Le Knapp: Divorce Lawyer Orem Utah

Utah divorce laws are complex. Always seek the assistance of an experienced Orem Utah divorce lawyer.

Under Utah law, you can apply for an uncontested divorce. An uncontested divorce is one where the spouses have agreed on all issues of the divorce including alimony, child custody, child support and visitation rights.
Utah has minimum residency requirements for divorce. Just because you got married in Utah, you cannot automatically apply for a divorce in Utah. Either you or your spouse must be a resident of Utah for at least three months. If you have minor children from the marriage, this period is six months. Utah also has mandatory mediation requirements.

Utah also has a mandatory waiting period for a divorce to be completed. The waiting period is ninety days. You can request the court to waive this mandatory waiting period of 90 days under extraordinary circumstances. An experienced Orem Utah divorce lawyer can review your case and let you know if you can request this waiver. This waiver is not automatic and the court will review the circumstances before it waives this mandatory ninety day waiting period.

Once this waiting period is over, the court will grant the divorce. In case of an uncontested divorce, the spouses need not attend the court for a hearing. All that they need to do is file the paperwork correctly. The judge reviews the paperwork and pass the order declaring the spouses as divorced and the marriage as legally ended. However if the spouses are unable to reach an agreement on any of the issues, they will have to appear in court and the court will after hearing them and reviewing the evidence decide on the unsettled issues.

Divorcing women must suddenly assume the household tasks that may have been formerly in their husbands’ domain. Home and car maintenance and repairs, tax returns, and financial planning often top their list of practical problems. Women with primary physical custody of children have a particularly difficult time. Their problems multiply exponentially with the responsibility for dealing with hurt, baffled children who may develop any number of transient problems in response to their family’s rupture (See Chapter 6). Typically, divorcing mothers’ lives and homes are in a state of disorganization. Financial worries, caused by their inevitably reduced resources, are a major source of stress. Mothers who had stayed at home or worked part-time often must return to full-time employment, turning an overloaded schedule into an exhausting one. Many report having to stay up past midnight just to get the bare essentials done. Yet those who remain at home often complain of being locked in a child’s world. Many mothers report that their stress is overwhelming.

Divorcing men have their own set of problems. Many wind up in small or furnished apartments, bitter that they have lost so much of what they had spent years building. A surprising number are lost when it comes to the mechanics of cooking, shopping for food, cleaning, and doing laundry. Fathers without custody report feeling rootless, shut out, guilty, and anxious. The great majority miss daily contact with their children, some desperately so. Reflecting their stress, fathers tend to sleep less, eat erratically, develop physical symptoms, and bury themselves in work during the first year after separation. It is also common for them to engage in a frenzied social life, not because it is satisfying or pleasurable but because it helps ward off feelings of being shut out and rootless.
Progression through divorce can be divided into three broad stages: preseparation, transition-restructuring, and recovery-rebuilding.
People’s experiences are most varied before they make the decision to separate and file for divorce. For some, the long months, and perhaps years, before the decisive separation are a volatile period of acrimony and anger. For some this period is marked by mutual indifference and alienation. For others it is a period of sinking disillusionment and hopelessness. Some engage in endless discussions and negotiations in an attempt to save their marriages. Some try marriage counseling. Others are taken by complete surprise when a spouse leaves.

Women often experience the preseparation stage as more stressful than do men. Women are more likely to report having been depressed, pessimistic, and lonely during this period. Between two-thirds and three-quarters of divorces are initiated by women, so their greater preseparation distress may reflect their turmoil while wrestling with their decision to divorce or not. For some, the preseparation period is the most traumatic period of their divorce.

Not everyone encounters the divorce experience. A minority of divorcing men and women feel primarily relief, hope, and even positive feelings at the end of their marriages. They may talk of being released from prison or bondage, of new beginnings, of a chance for a better life. Sometimes there are celebrations and self-indulgences like massages, facials, new wardrobes, and new cars. They function fairly well and quickly begin to rebuild their lives. Many immerse themselves in dating and the singles scene immediately, sometimes at a hectic pace, as if making up for lost time.

With divorce come time-consuming paperwork, the necessity of dealing with an unfamiliar legal system, new loneliness, difficulties concentrating, countless questions from relatives and friends, and the endless list of decisions (new living arrangements, how every material possession will be divided, where the children will live, how parenting will be shared, how to handle holidays, and on and on).

Divorce can be emotionally stressing. When you are in such a situation, attempting to navigate complex maze of Utah divorce laws can be disastrous. Seek the assistance of an experienced Orem Utah divorce lawyer.
When you deal with an experienced Orem Utah divorce lawyer, you can rest assured that you are dealing with a professional expert. In the role of provider of services, there is equally an obligation not to perform unnecessary services. This does not arise so much from the relationship of trust, as it does from the concept of being a professional. Professionals hold themselves out as people who possess special competence and expertise. Competent performance certainly encompasses knowing which services the client really needs as well as performing only those services.
Like all other all professionals, the divorce lawyer too has problems of formal role conflict. The classic view of divorce lawyers is that they are the champions and representatives of their clients, and their loyalty should be undivided. It is this view that makes the provision of excessive services so obviously inappropriate and perhaps explains why a member of the legal profession would be more likely to focus on this dilemma. The legal profession seems to be in the process of moving from the aspirational statements found in the Model Code of Professional Responsibility to a much more rule-oriented approach. The American Bar Association adopted the Model Rules of Professional Conduct in 1983. They are much more detailed and specific than the Canons of the Model Code.

Obviously, some form of consent is a threshold requirement in every professional relationship. Both the professional’s right to compensation and her authorization to manage a client’s affairs or to undertake some service for him arises from the notion of contract. Unless the threshold of legal contract is reached, professionals are not entitled to recover compensation, nor would they have a defense to a legal challenge of unauthorized interference with the client’s person, property, or freedom. Assent is the least demanding form of consent. A legally enforceable contract normally does not require much knowledge.

Rule 1.4(b) of the American Bar Association’s Model Rules of Professional Conduct provides:

A lawyer shall explain a matter to the extent reasonably necessary to permit the client to make informed decisions regarding the representation.
The client should have sufficient information to participate intelligently in decisions concerning the objectives of the representation and the means by which they are to be pursued, to the extent the client is willing and able to do so. Adequacy of communication depends in part on the kind of advice or assistance involved. For example, in negotiations where there is time to explain a proposal the divorce lawyer should review all important provisions with the client before proceeding to an agreement. In litigation a divorce lawyer should explain the general strategy and prospects of success and ordinarily should consult the client on tactics that might injure or coerce others. On the other hand, a divorce lawyer ordinarily cannot be expected to describe trial or negotiation strategy in detail. The guiding principle is that the divorce lawyer should fulfill reasonable client expectations for information consistent with the duty to act in the client’s best interests, and the client’s overall requirements as to the character of representation.

Ordinarily, the information to be provided is that appropriate for a client who is a comprehending and responsible adult.

A mutually satisfactory agreement would go beyond informed consent by requiring not only that the professional give the client all the necessary information, but that she also help the client to reach a mutually satisfactory accord by trying to reduce to an insignificant point any misunderstandings and disagreements between the professional and the client about procedures, desired results, and obstacles in trying to achieve those results. This is the situation where neither professional nor client is being used as a means to the other’s ends.

It should also be an important part of this understanding for the professional to assure that the client’s expectations are realistic. The client should not only be aware of the risks that are possible from the external world in which the professional and client are acting, but also the risks inherent in the professional’s limitations of competence and fallibility. Many clients often come to professionals in times of great stress. This situational pressure often inhibits the client’s capacities to be highly objective, calm, and rational. One responsibility of the professional is to bring these qualities to the decision. The client of a divorce lawyer may be risk-averse or risk-preferring. He may have a great need for harmonious relationships or a preference for conflict. Or he may be concerned with the financial bottom line, that is, the most efficient and cost-conscious decisions, or he may be interested in trying to protect or further principles or rights. To the extent that the professional’s value preferences are different from the client’s, the client’s should prevail.

Lawyers it is often claimed, must engage in certain sorts of professional detachment if they are to perform their role well. So, for example, where the evidence against one’s client in a criminal defense case looks fairly convincing, many criminal lawyers talk about the importance of remaining somewhat aloof from the fact that here they are most probably helping, say, a murderer get off the hook. Such detachment is important, they say, since otherwise one might find it difficult to be an effective advocate for one’s client, and so one might undermine the legal rights of one’s clients to effective legal support and defense.

Your confidential information that you share with your Orem Utah divorce lawyer is safe. Your Orem Utah divorce lawyer will not share the information with anyone. The ABA’s Model Rules, like its earlier Model Code, prohibit lawyers from revealing confidential information except under highly limited circumstances. The Model Rules do not require disclosure of confidential information except where necessary to prevent fraud on a tribunal. Nor do the Rules even permit such disclosure to prevent noncriminal but life-threatening acts or to avert massive economic injuries.

When you hire an experienced Orem Utah divorce lawyer to represent you, you can rest assured that the lawyer will protect your interests in the court. The lawyer will not do anything that will adversely affect your case. Your interests are of paramount importance to your divorce lawyer. Your Orem Utah divorce lawyer is your best guide. Don’t get carried away by advertisements that offer cheap DIY divorces. All divorces are not the same. Each case is different. Seek the assistance of the exert – Hire an experienced Orem Utah divorce lawyer.

Orem Utah Divorce Attorney Free Consultation

When you need legal help with a divorce in Orem, Utah, please call Ascent Law LLC (801) 676-5506 for your Free Consultation. We can help you with divorce. Child Custody. Child Support. Adoptions. Step-Parent Adoptions. Alimony. Prenups. Postnups. Enforcements of Divorce Decrees.
Modifications of Divorce Decrees. And Much More. We can help you.