A client success story

How we helped Lydia

Lydia (name changed) needed to get her separated husband to pay child support for their two young children and deal with the house. She had tried to get a settlement agreement, but he felt that because he was spending an equal amount of time parenting their two children, he did not need to pay. He earned twice as much as she did. She had moved out of the house and he was not interested in paying her for her share of it.

She was becoming more and more frustrated with him. She had tried talking to him but he just would not take it seriously.

Lydia knew she needed to take him to court to get the child support going and to deal with the house. Her challenge was that court was overwhelming to her. She lived in a county in Ontario that had two levels of court, Ontario and Superior Court of Ontario. She did not know even what court to pick, let alone to know what the court forms were.

Lydia has a university degree and can read and manage forms. She was a teacher and was used to speaking in front of a group. She felt she could tell her story to a judge and did not need a lawyer, nor could she afford a lawyer to do a typical lawyer representation. She called us for help. We walked her through what forms to use and told her to take time to fill them out as best she could.

She did. She sent them back to us, asked us to re-word it for the best way to put her case content out to the court. She saw how helpful that was and went ahead and took the steps we told her to get her documents done.

Her first step was to go to the Court for a case conference. In front of the judge and her husband. It was scary and even though she was used to speaking in front of a group, this was still daunting. She knew she needed some coaching. She went to the first case conference, in court, on her own, but had prepared for it. She had called us for a half hour of coaching on what to say and how to say it. Speaking in court is not like a classroom and not like any other place. It has it’s own special process of who speaks when and how they speak. She was a quick learner, asked lots of questions and took notes. She told us she did well at the conference but her husband was not listening to what their judge was recommending.

Her case went on, as her husband had no lawyer and was a bit argumentative.

She had to schedule a Motion on the child support issue. She again called us to get her paperwork done. We helped her do the Affidavit and the Notice of Motion and the other supporting forms. All the time we were in the background. She did all the direct negotiations with her husband which saved her thousands in legal dollars. Before the motion was heard however, her husband agreed to settle. We then helped her put the paperwork together to get the court order done.

She was very pleased with the outcome and spent a fraction on legal fees as she would have if she had full legal representation. Let us know if you need help too.