Texas Lawyers Offer Tips to People Facing Separation and Divorce
McKinney, Texas (PRWEB) January 30, 2015 -- Dan Couvrette, the CEO of Divorce Magazine, recently interviewed two of the top family lawyers in Texas – Eric Higgins and Brian Loughmiller from the McKinney law firm of Loughmiller Higgins, P.C. – for a special podcast. “Our goal at Divorce Magazine is to help divorcing people make better, more informed choices as they go through the separation and divorce process,” says Couvrette. “We find that the best way to accomplish these goals is to have professionals like Eric Higgins and Brian Loughmiller share valuable information and advice based on years of having worked in the field of family law.”
During the podcast, Higgins recommends that people should have an exit strategy when leaving the relationship. “It’s one thing to decide that they’re going to get a divorce, but it’s another to have a plan for where they’re going to live, to resolve housing issues if there are children, and to consider expectations are in terms of possession schedules for the children,” he says. Before seeing their attorneys, he suggests that people should try to create a budget as well as attempt to identify and gather documentation for community assets (which are subject to division on divorce) and separate assets (which are not subject to division on divorce). In order to save time and money during the divorce process, Higgins advises clients to gather and organize all documents pertaining to the marriage, property, and children. “We have had clients who brought us boxes of documents that were just thrown into the boxes – completely unorganized,” he says. It is both labour-intensive and expensive to ask a lawyer to sort through and organize boxes of documents, so he suggests that people do as much of the sorting as possible before presenting the documents to their lawyers.
Choosing the right lawyer for a person’s unique situation is the key to a successful divorce process, but most people have no idea how to do this. “The relationship between a family law attorney and his client is a little bit different than the relationship between attorneys and clients in commercial litigation cases or other types of civil litigation, in that it truly is both a business relationship and a personal relationship,” Loughmiller points out. “The client has to feel comfortable – not only with the legal advice they are getting, but also in that there is good communication and that they trust the attorney to look out for their best interests.” Good communication means that sometimes, the attorney has to give the client some bad news, he says. “For instance, a client may want custody of their child, but the lawyer may have to tell them that this isn’t going to happen – perhaps because they travel a lot for work and they won’t be able to devote the time and energy that it takes to be the custodial parent in the judge’s eyes. Building a personal relationship of trust between the attorney and client is very important,” Loughmiller continues. “A client has to walk out of the initial consultation feeling like the attorney is going to advocate for them, but not give them false expectations in an effort to generate a fee.” He says that a client must believe the attorney is somebody they can trust to help them through the separation and divorce process “so that when it’s over, the client can move on with their life, have a good relationship with their children, and continue to operate effectively as a person.”
To listen to the full podcast, go to: http://www.loughmillerhiggins.com/Teleseminars/index.html
About Divorce Magazine’s guest speakers:
Brian Loughmiller has been recognized as a “Super Lawyer” every year since 2005, and he is Board Certified in Family Law and Civil Trial Law by the Texas Board of Legal Specialization. He has litigated cases throughout North Texas, and has served as a mediator for both Dallas County and Collin County courts. Cited by Texas Monthly magazine as a “Rising Star” in the area of family law practice, Eric Higgins has experience litigating highly contentious cases involving both complex property division and child custody issues. Brian and Eric are partners at the McKinney, Texas law firm of Loughmiller Higgins, P.C., which represents people in the North Dallas area and throughout the DFW Metroplex. They have 47 years of combined trial experience, and offer litigation, mediation, and collaborative law approaches to resolving disputes.
Eric Higgins, Loughmiller Higgins, P.C., http://www.loughmillerhiggins.com, +1 (972) 529-5554, [email protected]
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