When looking for a Pasadena family law firm to handle your divorce, it's helpful to make sure you understand what a family law practice involves.
Family law is an area of practice dealing with legal issues of interest to families. This includes divorce-related issues as well as concerns such as:
- Legal separation
- Prenuptial agreements
- Paternity testing
- Child custody and visitation for unmarried parents
- Adoption
- Surrogacy
- Elder care issues
Many law schools now offer elective courses on the subject of family law and the bar exam now contains questions specifically designed to test a lawyer's knowledge of this subject area. The State Bar of California also allows lawyers to take a certification test declaring a specialization in family law. The certification is good for five years. To obtain recertification, an applicant must complete at least 60 hours of study specifically approved for family law. Of those 60 hours, at least six, but no more than 10 hours can be in the psychological and counseling aspects of family law.
If you're looking for a family law attorney to represent you during your divorce, don't simply hire the first person you come across in the phone book. Family law attorneys must be gentle and understanding with their clients, since the issues they deal with have a strong emotional component. Yet they must also be able to keep a professional distance. A lawyer is not a therapist. His job is to simply represent his client's best interests in the court room.
The best way to find a good family law attorney is to meet with several candidates for an initial consultation. Many attorneys offer a free or low cost initial consultation to allow you to ask questions and get a feel for whether you'd be comfortable working with them on your case. "Shopping around" for an attorney is perfectly acceptable.
How Can We Help?
If you are in the process of selecting an attorney to handle your divorce, please call our office at (626) 683-8113 or email us at info@PasadenaLawOffice.com. Our Pasadena family law lawyers are able to handle a variety of divorce-related issues, including child support, child custody, and spousal support concerns.