HOW MUCH DOES THIS COST AND WHO PAYS?

Let me tell you about my experience here, and let's approach the question from two directions

• Child support collection
  

  What I most often find in parents that have been deprived of their court ordered child support is that if they are struggling to raise children with poor assistance then they cannot pay lawyers $200 per hour to help. In a support collection, if I agree to accept the case, clients have an option of paying as we go or having me do the work on what is known as a contingent fee. Under a contingent fe contract, my office will do all the work and we divide the collections evenly with the client. We always calculate and pursue interest which adds significantly to the amounts we collect so often the client does much better with such an arrangement than if they were paying a smaller percentage and did not receive aggressive representation. For that fee, we also spend a good bit of money sometimes to try to keep up with debtors who job hop or throw up aggressive resistance. We do it all.
  
  

• Modification of child support

  A simple agreement modification of support may be accomplished for a few hundred dollars most of the time. We may or may not speak with all parties, but we fashion an instrument upon which they can agree and then obtain a court order. At the risk of over simplification, that is the easy way to accomplish a valuable objective.

The other way is the hard way (often coming about because someone is hard headed). This translates into the expensive way.We prepare and file a complaint along with preliminary interrogatories, requests for production of documents and other devices designed to get financial information from the adverse party. We discover their banking relationships-statements and cancelled checks, their credit relationships and statements made to induce people to lend them money. We may get property appraisals and will likely get employment compensation records directly from their employer. We might get a deposition from them or others to get sworn statements into the record and we will certainly put them in front of a judge to get a decision they want to spend a lot of money to get someone else to make for them. The more they fight, the more we have to do to deal with it. Expect to pay a minimum retainer, up front, of $2,500...more if we are defending a contested modification action rather than starting one (because now we have to react to a course that is already set as we work to establish your position).

Who pays for this? That's easy. you do. These are not contingent fee cases for any attorney in Georgia, and they require a great deal of time. Time is the only thing a lawyer has to sell. The law addresses the subject of having your fees paid by the other side:

O.C.G.A. 19-6-19
(d) In proceedings for the modification of alimony for the support of a spouse or child pursuant to the provisions of this Code section, the court may award attorneys' fees, costs, and expenses of litigation to the prevailing party as the interests of justice may require.

So, whether you'll get any help for a successful action is a matter within the sound discretion of the court. Your attorney wants to help you and the children, but he is not a riverboat gambler and has quite a few people depending on him for current financial contribution, too. The fees are a factor, and can be a major factor, in any modification case. I cannot stress in stronger terms the wisdom of negotiating the matter to a successful conclusion either through the other party, or their lawyer if they have one. Call our office for a courteous and confidential interview to asses your situation.

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