Choosing a family lawyer is one of the most important decisions to be made in the event of a breakdown in your relationship.

Making the wrong choice can make or break any desire you have for a low cost amicable process.

Whether it’s about property or parenting or both, you need to be sure that the family lawyer you choose will give you sensible accurate advice; after all, this is about you and your partner and most importantly your children, if you have them. Your lawyer has no personal interest whatsoever in the outcome and nor should they.

Choosing the wrong lawyer for your family law matter can cost you much more than just time and money.

The first interview with your lawyer can greatly assist you to discover some important things about them and if they are right for you.

Be aware that there are some lawyers practicing in the family law jurisdiction who do not necessarily have a full grasp of the very important principles underpinning the area in which they practice or they simply tend to ignore them and they do this at YOUR peril.

Get one of these family lawyers in your camp and very quickly you can travel with them down the rabbit hole of wasted time, money and emotional quicksand. Many of these lawyers can get you hooked up on little issues that have absolutely no bearing on the final outcome of the matter with which they are dealing or worse, they write vitriolic sour correspondence to another lawyer and are more than pleased to become your emotional mouthpiece.

An “I hate my partner and so should my lawyer” approach is not only inappropriate, but is costly and a total waste of time.

Remember this! You loved your partner once and you may even have had children together; children rely on you as a parent and significant person in their life to be sensible and reasonable for their sake. Children rely on you to be sensitive to their needs and to act accordingly.

Do you want to engage a lawyer to punish someone your children love and that you once loved, or may even still love? Then you need a large dose of reality and self-assessment. If your lawyer does not insist that you put your children’s needs first as an absolute priority or they seem content to simply be your emotional mouthpiece with a siege mentality then high chances are you have the WRONG family lawyer.

Don’t be afraid to interview your family lawyer in order to find one you are comfortable with and who has the qualities that are going to get you the best outcome for your family.

DO NOT choose a lawyer because someone has told you that they “crushed my partner like a bug” or they seem prepared to just do as you say against better advice. If this is the criteria upon which you seek to choose your family lawyer then by all means feel free but make sure you are prepared to write a blank cheque to hand over to them.

Why you would want to enflame an already emotional time in your life should be utterly perplexing to you at this point. You need to question your real motives. If you identify that it’s because you’re hurting and do not wish the relationship to end then stop, rest a while and change your tack. Remember this – the relationship is over if your partner says it is and you must accept that as a fact.

So take some time out to deal with that emotional letting go as a first step before you go to a family lawyer. You simply do not have any room for it in your emotional state and any family lawyer worth their salt will guide you to an appropriate counselling service as a very first step until you are ready to resolve your family law matters in a better frame of mind.

Every family law property pool has to have a budget and you and your partner need to be realistic about what the budget is. Often, things like chattels can seem to preoccupy some lawyers when there are “bigger fish to fry” and resolve. Before you know it your lawyer has charged you a large amount for back and forth correspondence over how much a ride on lawn mower is worth and who is going to get it. So be sensible about things! A good lawyer in the family law jurisdiction will not tell you what you want to hear but will take a pragmatic approach to issues as they arise and guide you sensibly and appropriately.

If during your first interview with your lawyer they tell you things that they think you want to hear and make promises about outcomes then you should view them with great caution before proceeding to retain them. If your lawyer is not realistic then you will follow down a path of unrealistic disaster.

Remember, seek out a lawyer who is pragmatic, approachable and sensible for the sake of your family, one who promotes and guides you to pursue an amicable compromise rather than one who can’t wait to take you down the rabbit hole with them.