Both family law and probate law have one important quality in common – and it’s at the heart of why our team of lawyers at the Law Office of Lisa A. Vance have chosen those areas of law. They both help people through life’s challenges: Specifically, the emotional periods of people’s lives where they experience great uncertainty and transformation.
Family law, obviously, deals primarily with divorce, which is an incredibly emotional time for anyone going throughout. Even couples who are civil with one another, and largely in agreement with each other on dividing assets and determining parenting time, experience grief and loss and worry about the future. For couples who don’t get along, anger can create additional challenges in getting to a settlement that serves everyone best – most importantly the children who are caught in the middle.
When people think of probate law, they often think of wills – but it’s so much more than that. The most important work that probate lawyers do, as we see it, is to help clients prepare the documents that will help them when they’re alive but not necessarily able to communicate their wishes. This can be especially true for people who unexpectedly go to the hospital and whose lives hang in the balance.
It’s important, in helping our clients to get through the challenges that life might send their way, is to first understand what they’re going through. The “compassionate” part of our reputation as “fierce, compassionate lawyers” is all about understanding emotions, getting to know our clients, and learning what our clients truly want as they seek to settle their divorces, modify their divorce decrees to reflect new post-divorce realities, or prepare the documents that will help them and their families negotiate an unexpected illness or death.
But, of course, it’s more than just being able to meet our clients on an emotional level. Our expertise in family and probate law means that we can handle a broad array of situations. If a divorce requires litigation due to its contentiousness or the existence of abuse or neglect, we are willing and able to fight for our clients and protect them. But if litigation would do more harm than good to the future co-parenting relationship, we are equipped to handle alternative dispute resolutions.
We also provide a setting that feels more like a home than an office, which for many of our clients, makes them feel more at ease and more able to deal with the stress involved with litigation. Many of the people who seek family and probate law services rarely, if ever, seek legal help, and we make it a point to help people be more comfortable in what can be inherently stressful.
Challenges can be hard, but they don’t have to be insurmountable or overly taxing. We’ve helped many clients in challenges that felt difficult or overwhelming to them, before we were able to step in and work with them.
If you’re facing challenges or anticipating future challenges requiring a family or probate lawyer, we’d love for you to consider an appointment with us to talk about what you need. We can come up with a plan, after hearing you and determining what’s important to you in a potential resolution, to help you meet whatever challenges you might face.