pay her legal fees ?

[FL_Needs_To_Change]

Originally Posted by dovan

Hi brick,

In our case the ex has to pay $20,000.00 in court costs plus 6& post judgement interest. The reason behind his decision was that she was unreasonable and that our case should have never gone to trial. She was offered a settlement in 2006 .......

The primary reason for award of costs was this, "She was offered a settlement in 2006".

When one party offers a settlement and it is a reasonable offer to settle and the other party simply chooses to take their chances in court, and if the judge’s order resembles or is better then the offer to settle, the court will order costs to the party taking it to court without first mediating the offer to settle.
As dovan stated, this should never have gone to trial. Instead the lawyer for the ex should have advise mediation on the offer to settle before seeking to go to trial.

[dovan]

The ex fired her lawyer when he mostly likely told her to settle and she went to trial in Superior court representing herself. She is a very difficult person so difficult that after we were awarded sole custody in June she continued on trying to change the order to suit herself. She would not return the child to us when she was suppose to, she started messing with the childs head even more by telling him that his lies got him taken away from her and that she cannot live without him. Needless to say the CAS in Nov stepped in and now we are back in court with CAS for emotional abuse. We still have custody of the child our role in this matter is that we cooperate with them in ensuring that the child attends supervised visitation with the ex twice a week for one hour each time. They are ordering that she has mental health assessment and counseling something that was also recommended by the Clinical investigator of the OCL but was never ordered in the final order in June. I guess the Judge felt there was not need to order that since she was not getting custody and hoped would stop the conflict between the parties but it did not. Three months later the child is still missing mom which is completely understandable but he understands why things are the way they are and he knows he does not want to go back to his mother's home the way it was before. He is much more calmer then ever before and he thought pattern as well. He continues to atttend counseling which we have provided for him since June 2007 when we realized that this was stressful on him as well and he needed someone to speak to that was not involved in the middle of everything.

[sufferer]

I am surpeised that you were awarded $20,000 in legal costs.I remember when my e x was nagging on every single thing . I made my lawyer very clear that I want sole custody at any cost, in worst scenario I will go to trial.Then she told me that even if we win the trial then too it will be damn costly for me because 6000 is the maximum costs I can be awarded by court.Rest everything will go from my pocket.

[dadtotheend]

I'm very sorry to read about the trouble Mom is creating for this child. Best of luck to you in normalizing things.

[dovan]

Sufferer, the offer to settle to the ex was made in 2006 before the involvement of the OCL (Office of the Children's Lawyer) so in looking at our bill the judge basically had her pay costs on everything after that report of the OCL was filed and a portion of the legal bill after the settlement offer in 2006, the OCL reported that we should have sole custody of the child and only specified visitation to her among other issues as well pretaining to the ex that were not in her favor

[sufferer]

Alright ,now I understand
Thankyou Dovan

[selfrep]

I have been involved now in litigation for over 4 years. The other side is well over $100k. We had a trial date and I could not settle. The lawyer representing the other side informed me that this was the largest bill he had ever given a client and was going to be sure that I saw every penny of it. When you are a self rep the way you are treated is entirely different. You just have to smile and say " Is that so, well good luck with that, I believe that should conclude our discussions for today." I had no alternative to hire a legal firm. I was told that my retainer would be $50k. Mind you this should pay for a 5 day trial. All situations are different but as the majority of people will say it is the lawyers that win in these cases. The longer you go through it the more de sensitized you become to the tactics and strategies of opposing council. This has been a career for me and one I am hoping to retire from. I have been told that our legal fees could reach as high as $350k between us. This is far in excess of our assets.