The hardest legal choices usually involve the ones you love
Ok, here’s the situation. You are in a car accident and the person at fault is a good friend or a family member. Do you call the police? Do you notify your car insurance?
What about a Will that leaves something to you that you know another family member. Do you give it to the family member?? What if the item is something you always wanted but your family member has always said they wanted it? If they fight it in court, are you going to fight it in court??
What about a family member that gets arrested and wants to use you as an alibi? Do you cover for them if the alibi is not true??
I wish I could give you the ‘CLEAN LEGAL’ answer for all of the scenarios but unfortunately, I can’t. I can tell you that you may need to investigate the damages for your car and speak to a Personal Injury Attorney. I can tell you that you may need to speak to an Estate Attorney regarding challenges to wills. I can tell you that you need to speak to a Criminal Defense attorney so you can appreciate the ramifications of your actions for covering (i.e. lying for a family).
Those responses are the “Legal” responses. Unfortunately, they are not necessarily the CLEAN responses. The reason I say they are not the CLEAN responses is because any time you are dealing with family members or loved ones and THE LAW, things are never as clean as we would like them to be.
It’s easy to deal with someone who is not a relative or a friend. However, when you find yourself in a situation where you are trying to separate your personal emotions and feelings about a legal situation, it can be come increasingly difficult based on the person you’re dealing.
Unfortunately, there is no easy answer. The phrase “The LAW is Blind” is also applicable to family members and friends. When you find yourself in a situation where you are forced to avail yourself of the legal system, you have to keep in mind that your relationship with that person will be affected by the legal process. The impact of that affection depends on you and your loved one.
Anthony Reeves
www.reevesfirm.com
Dedicated to Representing the Disabled and Discriminated
Be careful when YOU are NOT the client
I know it’s your loved one. They look up to you. They trust you. They rely on you. SO when the time comes to seek legal counsel, they turn to you to recommend someone. They turn to you to be there with them when they go through the legal process. Unfortunately, some people (let’s call them 3d parties) don’t really appreciate the fact that they are NOT the client.
When you find yourself in the position of being a 3d party, you gotta keep in mind that you don’t have the same priviledges, rights, and expectations as a client. You aren’t going to get the same level of deference. So before you decide to swell up and call the attorney’s office going OFF, here’s a few things you need to think about if you’re a 3d party:
1) The CLIENT must give you access. Contrary to popular belief, just because you came with the client to an appointment does NOT guarantee automatic access to information. It is important to understand that the client has to give you permission.
2) A 3d party may break privilege. The power behind attorney / client privilege is based on the ability for the client and attorney to confer WITHOUT worrying about that information being obtained by outside sources. However, if you as a 3d party, are there, you risk the possibility of that communication not being privileged because of another person being there.
3) The CLIENT is the final decision maker. I know you believe that you know what’s best for your friend but in the end, the client is the person who must make the decision regarding their case.
I know you love your friends or your family. However, when they go to hire an attorney, this decision may have a significant outcome on their life. It is important that as a 3d party, you can help your loved one most by being there for them and on not trying to impede the process.
Don’t KILL your case!
The legal process is a frustrating beast and let me be the first to tell you, the BEAST always wins! Now, I am not saying that the BEAST will beat you but what I am saying is that most people get so upset with the waiting, the red tape, and all of the little steps you have to take in order to get from point A to Point B that they sometimes do things in order to fight the BEAST.
If you’ve hired an attorney, your attorney is trained to fight for you as well as deal with this BEAST that is known as the LEGAL process. Unfortunately, too many times, people will do things that may potentially HURT (or even KILL) their case:
1) Talking to witnesses on your own. Depending on the situation, you really should let your attorneys talk to potential witnesses. Why? One, attorneys tend to fully document the context of the conversation. Two, attorneys tend to have specific, well crafted questions that they ask which will give them an idea of whether the witness’s information is helpful or harmful. Three, what you tell your witnesses may eventually come back to bite you in court. You don’t know how someone will convey what you said to them.
2) Sending in your own evidence. So you found something that you think is useful, that’s great. Make sure you let your attorney see it first. Most attorneys are aware of discovery requirements but if you decide to give the other side some information that you didn’t necessarily have to give and it’s damming to you……….do I need to go further??
3) Taking steps without consulting your attorney. If you are going to do what you want to do, then you probably don’t need an attorney. Most attorneys work to carefully lay out a plan of attack to deal with any issues or problems that may arise and if you decide that you are going to do things that undermine that, the attorney can’t help you.
4) Responding to the court or the other side on your own. If you get documents from the court or the other side, unless you don’t have an attorney, please be careful not to respond. So much time, we think that if respond to someone right away, it will help our case.
5) following the advice of someone who is NOT your attorney. I had a friend of mine who is an attorney tell me that she has to tell her client’s all the time “I didn’t know they gave out law degrees at the gas station?”. The reason she says this is because so many times, her clients will come to her FIRED up because someone who is NOT an attorney will tell her client something and then come to her HOT! Becareful about following the road of some person who THINKS they know what’s going on when in reality, they don’t.
Like I said, the legal process is a BEAST but don’t add to the problem by giving the BEAST food to eat. The process is tough but it can be tougher if you do things to make it worse.
Understanding your role in the legal process
My heart goes out to NFL Player Ryan Moates and his family because of this powerfully unfortunate situate he recently went through. If you are not familiar with the siuation (and it’s very sad), check it out here: http://sports.espn.go.com/nfl/news/story?id=4017382. Just to give a few brief background facts, Ryan was driving an SUV and ran a red light while en route to the hospital to take his wife to visit her mother (his mother in law) who was dying of breast cancer and only had a short period of time to live. Unfortunately, a police pulled them over in the parking lot. Despite several statements by Ryan, his wife, family members, another police, and a couple of medical personnel that the mother in law was indeed “on her death bed” and only had short time to live, the police still detained Ryan and his wife for 13 minutes so he could write them a ticket and lecture him about his attitude.
Despite being in what I would clearly call an EMOTIONALLY charged situation, Ryan kept his cool. Of course, we can talk about the significance of the event and how everything was handled by the police but this post is really more about RYAN! He handled himself EXCEPTIONALLY well. Towards the end of the lecture with the police, he was telling the officer ‘yes sir’ and ‘no sir’. How many of YOU could be that cool if your mother was upstairs dying?? (For the record, she had just died by the time the police let them go upstairs).
The point I want to illustrate with Ryan Moates behavior was that Ryan demonstrated his understanding of his role in the legal process. Had Ryan started cussing, getting belligerent or even walked away, his legal situation could have gotten infinitely WORSE!! So many times when we get fired up or emotionally charged about our legal situation, we don’t look at it from the big picture. Bear in mind, your role in the legal process is extremely crucial:
1) Contrary to popular situation, you can make your situation worse! Go ahead and get stank and tell everyone how you’re going to sue your employer and get all this paper. And you know what? Don’t get salty when those SAME people appear on the witness stand to testify how you were telling everyone that you were going to sue your employer and get this paper! What would YOU do if you hear this?? Also, in most situations, you have a duty to ‘mitigate’ your situation. For instance, if you get fired because of wrongful discharge, you can’t just sit on the couch and wait for your law suit to come through. You gotta look for a job!
2) I hope you didn’t think the other side was just going to sit there and take that beating from you! IT’s amazing how people think that when they use the legal process that the other side is just going to TAKE IT! Recognize, every body has the right to defend their position and utilize an attorney just as much as you. More important, if you thow a brick, don’t be made if they throw a concrete block back at you.
3) Look at the LEGAL situation and not your PERSONAL situation. So many times, when we are mad about something, we constantly look at ourselves as the victim. When you feel like this, you don’t want to hear about all of the consequences and scenario. We want vindication. We want revenge. We want someone to go down in flames. However, it is important to be able to stop and look at the whole situation from an objective standpoint so you don’t lose sight of the big picture.
4) Don’t expect anyone to keep FIXING the hole if you keep putting HOLES in the boat! So many times, people think that when they hire an attorney, this allows them the ability to do what the hell they want to during the legal process. Unfortunately, these same people may make their legal situation worse and when they do this, they expect their attorney to fix their situation (even when they are TOLD to NOT to do something). Remember, if you make your situation worse, don’t expect anyone to hang around to help you fix it.
Any legal situation is difficult but understand that you play a role in the process. You can help your situation but you can, also, hurt it. Play it cool and play it smart.
