The goal is to have five attorneys on your short list before you start interview for that special one to represent you.  You may have already gathered attorneys from Fathers’ groups and attorneys from others friends and family.  But what do you do if you still don’t have five?  In other tips I encouraged you to take a day off and watch your judges in action.  During that time you should have observed some attorneys working.  Much like trying to hire the right person, you are going to do some pre-observation preparation. For this tip, I want you to dress in a suit, bring a book and a notepad, and sit at the court house.  Your goal is to get the names of two to five good attorneys.

While you are doing your observations, you are going to be asking yourself:  Could I get along with this attorney?  Does this attorney communicate effectively with his client?  Does this attorney appear to handle cases similar to mine?  Do I like the demeanor and attitudes of this attorney?  Would I be willing to listen to this attorney?

Spend the first hour in the court room hallway, second and third hours in the actual court room, and finally an hour by the attorney/client conference meeting area.
1)      Start in the morning with the hallway outside the court room.  You will witness clients and attorneys looking for each other.    Watch carefully the interactions attorneys have with their clients, other attorneys and maybe even judges.  Do they seem cordial to their clients?  Are they talking and meeting with other attorneys?  Do they seem well known and comfortable in this courthouse?  Are they discussing and directing clients and witnesses?  Do other people seem to know the attorney?

2)      In the court room, you are watching potential attorneys conducting their case.  Do they seem to know what they are doing? Are they respectful to the judge and other attorneys? Are most of their objections “sustained” (ruled in their favor) or “overruled” (not ruled in their favor).  Are they organized?  Do they have several clients or just one?  Do they work alone or do they have an assistant?

3)      Somewhere in the building, attorneys meet with their clients to discuss settlement offerings, debriefing on rulings, and general somewhat private conversation.  Find this meeting place and sit and observe.  How well does the attorney appear to be communicating information to their clients?  Does council appear to be taking appropriate time to have client meetings?  Is the attorney explaining things clearly?  Does the lawyer appear to be listening as well?  Does the attorney offer several options to the client?  Is the representative making recommendations on what to do next?

During this process you are going to find lawyers you like and those you do not.  Once you have found a potential candidate, go introduce yourself and ask for a business card.  Most attorneys will be very flattered that you have taken the time to seek representation this way.  Keep in mind you may be interrupting them while they attend to another client, so tell them you will call to setup a follow-up appointment.

Overall this may seem like a lot of unnecessary work.  Nevertheless you will probably spend a great deal of time and money with this person.  Ultimately, you are looking for an attorney that is local, well known in your court, and can do the work you desire.  In future tips, we’ll talk about the specific questions you need to ask before hiring, but today you’re just adding to your list of potentials.

What are other suggestions for finding good attorneys? What would you add?

Copyright 2012. This is an excerpt from “Daddy Got Custody” by Fred Campos due out this summer. Make sure you subscribe to this blog.

For court appointments of any kind, drive your oldest most conservative car.  Upon exiting the vehicle you show your confidence with a smile. You don’t know who you will pass on your way into the building. You could be passing attorneys, jury members and judges. In my case, it was a jury trial that lasted three days. So there were jury members I was not allowed to talk to but whom I nevertheless saw in the restroom and shared elevators with.

Judges, opposing counsels, witnesses, are parking cars next to yours, walking in behind you and either getting the doors held for them by you—or else closed in their faces.  During my trial, I saw dads and other people going to court who were losing their cool in the parking garage—cussing, cutting up, saying negative things about their spouses—while judges and jury members were still watching them. Folks, your trial is not going on inside a vacuum. It is therefore up to you to keep your act clean both in and out of the courtroom.

Later in other tips, I’ll tell you about getting to do a post-trial interview with a jury member, and how close I came to not getting custody despite all my preparations and hard work. It comes down to little things like whether you were polite, whether you held doors open, how you spoke, if you made good eye contact. It is imperative to your success that you maintain your composure until the moment you leave and drive calmly away in your car.

This is an excerpt from “Daddy Got Custody” by Fred Campos due out soon. Copyright 2011.

What tips have you learned from court?

“I DON’T JUST WRITE THE BLOG, I’M ALSO A CLIENT” – Fred

One of life’s great truths can be found hidden away in Steve Martin’s comedy LA Story. “Why is it that we don’t always recognize the moment when love begins but we always know when it ends?”

The truth of that statement hit me head on back in 1998. I was on top of the world. I was a software engineer, I’d created a product called Remit Plus, I owned my own company. At 29, I was making 6 figures, driving a sports car, and I’d just bought a four-bedroom house. The roommates and I turned it into Animal House. Between the partying and the shallow relationships, I was losing focus and letting money get the better of me.

One month after a one-night stand with a gal named Cindy, everything came crashing down with those two words a party animal dreads most: “I’m pregnant.” I’d had a pretty decent upbringing, so I slammed on the brakes: cleaned up the house, got rid of the beer, decided I’d better grow up, do the right thing. I was going to get married.

But being a stand-up guy and doing the right thing isn’t the same as being a fool. This marriage wasn’t based on a long term and loving relationship. So it had better be based on a prenuptial agreement.

Thing was, Cindy wouldn’t sign it. Her parents told her not too. And everything went even further south from there. I was in the title role of a paternity suit and I was expected to become the meal ticket. My whole life was crashing down and my business and finances were about to be affected in a pretty serious way.

I joined Fathers’ Equal Rights; I read some books. I found nothing that would help me with the day-to-day details on what I needed to do. I flailed around through a couple months, got an attorney, and began to truly realize that this situation was entirely about the money.

Meanwhile, the greatest thing that ever happened to me was coming at the worst and lowest period in my life. My daughter Caitlyn was born on March 31. So why wasn’t this about her?

At this point, I decided I needed to file and be the custodial parent. I told this to my attorney, who said, “You know, Fred, men don’t gain custody.” Not unless you can prove over and over that mom is unfit, on drugs, criminally insane, tortures puppies, still likes Gallagher: that there’s something Beyond Wrong with her. He told me I wouldn’t have a chance. And I was thinking, “Here it is, the end of the 21st Century, we live in the greatest democracy in the world. This cannot be true.”

Now I had a quest, a real focus. My main reason for doing so was that I had determined that I would probably be the better parent. Looking back on the ten-year history today, I obviously am the better parent. And that is the premise of this blog: that you become, and that you ARE the better parent. There are no tips in this blog that will give you a sleight of hand trick. I believe that the primary custodian should be the better parent, and I believe that there is no predetermined law that that must be the mother.

I want to let you know that I have been in your shoes. I was a single male, involved in a paternity suit over my daughter who at the time was less than one year old. And I got custody. It’s not impossible. Don’t give up hope, but it is going to take some serious work!  Kids need good parents.  Courts need the BEST parent to be the primary custodian. 

This is an excerpt from “Daddy Got Custody” by Fred Campos due out Summer of 2010. Copyright 2010.

Are you that parent?  Could you be? Does the evidence of your life say you are the better parent?  What do the neighbors, the mailman, the kids’ principal, your kids’ dentist, the school nurse say?  Would they say “You are the better parent?”

Social studies case workers will evaluate your location. Your kids need to have their own room, bed, toothbrush, clothes. If the status quo is you vegetating in front of the TV with your hand down your pants while your kids play with your gun collection, you’re not going to display this attitude to case workers. They know this, and they’re on the lookout for dads putting on a game face for company.

The kids’ stuff shouldn’t be able to fit easily into a backpack, or even into a nice set of luggage. Their room needs to be decorated, pictures on the wall, games and books, stuff to do; it needs to look like a room your kids live in permanently, not just a place they kill some time before returning to their real home, not just four walls with a bed in it.

My daughter Caitlyn's Room

This is next to impossible to do if you only have a one-bedroom and you or the kids are sleeping on the couch. Not favorable to a one bedroom where the kids or you are sleeping on the couch.

The room as well as the house/apartment need to look like you are the custodial parent and you could function without help from the other side. Make it look like maybe the child is packing up their own stuff when they go visit mom.

So often during temporary orders, mom is packing everything from the clothes to the toothbrush. Expecting the court to grant dad custody under these circumstances is like expecting the inheritance to go to the prodigal son; yes, everyone’s happy and maybe a little surprised the prodigal son made good, but he gets a pat on the back and fatted calf, not the family farm.

This is an excerpt from “Daddy Got Custody” by Fred Campos due out soon. Copyright 2011.

What room decorating tips do you have? What else is a must have for your blended family home?

People will judge you based on your appearance. The only person you will ever meet who might not is your mom. Or at least she’ll love you anyway. Probably. The legal system is a very, very judgmental system. Hence why one of the key players in this drama is called a “Judge.”

Every time you walk into court, whether you’re coming in to drop off a piece of paper, make a child support payment, or even if it was just the closest bathroom on your way to somewhere else, you need to be dressed to the hilt.

Now I know you’re guys reading this, so a lot of this probably doesn’t come naturally to you. I personally don’t believe that just because you don’t know enough not to wear a brown belt with black shoes or to leave the bottom button of your suitcoat open, you should have Sally taken away from you. Stated like that, it sounds silly, and you’re going to want to discount this advice. But many of the judgments made against you aren’t even formulated into words in the minds of the people who have your future in their hands. Vague thoughts for or against you could make all the difference.

John Mahlo’s Dress for Success can help the fashion-hopeless with details like shoes and socks or making the knot in your tie. Which brings me to my next important point: the Tie.

Buy yourself a very nice, very conservative tie. Don’t make any political statements, don’t be funny, don’t express your love of fishing or duck hunting. A dressy, unexpressive, conservative tie, to go with your well-fitting suit. Nothing baggy or awkward, not the kind of suit a guy might borrow from his court-appointed lawyer to use for one hour before giving it back. We’re talking a suit that fits you and really looks like it’s yours.

One of the weird things you might notice about dressing well in court is that people often mistake you for an attorney. So you’ll be respected; people will be polite.

To keep these positive feelings, you need to make yourself memorable. The easiest way to do this is by wearing the same conservative tie every time you go to court. If you’re doing well, you’re polite, you’re passing through the metal detectors and sharing elevators with people, they need to have something about you pegged with this good experience.

That said, heaven forbid you have a bad day in court—badmouth someone, don’t get along with your attorney, jump on the table and scream swearwords at a random woman who looks kind of like your Ex. Now you need to change the color of your tie and show up in something different.

In my 13 years of experience, I can’t tell you how many guys go into court looking like they just fell off a truck and they want the judge or jury to see through all the crap on the outside and realize something that, at this point, is only apparent to long-term friends who’ve seen them in better times.

This is an excerpt from “Daddy Got Custody” by Fred Campos due out soon. Copyright 2011.

What dressing tips would you add? What edict have you seen in court?

One of my fellow bloggers who I greatly love, is another father Fred out of Houston named Mocha Dad.  This month he has asked me along with six other great fathers to be interviewed regarding great topics in a roundtable discussion on his website.  Below is the FOURTH of four interview sessions.   If you missed the first, <click here>, the second, <click here> or the third, <click here>. However, after reading my responses I would prefer you go to his site (see link below) and read the other six panelist and comment or discuss on his blog.  Thanks – Fred

Mocha Dad’s Fatherhood Roundtable Session IV Link

Mocha Dad: How do you handle household chores in your home? What is the division of labor?

Fred: Unless you have four legs, you must do chores in order to live in our house. It is all part of being a growing functional family. The chores increase with age and are addressed as primary and secondary functions:

• Karen: Primary – Shopper, all things school related, homework helper, decorator of all things outside, keeper of the dog, master family schedule keeper. Secondary – Fred’s backup, vacuuming, a rare occasional shower cleaner.
• Fred: Primary – Bread winner, bill payer, and budget producer, family laundry washer & folder, in charge of washing dishes and placing in the dish washer, all things electronic & computer related. Secondary – Karen’s backup, hard homework and major kid’s projects.
• Caitlyn: Primary – Reading and attending school, keeping room clean, dish washer emptier, must put away all her folded clothes, collecting dirty clothes, vacuuming. Secondary – Feeding the dog, cooking one night a week.
• Zachary: Primary – Reading and attending school, keeping room clean, table setter, mopper of kitchen and tiled floors. Secondary – All things electronic & computer related.

Mocha Dad: What do you teach your children about money?

Fred: Money is to be earned by trading time for money. To become wealthy you must learn to residual or duplicate your time to increase your money. You must save 10% and give away 10% and learn to live on 80% until you become rich then those first two numbers must go up.

Mocha Dad: What type spiritual or religious teachings do you share with your children?

Fred: Basic Christianity. When they get a little older, we will impart into them “Red Letter Christianity.” The reality is that God is real in our lives and we cannot separate it out in everything we do. Thus their Christianity is inevitable by modeled association.

Mocha Dad: What advice would you give to new fathers?

Fred: Now is the time to be the very best person you can be. As a dad, your influence on your kids will be far greater than your wife’s. Your child’s success, promiscuity, drug problem, integrity, and grades will be in direct proportion to your active involvement in their lives. The next 25 years will go by faster than any other year of your life—take some time and be present in your kids’ lives. Hug, be real, and say I love you—all the time!

Mocha Dad: Please share a humorous fatherhood experience.

Fred: Before I took daily ADD medicine, I had sleep apnea and would fall asleep reading to my kids. One day my kids were playing house where the parents were the kids and the kids were the adults. My son goes, “Ok, I’ll be the dad, he grabbed a book and proceeded to pretend to fall asleep on the couch and snore loudly. We all busted out laughing! Remember more is caught than taught. Now go have some fun with those kiddos!

This concludes the round table interview.  Again to read the other fathers and the MAJOR discussion that went on about these topic, please click the link atop for Mocha Dad’s blog.  Special thanks to Fred (aka Mocha Dad) for selecting me to participate in this discussion!