Only 5% of what you tell your lawyer about your custody case will be important enough to make it’s way to trial, if there is one.  Getting to that 5%, however, is going to take hours of telling your attorney about your life, including information that you don’t think has anything to do with custody.  But just about everything that has ever happened to you is potentially relevant to your child’s best interests, and only the attorney can separate out the information that may contribute, positively or negatively, to your case.

Don’t censor anything, especially those things that the little voice in your head tells you not to tell your attorney, because those are precisely the things your spouse’s attorney will use against you.  You saw a psychiatrist during the breakdown of your first marriage ten years ago, and you don’t think that has anything to do with your relationship to your children today?  Maybe it doesn’t; but your attorney can’t protect you from what he doesn’t know.  You can’t tell your attorney too much.  But you can tie one hand behind his back by telling him too little.

By: David I. Grunfeld