Need help...

[bribri1]

Ok, last year my husband and i started having problems... mostly due to verbal abuse, him drinking, threatening to leave all the time. I told him i wanted a divorce, but continued to stay in our apartment, i slept in the 2nd bedroom with our daughter. While staying at the apartment, i started seeing someone else... I eventually moved back in with my parents and am continuing to see this other man. So has anyone had experience with Judge Bell, and what are my chances of getting full custody of our daughter? And how long does it normally take for a divorce to finalize in alabama? The only thing we have to fight over is custody of our daughter.

[CollegeDad]

Okay bri, 

I can tell you about Judge Bell.  He does give fathers a fair chance at custody of the children. 

First of all, there are a couple of pathes that divorce may go down and they are either "contested' or 'uncontested".  If you feel that your husband will contest the divorce because of custody of the daughter, then you need to plan on presenting your case before a judge and having the judge decide who gets custody of the daughter. 

If your judge is judge Bell then he is going to be fair in weighing who should ultimately have custody of the daughter.  He will look at a lot of factors to decide who is the best parent to have full custody.  You will need to start pulling together every fact that convinces him that you should have full custody and every fact that you can that will convince him that your husband shouldn't. 

Right now, you need to be doing everything that you can to show everyone that knows you and eventually judge Bell that you put your daughter's wellfare above everything else.  Do not take marital money out of joint bank accounts.  Do not run up joint credit card accounts.  Doing so shows that you are putting money and things ahead of your daughter.  Do not destroy anything out of anger.  You are again showing that you are putting revenge above your daughter's needs. 

Do not move out of the home that your daughter lives in most of the time.  I know you said that you had moved away from your ex-husband.  I hope that you took your daughter with you.  If not, then you need to go back and start spending as much time with your daughter as possible.  If not, then he can say that you have abandoned her. 

I would recommend that you put your relationship with your new boy friend on hold if you are serious about having custody of your daughter.  Your ex-husband can already require him to testify under oath as to whether you have comitted adultery.  If your boy friend is asked this question before Judge Bell I would advise him to tell the truth.  More than anything in the world, Judge Bell hates a liar.  Its better to admit adultery in Judge Bell's court than to get caught lying.  Don't dare try it.  If you do have to admit to adultery, it is really of no consequence on the whole custody issue anyway.  Adultery is a weak argument against your character as long as your boy friend is not a bad apple.  Just the fact that you have a boy friend before settling this custody issue over your daughter will be  a strike against you though.  It'll just put into question where your priorities lie.  And you want them to know that your daughter is your top priority. 

While you are putting together all the reasons you should have custody you also have to put together all the reasons your husband shouldn't.  If he drinks then you need to find people that will testify for you to that fact.  If he buys alcohol bring the receipts in.  If he is an alcoholic then bring professionals in that know this or acquire evaluations.  If he has DUI's bring those forward. 

It can take as much as 2 years for a custody case to come to court but most likely it will be about a year.  You need to find a really good family law attorney to represent you if you really want custody of your daughter.  Here is my top 3 list. 

Dinah Rhodes
Susan Conlon
Bill Burgess

Its kind of dirty play to block your husband from seeing any of the best attorneys but most attorneys will not see your ex or represent him if you call them first and set up a consultation. 

Get ready to spend some money.  Retainers run from 3,000 to 5,000 dollars up front for contested divorces.  That is why it is important to see how serious your husband is in fighting this.  You can do an uncontested divorce for half that price. 

One more thing to know, most people don't realize that custody doesn't ever have to be settled if both you and your husband agree to spend equal time with your daughter.  In that case, neither one of you will ever be primary custodian.  More and more couples these days are chosing this option rather than to go to the trouble and expense of a huge court case to convince a judge to give them custody of their children.  You can both agree to have your daughter one week alternating and your husband will not be required to pay you any child support unless both of your incomes are more than say 30% different.  Even if they are different you can both agree on a fair amount that one will pay the other but it does not have to follow the Alabama Uniform Child Support Form.  This is a way to avoid the stress of court especially if you start to think that your case is a little weak.  Also, if you both agree that you can do this, then you can avoid waiting to go to court and treat this as an uncontested divorce that does not require a specific court date.  In other words you can get this over with a lot faster and get on with your life hopefully. 

Either way you go, get a good attorney. 

Hope this helps and good luck. 

[livealittle]

everything CD said plus

you should also do a lot of research on Judge Billy Bell and understand his stated views on marriage and divorce.

A simple google search nets you this result in the first few selections.

http://www.mcchm.org/index.html

Check out the members list. He also wrote a letter to the Governor regarding marriage and encourages marriage counseling for couples before they go through with the divorce.

I also recommend Christina Dixon. She is my attorney and I've been very pleased with her.

[bribri1]

Can anyone tell me anything about Sara Doty?

[CollegeDad]

Thanks LIV, I was trying to remember Christina but wasn't sure on the name. 

I tell you what bri, you can go up to the 8th floor in the court house and ask for a copy of Judge Bell's case docket.  He usually has about 20 or 30 cases on his docket in a weeks time.  Just look at the attorneys that are coming before him in divorce cases.  You will see Burgess, Conlon, and Rhodes and a few others repeated over and over.  That will show you who are the biggest names in family law in this county.  I don't know anything at all about Sarah Doty, but if you don't use someone that does a lot of family law cases, you may regret it down the road.  Most of these attorneys will not represent you after another attorney has botched up your divorce.  So, if you are thinking you can get by with someone less expensive now and get a high priced attorney to fix things down the road.  Think again. 

You don't want some attorney writing clauses in your decree that you can't enforce if your husband doesn't comply with them or worse completely leaving important clauses out giving you nothing to enforce when you have a problem come up.  If you have to carry your husband back to court for not following the decree you want it to be very clear and complete so there is no question who is in the wrong.  You also want someone to include all the clauses that are important to your case the first time that you go through this process.  You don't want to have to go back and try to fix it because your attorney didn't think of everything after its been signed by the judge.  That gets very costly and attorneys rarely ever fix mistakes out of their pocket.

I will give you a couple of other names that I would trust to handle a divorce for me that aren't going to charge as much as the big names. 

Tina McDonald
Keith Cornett

These attorneys don't specialize in family law but they can handle your case very competently for a little less cost than the big names. 

What really saves money when you have an attorney is if you go out and do all of the leg work for your case and pull together every scrap of evidence they need to properly represent you.  If you just hire an attorney and sit back and expect them to pull everything together for your case then you are going to be sadly disappointed with the result.  The attorney should tell you what they need and then you should try to go get it and bring it to them.  Have every witness that may testify for you submit signed statements of what they will say for you on your behalf.  You can type these statements up and then just have them sign them.  Go get all the financial records and bring those in.  Everything that you can do saves time and money with your attorney. 

[bribri1]

Well, on the custody issues, he wants our daughter every monday, wednesday and friday from 8 to 5. He doesnt want to keep her overnight, and because of that, would i considered the full time parent? Also, he receives a disability check every month, and a portion of that is supposed to go into a bank account for our daughter, because she is a beneficiary on his disability i guess you would say. That portion is not going to our daughter, he uses it for himself. So does anyone know how child support would work since he's on disability? He also works a part time job, not making much.

[CollegeDad]

Without knowing all of the details of your case, yes you would be considered the primary custodian of your daughter if he only plans to have the daughter during the daytime three days a week.  I am assuming a lot.  I am assuming that you have your daughter the rest of the time. 

Remember, if you spend equal amounts of time with your daughter, then no primary custodian is designated. This is called sharing physical custody. 

I am assuming that you are not intending on sharing physical custody of your daughter.  If you are not, then one of you would have physical custody of your daughter most of the time.  If that is the case and it is you then you would be the primary custodian. 

I do not understand what you mean about your daughter being the beneficiary of your ex-husbands disability check.  If you ex-husband receives a disabiliity check then that would be considered along with whatever he makes working part time as money available for paying his part of the support for your daughter.  I don't know if there are any rules that prohibit disability from being used for child support.  If there are not any such rules then I would think his part of child support would be calculated via standard child support form in your case with you being the primary custodian.

I would recommend that you have the child support withheld from his disability pay and deposited directly into your bank account if possible. 

[bribri1]

i have my daughter full time now. he rarely sees her, i tell him he can pick her up on such day, he tells me hes busy working "2 jobs", and cant pick her up. then he blames me and says i keep her from him, and that its my fault that he doesnt get to see her. so im sure thats going to turn into a pattern, and i probably wont be able to depend on him having her even on the days he wants her.

[belle]

Wait......he's working 2 jobs but gets a disability check.  WTF is up with that?

[Aim]

Wait......he's working 2 jobs but gets a disability check.  WTF is up with that?

Folks receiving disability (SSDI) can work as long as their gross income is less than $1000 a month.

[belle]

Seriously?  How much do disability checks run a month?

[livealittle]

i have my daughter full time now. he rarely sees her, i tell him he can pick her up on such day, he tells me hes busy working "2 jobs", and cant pick her up. then he blames me and says i keep her from him, and that its my fault that he doesnt get to see her. so im sure thats going to turn into a pattern, and i probably wont be able to depend on him having her even on the days he wants her.

be sure you document all of this. Writing it down on a calendar will suffice. I was advised of this when I first started my divorce process in 2004 and I did it. It was golden when it came down to it.