the other parent will not give other the children as the judge dictated.
Should the other parent give you any problems, your child custody lawyer will know the exact paperwork that needs to be filed in order to have the other parent held in contempt.
As you can see, there are multiple reasons to make sure that you are going to have a child custody lawyer on your side from the very start. Talk to law firms such as Shipman, Dixon & Livingston Co., L.P.A. for more information.