Jason Smith is a family law attorney in Orange County, California. Mr. Smith understands how important his work is to his clients. He is married with two children. He practices family law and exclusively focuses his practice on divorce, child custody, alimony, and other family law issues. This page details the basics of what JS Family Law Attorney can do for you.
Choosing the Right Family Court Lawyer
The possibility of losing custody of your child or separating from a spouse is one of the most traumatic experiences you may ever go through. How do you choose a attorney to entrust your future to? This attorney should not only have the knowledge and experience to successfully help you win your case, but he or she should also understand how important these issues are to you.
When you meet with a lawyer, you should feel free to ask all the questions you have regarding the process. If he doesn’t listen to you, you shouldn’t hire him. There are no such thing as super lawyers. No lawyer can help you unless he or she takes the time to hear your story. Before you sign anything, make sure you feel comfortable with your lawyer because you will provide him with private information.
If you’re going through a divorce with a hostile spouse, you should also judge whether your attorney will be aggressive enough to handle your case? Just as important, do you think your attorney will also provide you with honest advice? Most importantly, you and the attorney must be able to communicate effectively. Remember that there are no guarantees what your judge will do, but you should feel very comfortable that your attorney to help you navigate it.
Another relevant part of choosing the right family law attorney for you is your financial ability. Can you afford the attorney’s fees on top of the filing fees? Family lawyers have different fee structures, including hourly rate, flat fee, or retainer fee arrangements. Carefully discuss all fees that would be involved in handling your case so that you’re not hit with any surprise fees.
Attorney Consultation in Orange County
When you call for a consultation, we will ask you all sorts of questions. A family court lawyer must first acquire lots of information before he can give you any advice or estimate how much a matter will cost. After getting to know you and what your goals are, our lawyer can develop a strategy of how best to fight for you.
There are a wide range of topics in that may need detailed examination by the lawyer. He is an experienced California family court lawyer and knows exactly what questions to ask. When you work with a JS Family Law Attorney, you will feel confident that you’ll have someone to walk you through this complicated and difficult process.
Practice Areas
We handle family law cases in the following areas:
Divorce, Annulment, or Legal Separation
When you make a commitment to get married or enter in to a domestic partnership, you probably hoped it may never end. But there are many reasons that may push a couple into parting ways, but the complicated part is making sure the split is fair.
A family law attorney can help you through the paperwork, figuring out child support, custody, alimony and more. It might be an amicable split or a complicated one; either way, it is recommended to have someone familiar with divorce law, dissolution of marriage, or domestic partnership law to walk you through this. Visit our main divorce page to learn more information.
Child Custody
The biggest issue that comes from two parents separating is determining child custody.[1] A child’s best interest is the top priority in making this decision. Generally, parents are encouraged to settle it without court intervention, but there are times when they need a family law judge or arbitrator to make the order.
An experienced family law attorney will help you determine what factors will affect your chances of gaining child custody. The guiding policies of determining outcome in these cases, are based on the child’s “best interest.” Visit our main child custody page for more information. If your child custody case involves a history of domestic violence from a parent, the judge’s decision may be significantly affected.[2]
Child Support
Both parents are responsible for the care of the child or children, financially and emotionally. If the parents are not together and a court needs to get involved in establishing child support, you need to work with an experienced lawyer. Having a good family court lawyer on your side can help you get the child support that you believe your child deserves to grow up well. Don’t navigate this complex situation on your own, as your decisions impact the rest of the child’s life. For more information about this critical topic, visit our child support page.
Alimony or Spousal Support
In a divorce, legal separation, or annulment, there may be an order for spousal support, also known as alimony. A California judge must consider a variety of factors. California Family Code § 4320. This includes the length of the marriage, the marketable skills of the non-wage earning spouse, their ages, debts, and several other factors. The goal of the judge, when determining the amount of spousal support, is to help each spouse maintain or stay close to their standard of living when they were married. For more detailed information regarding alimony, visit our spousal support page. If you want to end support for your spouse, visit our ending alimony page.
Paternity
Establishing who is the child’s father is critically important. Being officially recognized as the parent of a child gives the Court the ability to attach responsibility for the care and support of the child or children. Unfortunately, some men want to avoid this obligation. To learn more about how an Orange County family lawyer can help establish paternity, visit our main paternity page.
Division of Assets & Community Property
When two people get divorced or legally separated, they must divide their assets. This is an extremely complicated and stressful process. Our division of assets doing divorce page details how this process takes place, what the current community property law says, and what gets divided and how.
Visitation
Child visitation is tremendously important. While divorce is extremely challenging by itself, when one spouse prevents the other spouse from seeing the children things can get really stressful. Visit our child visitation page for more information. If you are a grandparent and want to see your grandchildren, click here.
Guardianship
A guardianship proceeding is brought to authorize a non-parent’s custody of a child where both of the child’s parents are dead or missing. Sometimes it is for when a parent is detrimental to the child. This is a common legal mechanism for grandparents to utilize when their son or daughter is deceased, addicted, or abusive to the grandchild. The proceedings for requesting guardianship are complicated and necessitate family law expertise.
Domestic Violence
Domestic violence incidents can be considered a misdemeanor or a felony. Getting a family law attorney involved may help tremendously. They will take care of examining police reports at arraignments, reviewing whether a protective order is warranted, and/or even working with investigators to prepare for trial. A domestic violence case can get messy, so having the right legal representative will make this process a lot less intimidating.
Speak with an Orange County Family Law Attorney
The information on this page is written solely to provide you more information for family law matters, it is not a substitute for getting legal advice from a lawyer who learns about your specific situation. Speaking to an Orange County family law attorney will give you peace of mind, knowing that you’ll be working with someone who deals with clients of these issues on a daily basis. All consultations over the phone are confidential, but you shouldn’t consider this conversation as legal advice until a client-attorney relationship is established.
All cases are different and no single outcome of prior cases should be used to estimate the outcome of your situation. Allow our attorney and staff to speak with you in-depth to see if you’ll have a good case in family court. You can give us a call at the number listed at the top, or fill out the contact form on the right and we will contact you as soon as we can.
For more family law information, visit Orange County’s family court website.
Thank You for Visiting JS Family Law Attorney
This is a website. It is not legal advice. The information presented here is general, and should not be used by anyone without first speaking with an Orange County, CA, family court lawyer or law firm. Nothing should serve as a substitute for speaking with an experienced family attorney.
All consultations are over-the-phone, not in-person. FamilyLawAttorneyCal.com’s lawyers do not give legal advice over the phone. If a lawyer believes you may have a case, we will schedule a more in-depth, in-person meeting at one of our office locations to discuss the details of your case.
All cases are different and we do not guarantee any result. Any of the verdicts, settlements, or results reported on this website are for informational purposes only and do not represent the value of all cases. Each case and matter is different and evaluated based on the unique facts. No two cases are the same. We make no promises.
By submitting the contact form to JS Family Law Attorney (right-hand side of each page), you consent to having your contact information, including your name, phone number, and information stored and sent to the attorney in order to allow our attorneys and staff to contact you about your potential case.
Footnotes:
[1] California Family Law Code § 3020