You know how family & divorce attorneys have these grand websites telling you how much they care about their clients & how much pro bono work/helping others they do? Well, in my experience that is total & utter bullshit.
The only time any of these people care is if you've got thousands of dollars to pay a retainer. I have encountered exactly zero family law attorneys, even among people I know, who have said "Here, Angry Redheaded Lawyer let me alleviate your stress & help you on this divorce against your ex's pro attorney." I've not had any type of regard shown for me by actual divorce attorneys in my region who know this area & could help me if they had half a mind to or even some tiny shred of empathy for me.
Realistically, legal aid is not a good option for someone who is an attorney, needs legal counsel at once & is being argued against a man so scummy he had the gall to ask for maintenance and counsel fees from someone who's got NOTHING whatsoever because he stole it all AND illegally evicted her with the help of the landlord.
If you were in this situation & yourself an attorney in need, wouldn't you find it incredibly hypocritical to find some divorce attorney's website saying they care about their clients & do all this pro bono work when they refuse to bother to help you or do anything useful? Not even saying something like "You are a stronger person than me" or "You are stronger than most people because you haven't developed a substance abuse problem, gone insane or crawled back to Mommy & Daddy's after all that. I admire you for it."
Turning away someone when they ask for help, especially if they aren't the type of person who likes asking in the first place, is how suicide and downfalls happen. Without going into too much detail, I have still managed to stay in the Tri-State area & haven't gotten addicted to drugs or alcohol, attempted suicide, gotten committed to an insane asylum or crawled right back to Mommy and Daddy's house. In some ways, life is better for me now than it was with my ex.
Some of you should ask yourselves what you'd do if my situation happened to YOU. What would you do? Where would you be? How would you cope? If you think things would be 100% peachy keen, you're dead wrong. Even if you had a million dollars, you'd still have the emotional stuff to deal with & it would be very tempting to go buy some drugs or alcohol to muffle your pain. Imagine that your entire life, everything you knew for years, was gone. Everything is turned upside down & you had to fight to keep vestiges from your whole life and not end up in a full regression. Divorce is very much a regression along with a grieving period. I dare anyone who'd judge me or diss me to live a few months in my shoes. Give up your creature comforts, your easy money, a steady job, nearness to your family & see what happens. I think I'm entitled to some "props" and a little moral superiority if I look down on you for not being able to hack it as well as me.
I'd bet you if I were to kill myself or end up in legal trouble for drunk driving or drugs or got committed, these same people would be all sad & say "I wish I could have helped," "I had no idea" & "What could I have done?" Ha! I've given you the answer and you ignored it. These people would try turning my death or downfall into some great unsolvable tragedy when they in fact simply failed as human beings & did nothing. That is something I'd want these jerks to take with them & feel.
Unlike some of these lawyers who put on shows about how great they are as humanitarians, I've actually helped people for free before. Advice, sending sample forms, I've done that for colleagues. I've stood by my friends & if they were in dire straits & needed MY help, I wouldn't be a callous bitch refusing to do something I could easily do for them.
In the entertainment field, there are people who'd have your back and give a damn about not adding to your stress. People who actually ARE humanitarian in their nature, who will do for you instead of being a bloodsucking, lying asshole pretending to care when what they care about is the size of your wallet. There is SOME professional courtesy in the entertainment field that I'm not seeing in the legal field. I sure hope these people don't think I'd hire them if I had the money to retain them. If I had the money, I wouldn't bother with anyone I've contacted since they have proven to be total liars, completely unsympathetic & reinforcing my full on hatred of attorneys.
If you wanted to know why I won't do for other attorneys the way I do for other creatives, this is your answer. Producers & directors tend to help their friends and hire them for things. There's apparently zero friendship with your so-called attorney "friends" when you actually need their services & they could help you but just don't bother. Some could certainly afford it & frankly, my finances are likely in far worse shape than many of theirs at this point since I didn't talk to newbies just starting out. People in the entertainment industry will even help strangers in need sometimes. It seems attorneys don't do that, at least in divorce law. I've been told of attorneys who did barter with some clients. No one has offered that with me or bothered to be creative in things.
How many of you are sitting unemployed right now? Who will get off your ass & maybe actually HELP someone, even your own peers? I know how the game works, I know what legal aid offers & how that deal works so I get very insulted when people suggest that like I have no knowledge or thought of that. Let's get serious here.
So, there's a prime example of blatant hypocrisy for you & a damn good reason to hate lawyers. If I do a job website & ads I'm not going to say I "care" or that I do "pro bono" efforts when I don't. These attorneys should just say "if you can't afford my retainer, I don't care if your ex has the top divorce attorney in the country & you're broke with no rich people or good credit to get money from; I don't give a damn & wouldn't shed a tear if you died, had a nervous breakdown, ended up homeless or had your entire quality of life vanish b/c of the inaction of me and every other divorce attorney in this town."
People keep telling me to "move on" but how does one move on when they have to confront that reality of divorce all the time by having to represent themselves & handle it all by themselves, especially when their opposition is a spoiled brat with expert legal counsel they'd never be able to afford without Mommy & Daddy? That situation makes it impossible for me to move on so if you want me to stop talking about or dealing with it, how about getting me a divorce lawyer?
You'd think at the very least, some divorce attorney would like the challenge, have the Christmas spirit, want to help their own, have some righteous indignation at spoiled brat man children who treat their wives the way mine treated me after (my father died 9 months beforehand, by the way) or want to get in my good graces since if I can afford one, I sure won't hire anyone I contacted & especially not anyone who makes this big show of claiming to be SOOOO caring and humane when they aren't at all. Honesty will win points with me. Reinforcing my hatred of lawyers as a group will not; it simply makes me all the more wary & hostile toward them.
So if you're an attorney reaching out & I ask you certain questions or feel wary of you, that is why. Don't tell me "you shouldn't handle your own divorce" then have zero practical steps for me to not do that. It's just like with job hunts; everyone can give you pat answers & advice but never provide you actual contacts or an interview opportunity to really help you. Pat answers & advice are a waste of everyone's time. If you don't have actual knowledge on someone's problem, it's best to keep your mouth shut.
Friday, December 19, 2014
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