Answer:

Oftentimes, we receive telephone calls from potential clients who really aren’t sure whether they need an attorney in their circumstance. It’s an important question because an attorney can cost a lot of money. An attorney is going to find out intimate details about your life. They’re going to get to know your children and your relationship with your children. Oftentimes, that attorney is going to be one of the most important people in your life while you’re going through this emotional turmoil of a custody case.

In choosing an attorney, it’s very important that you get to know them. You decide whether you trust them or not to really guide you through the process. I would always recommend that you get an attorney in this process because, in Georgia, a custody case can be very complicated. Oftentimes, the other side will have an attorney. The judge is going to hear from that attorney in a way that you may not be able to defend yourself to them the way that you could if you had an attorney on your side.

Oftentimes, people are very concerned about the cost of having an attorney. What we find is it’s more costly to go to court without an attorney the first time having to hire an attorney to then go back and either fix something that may have gone wrong during that hearing or maybe the judge didn’t even hear from you because you weren’t represented. It takes us more time and more resources to undo what may have been done in the first court date when you weren’t represented.

That’s why I would always say you should meet with an attorney. Based on when you meet with the attorney, if you trust them, you should always have an attorney with you, especially when there’s going to be a court date and a judge is going to see you in the courtroom. You want to make sure that somebody that you trust and someone who’s on your side is going to present your evidence, your testimony, and your side of the story in a way that the judge can understand and really comprehend so that the best outcome is had in any custody case.