Surprise! I'm a single parent

How do you get a good lawyer?

It’s not like flatmates where you put an ad in the paper and they line up to be interviewed. It’s not like husbands where – well how did that happen?

Lawyers cost three hundred dollars an hour to interview. Three hundred dollars!!!

So I put an add on my work bulletin board. Discretely. In amoungst does anyone know a good panel beater, painter, mechanic, piano tuner I placed ‘divorce lawyer wanted’.

I got 5 recommendations and now I need to come up with some criteria. What I’d really like to be able to assess is how well they identified and secured a good share of assets, how cheaply they did it and how fast. But I’m not sure how to guage this. Instead I think about how easy it will be to get to their office, whether I could park there and what their office hours might be. I want to know the hourly rate but …. are the faster ones more expensive?

Again in all this I realise that although I feel poor and like some sort of emotinal refugeee Im actually in a better position than most. I have a job where I have flexibility to head out and meet with a lawyer, I have a super scheme I can break in to in order to pay a lawyer and I have some assets to split. But why do I just feel completely resentful I have to pay someone to do my negotiating for me?

I have some numbers and I’ll write my questions down:

About how long and how much do you think this will take?

Will you be able to take my phone calls?

Will you be able to get him to be a better parent?

Could you get him to take all his rubbish away?  I have rooms of the house I can’t get into because of his things and I think I may need to get a boarder in order to pay you… hmm maybe that last question I should keep to myself.

So lawyers – how can you tell a good one? Do you really need one? All this and more maybe in a future bloglet from the erratic surprised single parent.