Collaborative Law: The philosophy of our firm is to offer people an alternative, when possible, to the traditional litigation model of dispute resolution. The key issue is not who is right or wrong, but how can the issues presented (often caused by an inability to effectively communicate and financial stress) be reconciled by the parties themselves under the guidance of certified professionals through the Collaborative Law process or via Mediation. In our opinion, the obligation of a family lawyer is to facilitate the settlement of conflict and to carefully evaluate the responsibility of each party to bring the subject matter
Author: Roy M. Bowes
For over 43 years, Mr. Bowes has had a private civil practice in the New Orleans area with concentration in family law, personal injury, estate planning, successions, collections, and mediation.
Preventing Divorce: One in two marriages ends in divorce. Given those odds, it’s easy to think of marriage as a gamble. However, by taking a few basic steps, you can raise your odds considerably. Here are four ways to make sure your marriage can weather any storm. 1. Have fun together The number one difference between couples that stay together and couples that split up is how much fun they have together. It may sound obvious, but as responsibilities mount, it can be easy to view your spouse as more of a business partner than a life partner. Find fun
How Men Heal from a Breakup: Men pride themselves on feeling powerful, competent, and effective in their world. They receive a sense of fulfillment in feeling successful and doing well. Men take great pride in being independent and self-sufficient. Then, they fall in love. They allow themselves to be vulnerable to another, they get close and sometimes they end up getting hurt and their hearts get broken. Surprisingly, men generally are the first to fall in love and the last to fall out of it. Men have more difficulty handling their emotions than women because they have been trained to be
Who Wants to Retire? People in their twenties don’t plan for retirement because they think they’ll never die. People in their thirties don’t plan because they are too busy building careers and acquiring assets. People don’t plan during their forties because they’re too busy paying off the college tuition of their children. Most don’t start planning until their fifties, sixties, and seventies and sometimes that’s too late. It’s not too late for you. When are you going to plan? Is your plan current? Laws frequently change and plans should be reviewed and updated to reflect these changes. We offer estate
Updating a Will: People often ask how often they need to review and update their wills and estate planning documents. Many assume that once they have prepared a will, durable power of attorney, and/or other related documents, these will last for the rest of their lives and never need to be updated. A Will is Your Chance to Write the Law that Favors You: For most people, the most effective method of engaging in sensible estate and Medicaid planning is as straight-forward as preparing a Last Will and Testament and Durable Power of Attorney. Wills and powers of attorney give
Family Law Mediation Process: In a divorce or other relating family law matter, your options are as follows: Hire an attorney to litigate; Hire a team of certified collaborative practice professionals; or Mediate. Regrettably, it is difficult and often expensive to resolve any family law dispute (divorce, custody, child support, partition of community property) in court, or even using the collaborative law process. In an adversarial traditional litigation case, the lawyers jockey for control and the courts often don’t want to spend the necessary time to discover the specifics of what the parties actually need to resolve their dispute. As
The Collaborative Approach to Resolving Family Law Issues: Collaborative law is an innovative way to resolve conflict by removing the disputed matter from the litigious courtroom setting to a “troubleshoot and problem solve“ process with the use of collaborative professionals, rather than to fight and win. As part of the collaborative process, both parties retain separate attorneys to help them settle their dispute. No one may go to court. If that should occur, the collaborative law process terminates and both lawyers are disqualified from any further involvement in the case. Each party in the collaborative law process signs a contractual agreement, which
Fighting Fair: Take a moment to recall a recent conflict between you and your partner. Perhaps it was just a small misunderstanding, or maybe something major. What were the circumstances of the problem? Replay the event in your mind. How was the issue resolved? Have the two of you reconciled? How did you feel once the two of you had reconciled? Someone once said that if you want to avoid marital conflict you will have to forego all intimacy. Not for us, thanks! Conflict is a part of every close relationship. The more intimate we are, the more vulnerable to