File for Divorce in Maryland, Virginia or the District of Columbia, 2E (File for Divorce in Maryland, Virginia & the District of Colu Mbia),   ISBN:9781572485365

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This book appears to be helpful and timely for the forms needed for filing for divorce and the basic procedure and timetables. This is useful information to have since there is no such thing as a "generic divorce" - they are so different in all fifty states.

I only know about the Virginia end of divorces, and what I know about divorce/family lawyers is not in this book or probably in any book. Generally speaking they are a lazy yet overworked lot. Why? Because you only get paid by the hour in such cases. It is not like family law attorneys can look forward to 30% of some big settlement down the road. Therefore they generally take on too many cases to do any of them justice. Because they have too many cases they tend to focus on the mechanical end of things... Has form X been filled out properly and filed properly by deadline Y, etc. They may spend one afternoon the day before a case goes to trial "thinking" about the angles of the case - these are not out of the box thinkers. They will not be familiar enough with your soon-to-be ex or your personal issues to ask the right questions at the right time when he/she is on the stand in order to effectively get their/your points across.

The problem is, if you try to assist them by giving them a list of questions to ask the ex, they'll likely get huffy, as though they don't know their business - which they don't. Thus family law attorneys are (generally speaking) unjustifiably self-important on top of everything. That is probably true in all 50 states - I've only met one exception ever.

Now for the Virginia-specific part of divorce. If you are a man, I don't care if the ex-wife attempted suicide with the kids in the house because she blames you for her never having had a career. Family judges in Virginia are conservative, and I don't mean conservative in the left/right sense. I mean conservative in the sense that in their eyes woman equals backbone of civilization and all that is good, man equals ATM, and the woman always gets the kids. Don't expect the law to be sympathetic to your inability to pay what they tell you to either. Virginia was founded by elitists in wigs and short pants and the powers that be think the cure for the inability to pay for any reason is debtor's prison - which is where you will find yourself, literally.

The reason I am writing all of this is to inform you that even if you are armed with the best book written on the subject, and this is a very good book, there are many things in a divorce you can only learn through the school of hard knocks, and also no attorney is going to write what I just wrote about his/her fellow attorneys. That being said, some attorneys can't even manage to fill out the paperwork properly, so it helps to known when to file things so you can keep an eye out for yourself. Also, if your spouse happens to be that rare bird not dazzled with dollar signs and the possibility of alimony, you could use this book to file everything yourself and leave attorneys out of this matter as much as possible.

The book mentions one point repeatedly you should definitely keep in mind even if the divorce is amicable - get everything in writing. Just because you agree today doesn't mean you'll agree tomorrow or next year or ten years from now, and it can come back to bite you years after the dust has cleared.