First Kill All the Lawyers: In Pro Per

First Kill All the Lawyers: In Pro Per

by Katie Law Goodwin
First Kill All the Lawyers: In Pro Per

First Kill All the Lawyers: In Pro Per

by Katie Law Goodwin

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Overview

First Kill All the Lawyers is a step-by-step guide to obtaining a divorce without an attorney. Psychotherapist, nutritionist, energy worker, former actress and comedienne, Katie Law Goodwin, takes you through the often painful and difficult process from filing forms all the way through the self-care required to maintain your sanity-nutrition, exercise and meditation. Written with poignancy, wit and humor, Goodwin teaches the reader how to fill out forms, write legal pleadings, serve their spouse with papers, where to find forms, and even how to dress for a trial-should a divorce go that far. A must read whether you are going through a divorce or just considering one.

Your guide to:

• Manage your own divorce without an attorney

• Maintain your sanity along the way

• Research, complete and file court forms

• And much more!


Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781452591100
Publisher: Balboa Press
Publication date: 03/14/2014
Pages: 320
Product dimensions: 6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.72(d)

Read an Excerpt

First Kill All the Lawyers

In Pro Per


By Katie Law Goodwin

Balboa Press

Copyright © 2014 Katie Law Goodwin
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4525-9110-0



CHAPTER 1

Due Process Before the Due Process


IT IS TRUE THAT MORE than half of all marriages in the United States end in divorce. And it is equally true that we are as unprepared for divorce as we are for death. In fact, we go to great lengths to avoid the inevitable, and in both cases, we are always the loser.

Divorce is the ugliest, most profound grief I have known. It is a guaranteed "failure to thrive" event, and it is my deep belief that only the most pained, abused, horridly unhappy people rejoice in this life transition. It is worse than death, because it signifies the end of love. There is no idealized loved one, no dead body with which to have closure. Children become split in two and the archetypes of father, mother and child become something to scoff at as what was once called a family dissolves in the pain of single parenthood. Stressed out mothers and fathers try to take on superhuman roles while children "rule the roosts," unbearably unhappy, talking tough, yet staying dependent and childish much longer than normal.

I don't believe in divorce. Funny coming from someone who has been divorced twice.

I don't believe in abortion. Funny coming from a liberal Democrat who is pro-choice and who has had an abortion.

Divorce, like abortion, leaves a hole in the soul, a grief so profound that there is often no resolution, just a resonant tug of pain, triggered year after year after year.

I dealt with both life transitions the way I deal with everything: humor. Humor and Tylenol. Humor and tears and screams and coffee and writing. And the irony of all of it remains the fact that I wouldn't want my ex-husband on my land, yet I would have done anything to save the marriage. Anything. And I damn near died trying.

This book is about self-empowerment. It is about facing down the legal system. It is about not giving up control, even when you're hysterical on a daily basis, tragically menopausal, not presentable in public, a single mother, bereft, literally penniless, and fighting a near-fatal illness. It is about the clear, simple and rather alarming fact that divorce lawyers cannot possibly know about your unique case; and giving them money, unless you are extremely wealthy, is absurd. I would argue that it is absurd to give any attorney money in this highly specialized game of über warfare. Most especially it is true because the family law game represents two people who are equals, and since no crime purportedly has been committed (no matter how convinced you may be that your ex is a criminal) it becomes even more ridiculous to throw money at the very system which is guaranteed to make everything much worse.

Guaranteed to make things so much worse. And more painful. And make you angrier longer. And result in the state having control over your children while having no interest whatsoever in their welfare. Guaranteed to make you suffer so much that the very people you walk past on the street are split in two—a reflection of the warfare in your own mind.

So, empower yourself. If I can do it, you can do it.

Because I say again, and will say it over and over and over: the moment a retainer is handed to a family law attorney, you have lost. No matter how amicable your matter is, you have lost. Your money, your power, your love, your self-respect, and the welfare of you and your children, is lost.

Some readers may have thrown this book across the room or bookstore by now. I do not mean to be as glib and smug as to say that in cases of severe abuse or malfeasance, help is not needed. I, myself, hired an attorney for my first hearing because the man I was divorcing (he was actually divorcing me, "under the radar," as he so tactfully put it) had taken our assets without my knowledge and I needed a temporary support order. Soon afterwards—about $15,000 afterward, gobbled up in less than a month—I became aware that family law was a game and that I could and should and would carefully read the hideous forms thrown at me, that nolo.com—where I would find legal forms from a book and accompanying CD—would become my friend, and that anyone could be a lawyer.

You did not have to be particularly bright, but you did have to be able to endure the tedium and drudge of due process. I had to surrender to the fact that because my divorce was to drag on, each little item—including spatulas—fought over and contested by my mentally ill spouse, I would be doing the labor of fact-finding anyway. To pay someone $450–$650 an hour just to file what I had turned up in court, well, it stopped making sense. This was in California, in 2005. Now, in 2013, the cost of a family law attorney is even higher than the rate I was quoted.

Not only did I not have the money, I did not have the time. Who does? But I was well aware that lawyers have clocks on their telephones which aid them in billing in fifteen-minute increments. And, believe me, anything over fifteen minutes will most likely be billed at the hourly rate.

Now for the most amazing fact of all: I was divorcing an attorney.

I was divorcing an attorney who had been a partner in the world's largest corporate law firm for 20 years. I was divorcing an attorney with a mind like a steel trap, who could refer to "Article 30, Page 780, Paragraph 4, Section III" as if he were casually scratching a mosquito bite. Who answered every question with a question. Who could throw anyone off track. Who liked to say he could make Jesus question his motives.

Eli graduated first in his law school class of 380 students. That says a great deal, because he went to one of the country's top law schools.

But, smart as he was, I outsmarted him. I became:


In Pro Per

In Pro Per (adj.): A term derived from the Latin in propria, meaning "for one's self," used in some states to describe a person who handles his or her own case without a lawyer.

It was a big deal because not only was I going against one lawyer (remember, my husband, the one who graduated first in his law school class), but I was going against another lawyer—the rather hideous person he retained for his counsel in the parody, the absolute embarrassing horror and pain and scathing shame of:


Family Law

More on this later. It is painful. The very two words placed next to one another are sad. It is an oxymoron. It is moronic. There is no "family" in "law." It is a hideously grievous sadness, the juxtaposition of these words.

So, with all the objectivity I can muster, being a passionate, subjective, histrionic type, I will tell my story.


Preliminary Brief

Actually, you will never write a preliminary brief, but I thought I would give some background ...

I loved being with a lawyer. I could take those big risks I always wanted to take, being the repressed, inhibited daughter of Southern gentry, and know my husband could and would get me out of any mess I got myself into.

Problem was I had been acting out for 20 years, since I left the geography south of the Mason Dixon line and moved to New York, where I had never gotten into any trouble at all. This included the good old days, the 70s, when I scored coke in Harlem in my Escada mink and Rolex watch; when I used a slug instead of a token in the subway system, got arrested, and ended up dating the transit cop who arrested me. It got more interesting when I graduated to dating a narc, a guy I met when I decided jury duty was boring and left during the voir dire, deciding to go and drink in Chinatown, knowing only New York's finest frequented those hangouts. It was there I met Bobby and we became a thing. He was Puerto Rican, an undercover detective for the New York City Police Department's Narcotics Division, and I began doing some fun undercover work for the New York City Police Department in exchange for Sambuca, excitement, and free Italian dinners in Little Italy. Not to mention many Italian, Hispanic and Irish cops who were enamored with me, calling me "The Face." This dangerous escapade, undertaken in my 20s, gave me an appreciation for the police force which I honor to this day. And I so appreciated the force's proclivity for getting the very best cocaine to put up my delicate nostrils, a practice which, thankfully, has ended. Ah, the good old days ...

But to get back to the story of my marriage to Eli... being with Eli was something. He was brilliant. Remember, he was a la-di-dah partner in the world's largest corporate law firm, yet basically, from what I could tell, he was a glorified secretary. Day in and day out sat he, making fat documents word perfect, retaining the unretainable. He was a "dealmaker." He was always doing deals. But his firm (they capitalized the word, so it was the Firm) was smart enough to recognize that Eli was, as most of the lawyers I met at the Firm, a total social mal adroit, and they did not allow him to talk to anyone or be seen in public. So he sat in a huge corner office, doing deals. Now, the litigators—the sad class of people, some of whom I noticed had blackheads on their faces the size of Mount Vesuvius—dealt with people. And civil law is a yawner beyond a yawner. So, these socially unequipped people, with blackheads and bad breath and huge salaries, were, for the most part, able to remember things and were good at grammar.

I knew, I just knew, I could do this. Remember, I had been with Eli for seven years. I knew that mind. I knew those prepositions. I knew those commas and, God, did I know those colons and semi-colons. I could read forms, no matter how often I told myself I was beyond this tripe and trivia. I just stayed with it.

Now, to be fair, the attorneys I had met in Eli's firm were truly intelligent people, although, as I said, easily diagnosed, in my humble opinion, with minor autism—sort of an Aspergers' syndrome of lawyers—which manifested as an ability to cut off any emotion at any time, and to have no ability to deal on a social or empathic level. The people I met had the emotional lives of gnats. They, for the most part, had little or no affect. This was an exceptional and needed quality in corporate law, I discovered. Being married to it was another issue. It was terribly painful and mostly impossible.

Yet the lawyers in family law, less trained, less highly regarded, definitely more narcissistic, were passionate, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. They were working, for the most part, for people who were not guilty of anything except intolerable unhappiness. They were the bottom dwellers, and they knew it.

I also realized that lawyers were overworked and highly flamboyant if given half the chance in family law, and they wanted to be seen and heard, and since I had no money and wasn't loud enough, I was given little attention if I complained. I noticed our names were wrong on the forms filed with the Court in the first hearing in which we were required to appear. No one seemed to care. I realized then and there that I'd better be the one in charge. I realized I could do the tedium of caring for my case. This was before I understood Eli would take me to trial, but I was not able to see into the future, or understand where any case could go.

Eli wanted to frustrate and disgrace me. We had no real property, no children to talk about (his two children returned to his first wife when he walked out and I had a daughter who desperately needed my attention), so we were mercifully spared the ignominy of having to discuss children as property. He said again and again in court that his only reason for dragging me through the process of court was so that his lawyer would "get whatever money there was" and I would get none.

So I was suddenly, after 24 years of being married or living with a man, left completely alone, with a child—a sick child, I might add. I was old, I had a terrible, bone-melting disease, and I had a full-time job which was paying me very little. I was trying to get my business going. I was paid only for the hours I worked, so the time I spent on my case was a distraction, so to speak, from my primary concerns: my child and our financial well-being. My health was terrible, yet I was forced to ignore what certainly looked to be a disease process beginning to kill me. The distractions of being in court and arguing daily over minutiae like kitchenware was certainly not conducive to my getting well and addressing the condition which seemed to be causing my certain demise. But when I brought this up with the court I was shouted down by Eli's attorney.

I want to say this turned out to be a blessing. What I ignored was eventually mercifully resolved, and this has been the case for me with every one of my disease processes since—from cancer scares to MS to RSD to trigeminal neuralgia. Pain is always on its way out – notice it and it is gone. Disease is always changing, moving, taking a different shape. It is sometimes a blessing not to have to focus on it.

So, find some excuses if you want. So far, I was divorcing a lawyer, I had no money, I had virtually no left brain activity, I had a fatal illness, I was a single mother, and I was 55 years old. Did I mention menopause?

Now.

Back to the preliminary briefing ...

Eli was my husband, the guy who worked as a lawyer reading two-inch thick bundles of documents carefully, going over each meticulously, and becoming adept at the phrase: "referring back to Article 86, Page 289, Paragraph 3," etc. This is an important issue to keep in mind always when you remember that this is the person I divorced in a California superior court, and this is the person against whom I defended myself. I remind myself of this often, because I prevailed. As much as anyone who "wins" by contesting a divorce can prevail. No one really wins, although I would imagine one or the other manages to think they do.

It is equally important to remember that the law I ceremoniously spout is California Law. Most of the process is exactly the same in any court. It is called "due process," that term spouted by us all but rarely understood as the legally correct way to present pleadings and filings in a court of law. Remember this.

California is a community property state. This is the only state in which I have been divorced. I was once divorced in Reno, Nevada, but that doesn't count.

In 2005, there were nine states which were community property states: Arizona, California, Idaho, Louisiana, Nevada, New Mexico, Texas, Washington and Wisconsin. The other states were called "equitable distribution" states; a term which is relative when it comes to fairness!

A community property state means that you have an undivided interest in all marital property whether your funds bought the property or his funds bought the property. If the property is part of the marriage, it is community property, and you each have 50 percent interest. In an equitable distribution state circumstances come into play and judges can and do make decisions based on a variety of issues—like if one or the other is a drug addict or pervert or abusive—one party is going to get the bulk of everything they have. Interestingly, in Mississippi—where you can still be held accountable and be punished for committing adultery—it is another story altogether. And there are still "fault" divorces, but these are becoming rarer since we left the feudal system behind.

So, I lived in a community property state, and my divorce was contested. If you are becoming your own lawyer, do whatever you can to not contest anything. It is so much easier. Use a mediator. Talk and negotiate. Remember, no one wins! Everyone loses, so the best thing to do is get it over with as kindly and quickly as possible, and then never think about it again.

Had I been married to a reasonable person it would have been quite a good idea to reason things out in a direct way. Going to court is a difficult and costly process, yet each divorce's conclusion is handled in any one of three ways in any state:

1. Divorce by default. In a default divorce a Respondent is served with a Petition but does nothing. No Response is filed, so the case is completed by default. This is a good idea when there are no children, no debt, no need for financial support, or when the Respondent is long gone and refuses to participate. It is better if a Response is filed.

2. A contested divorce. If a Response is filed, the divorce is completed only by written agreement filed in court, or by taking the case to court and having a judge decide whatever issues cannot be decided by the divorcing parties. Even if both parties want a divorce, until an agreement is reached, the divorce is technically considered contested.


(Continues...)

Excerpted from First Kill All the Lawyers by Katie Law Goodwin. Copyright © 2014 Katie Law Goodwin. Excerpted by permission of Balboa Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

Table of Contents

Contents

Endorsement, v,
Exegesis, xiii,
Apologia, xvii,
Prologue, xix,
Part I: The Story, 1,
I. Due Process Before the Due Process, 3,
II. Amo, Amas, Amat, 14,
III. You do WHAT?! COOK?, 18,
IV. Whatever Has a Front Has a Back, 25,
V. Can I Put my Kunda Weenie in Your Shakti Pot?, 29,
VI. Eli 'n Me, Sittin' In A Tree, 34,
VII. The Q-Tip, 39,
VIII. The Head Click, 43,
IX. So a Lion Goes Into the Jungle; or Why Didn't She Leave?, 45,
X. In Conclusion 7:7:7, 51,
Part II: The Legal Stuff, 55,
I. Pre-Trial: Summons, Petition, Response and Proof of Service, 57,
II. The Contested Divorce, the OSC, Motions, Responses, Declarations and Discovery, 66,
III. Mediation and Settlement Agreements, 94,
IV. Tria, l97,
V. Judgment, 104,
VI. Pension Joinder, QDROs, and Really Hard Stuff, 108,
VII. Res Ipsa Loquitur, 111,
Part III: Self-Care, 115,
I. Self-Care, 117,
II. Emotional Self-Care, 120,
III. Spiritual Self-Care, 124,
IV. Psychological Self-Care, 133,
V. Physical: Beauty Self-Care, 136,
VI. Physical: Exercise Self-Care, 139,
VII. Nutritional Self-Care, 141,
VIII. Energy Medicine Self-Care, 151,
IX. Legal Self-Care, 160,
Part IV: The Forms, 167,
A: Redacted Documents, 169,
B: Index of Updated Family Law Forms, California, 2013, 193,
Glossary Of Terms, 285,
Recommended Reading List, 293,
About the Author, 297,

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