Many couples will divorce without using the services of a lawyer. And it proved to save them time and money. You do not have to pay legal fees to a third party and this can save money. You save time by being able to get on with your divorce instead of having to go through meetings with your lawyer.

However, this only applies when the divorce is uncontested. Contested divorces are so much demanding that doing without lawyer or representing yourself is not advisable. Some courts even discourage acts of self representation against a process of uncontested legal matters unless the representative is a master of the court proceedings and the divorce law.

So make sure that you take the divorce seriously and hire yourself a divorce solicitor. Here is some advice to help you hire the right one.

Of course, the best divorce solicitor is one who is dedicated to your case. Because the law is a business, most lawyers will charge you a huge amount of money for their services. One who doesn’t should cause you to be sceptical in terms of his competence. And some just want to take as much money as they can get. Here are telltale signs for such:

Charging too much for phone calls, never returning calls promptly, never keeps you informed of the proceedings of the case, won’t help you understand the terms and, won’t suggest better alternatives.

You should always keep in mind that your divorce solicitor is working for you. Before you hire them for definite, make sure you have a contract of employment drawn up. And actually read it before you sign it. This is the same when it comes to the billing summary. If your bill is not detailed with every payment, do not accept it.

Also, make sure you talk about these things with your potential divorce solicitor before hiring them:

- How long the divorce will take. – The overall charge of the process – The solicitor should map out every step of the divorce.

It is the lawyers job to help their client understand the terms and legalities of the divorce process, your lawyer is working for you so ask as many questions you want.

Mark Woodcock has been a webmaster for over a decade. He has employed Raleys Solicitors for his legal needs for years. Visit http://www.raleyssolicitors.com for more info.

Article Source: ArticleSpan

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Due to these reforms that divorce is more like a broken business partnership. Although it is very personal and emotional for the parties involved, the Court sees it as a matter strictly business – the dissolution of a partnership with the assets to be divided between the two partners.

The decision to seek divorce is only the first of many decisions during the process. Lawyers should be involved? What about mediation? What is collaborative divorce? Are there children involved?

Must be a person of his own divorce? Just what that means: “Do your own divorce? Are several levels of” Do it yourself divorces. Do not use all professionals (not recommended), using a mediator with a lawyer for advice and review documents. Before making a decision not to hire a lawyer to handle your divorce, think long and hard.

You’ve decided to hire a lawyer. Now begins the selection process. The choice of attorney should not be random. A lot of thought and research should go into this decision. Competence and work your lawyer will have a direct impact on you, your children and your financial situation for years to come. You must use the same approach when choosing a lawyer that the employer uses when selecting prospective employees. Interview them and check their references. Remember that the lawyer works for you, so choose carefully and choose wisely.

Perhaps the process of mediation does not work for you. Mediation is a process where couples negotiate an acceptable agreement with the help of a mediator. A mediator is a neutral third party to assist in negotiations, but not make decisions for you. As each situation is different, every mediator has a different approach to mediation. It is for the mediator to the structure of meetings so the couple can negotiate a divorce settlement. A good mediator will encourage you to leave the past behind and concentrate on the facts in the present moment.

There is a new movement in the field of divorce known as the collaborative process. , Such as mediation, this method is not contradictory and the courts are not involved. Unlike mediation, each party has its own lawyer. Each of the parties and their attorneys work in teams to reach an agreement that is good for both parties. If, however, the collaborative process does not work and conflict is necessary, lawyers involved no later and no longer represent the parties.

If children are involved

The divorce itself is trying enough. If children are involved, it becomes even more painful and very emotional. Parents often lose sight of what is in the best interest of their children. Where the child comes into this new life being created? Unfortunately, children often become financial pawns in a divorce where you decide the issues of child custody.

Children have rights in divorce. That common sense when it comes to children. Not for use as an outlet for anger, not always be used for revenge against their spouse. Do not bad mouth your ex-spouse with children, even if you’re still angry or hostile. Try not to use your child as a messenger or intermediary, especially when you are falling out. Children are egocentric. They think their role in things is more important than it really is. For this reason, we often feel that somehow caused the divorce. Make sure they know that’s not his fault. It is also important that children know that just because parents divorce each other, they are not divorcing their children. Some kids think that if their parents are divorcing, it means their moms and dads will want to leave, too. Remind them often that your love for them is unconditional and will not change because of divorce.

There are many aspects of divorce, to be taken into account: the custody and visitation, financial issues such as alimony, taxes, pensions and insurance, hiring a lawyer or mediator, to determine if you should do your own divorce, separation agreements and much more.

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Raleigh, NC (PRWEB) October 4, 2009 — Divorce Talk Radio, a production of North Carolina family law firm, Rosen Law Firm, discusses North Carolina’s newly passed alienation of affection laws in, “Should You Still Worry About Alienation of Affection?”. Every week, Divorce Talk Radio features current topics in family law and answers listener questions regarding family law issues in North Carolina.

Should You Still Worry About Alienation of Affection?
Should You Still Worry About Alienation of Affection?
Most people don’t realize that sex with someone outside of the marriage is considered a crime in North Carolina

The Top 6 Things Not to do During Your Divorce
Confronting your Wife’s Boyfriend
Should I Stay or Should I Go?
In “Should You Still Worry About Alienation of Affection?”, Raleigh Divorce Lawyer Lee Rosen, host and CEO of Rosen Law Firm, answers listener questions regarding separation, equitable distribution and divorce from bed and board and what impact the new North Carolina laws for alienation of affections and criminal conversation will have on individuals in relationships with married men and women.

“Most people don’t realize that sex with someone outside of the marriage is considered a crime in North Carolina,” says attorney Lee Rosen. Claims for alienation of affections used to include behavior at any point during the marriage – even after separation. As of October 1, 2009, claims of alienation of affection and criminal conversation can no longer be filed for conduct that started after the date of separation.

Divorce Talk Radio is a free, professional resource available to everyone in the state of North Carolina. Hosted live every Wednesday at 11 a.m. Eastern time, Divorce talk Radio offers listeners the chance to call in and ask questions about any aspect of family law. Attorneys from Rosen Law Firm address listener questions using their professional knowledge and experience.

Divorce Talk Radio covers a range of topics that may arise in a family law dispute. Recent episodes include; “The Top 6 Things Not to do During Your Divorce”, “Confronting your Wife’s Boyfriend”, “Who Gets the Kids?” and “Should I Stay or Should I Go?”

Listeners tuning in are able to access the show through an embedded video stream that appears on the homepage fifteen minutes before the show’s start time. Past episodes of Divorce Talk Radio, with a Durham, Charlotte, or Cary divorce lawyer as a panelist are archived on the Web site.

For More information on Rosen Law Firm and Divorce Talk Radio, or for an interview, please contact Ned Daze at Rosen Law Firm, or visit the Raleigh divorce lawyer homepage.

About Divorce Talk Radio
Divorce Talk Radio gives listeners an opportunity to ask questions and make comments about family law in North Carolina. To have your questions answered on the show, please call 919-256-1552 or ask your question in the live chat room below the video window.

About Rosen Law Firm
With offices in Raleigh, Charlotte and Chapel Hill, Rosen Law Firm is one of the largest divorce firms on the East Coast. Founded in 1990, the firm is dedicated to providing individual growth and support to couples seeking divorce by helping them move forward with their lives. Our staff of attorneys, financial professionals and specially trained divorce coaches expertly addresses the complex issues of ending a marriage. Our innovative approach acknowledges that divorce is so much more than just a legal matter. Practice areas include child custody, alimony, property distribution, separation agreements and domestic violence relief.

Media Contact:
Ned Daze, Director of Public Relations
Rosen Law Firm
919-256-1558
www.rosen.com/ned/

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Michael Jackson’s family is grasping at straws if they think they “have something” on Michael’s executor, John Branca.

According to reports today, the family — egged on by none other than Jackson hanger-on Brian Oxman — thinks they’re going to oust Branca on some kind of technicality. Oxman claims he has some “smoking gun” about Branca being fired by Jackson in 1990 — only to be rehired three years later. In 2006, after over 25 years on and off, Branca and Michael parted company. A week before Michael died, he rehired Branca.

The irony here will be that Brian Oxman is involved. Oxman, who used to doze off in open court — I mean, snore — during Michael’s criminal trial in 2005, was fired by lead defense attorney Thomas Mesereau. Oxman’s entire connection to Michael was that he represented Randy Jackson when his brother, Jermaine, conducted a takeover of his wife and kids. Oxman was Randy’s divorce attorney. He has hung on to his slim attachment to Michael ever since, sort of the way Harold Lloyd famously hung from the clock in the movie, “Safety Last.”

The Jackson family’s constant attacks on Branca are laughable, and ironic. It was Branca who engineered the purchase of ATV Music aka the Beatles catalog for Michael in the 1980s. After his brief absence, it was Branca again who merged ATV Music with Sony’s music publishing company, got Michael $90 million, and set him up for life. Without that deal, Jackson would have been destitute — and so would the Jackson family as they lived off of Michael’s largesse.

Indeed, it was only during the times that Michael was separated from Branca that he got into real trouble. And it was a stroke of luck that Michael returned to Branca this past spring. Otherwise, Jackson’s children’s interests could have been left in the hands of far more disreputable types — not naming names here — whose interests were purely self-centered.

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His defense team, which argued the law is unconstitutional, sought to bar as evidence certain statements and letters Peterson’s third wife, Kathleen Savio, is said to have made before her 2004 slaying in the midst of their heated divorce.

Attorney Joel Brodsky argued the law, enacted in December, allows in unreliable rumor and innuendo and violates the former Bolingbrook police sergeant’s 6th Amendment right to confront his accuser. Furthermore, Brodsky noted the law was passed after the crime was committed and, thus, should not be applied retroactively.

“It is disappointing,” Brodsky said. “It’s a bad law. I hate to even call hearsay evidence, evidence. You can’t rebut it. You can’t question it. Whatever you think about Drew Peterson, this law eventually will lead to wrongful convictions.”

Will Circuit Judge Stephen White disagreed. The law, which applies only to murders, requires a reliability hearing to be held in which the judge will decide which – if any – of the statements Savio’s family and friends said she made will be admissible.

Will State’s Attorney James Glasgow was joined by the Illinois attorney general’s office in defending the hearsay law, which the prosecutor said despite some controversy, affords criminal defendants more protection than that offered in other states with similar statutes.

It’s the second time Illinois’ hearsay law has withstood constitutional muster. A DuPage County judge also upheld it in the case of a young man accused of gunning down a Warrenville teen in 2004 shortly after she pursued battery charges against him.

On Friday, Judge White also denied Peterson’s change-of-venue request. His lawyers argued Peterson cannot get a fair trial in Will County due to all the media exposure and his 30-year local law enforcement career.

A trial date has not been set, but White in effect pre-empted the defense request Aug. 13 when he admonished about 240 potential jurors to avoid all Peterson media coverage.

White said he still could move the trial later after the potential jurors are individually questioned if a majority of them say they cannot be impartial.

Peterson is charged with murdering Savio, 40, who drowned in her bathtub in March 2004. He has remained in the Will County jail on a $20 million bond since his May 7 arrest. Prosecutors said Peterson killed Savio because he faced financial devastation from the couple’s ongoing divorce as he tried to begin a new life with his fourth wife, Stacy – with whom he had an extramarital affair – and their baby. They said Peterson even offered a state witness $25,000 to kill Savio months before her death.

The media fervor grew after Stacy vanished in October 2007 amid their marital troubles. Stacy has never been found. Peterson has not been charged with her disappearance, which sparked authorities to reinvestigate Savio’s death.

Peterson, who maintains his innocence, is due back in court Oct. 29

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NACOGDOCHES – Kyle Barnhill received the maximum sentence of life in prison and a $10,000 fine Friday for the March 11 death of his estranged wife, Melissa Barnhill, whom he fatally shot while she cooked dinner for their two daughters.

Barnhill was found guilty Thursday, and the jury debated the punishment phase on Friday. He will become eligible for parole in 30 years.
(ENLARGE)
KYLE BARNHILL

In closing statements before the jury left to deliberate for approximately 45 minutes, defense attorney Bill Agnew pointed out several events in Barnhill’s life that led up to the night he fatally shot his wife — bankruptcy, being kicked out of his home and the loss of time with his daughters.

“Mr. Barnhill was in a very, very, very vulnerable situation,” Agnew told jurors, adding that he was not trying to excuse the crime that had been committed. “… This was an emotional decision, not a logical one.”

Barnhill had been accused of shooting Melissa through the kitchen window of her Kings Row home while their young children were in the house.

District Attorney Nicole LoStracco, in her own closing statements, noted that while all those events may have been true, in each of them, the defense omitted one important fact — Barnhill killed his wife.

She said he had taken away a friend, favorite employee and mother to 3- and 10-year-old little girls, and then he “had the nerve to take the stand and blame his medication, (wife’s divorce) lawyer … to blame everybody but himself.”

LoStracco pointed out to the jury in her closing argument that Barnhill’s true callousness to the well-being of his family, his wife, and his children was told by one of the most important witnesses of the entire trial, his 11-year-old daughter, who took the stand Thursday.

“Her testimony was very important to this case,” LoStracco commented, following the verdict. “She was not only an immediate eyewitness to the death of her mother, but she was also the only person who could tell the jury where she and her sister were in the house when her mother was shot.”

LoStracco said she did not make the decision to call the daughter to testify lightly.

“Obviously, it was a difficult decision as to whether she would testify. We consulted extensively with her personal attorney, her therapist, her aunt, her pastor, and her guardian prior to approaching her about testifying. It was always her final decision whether to take the stand and confront her mother’s killer. I am very proud of her, and I agree with her family and the others looking after her interests that this will start to provide some closure for her and help her deal with this unspeakable tragedy.”

First Assistant District Attorney Lee Westmoreland, who assisted in Barnhill’s prosecution, was struck by the defendant’s attitude and demeanor throughout the entire trial.

“Both Mrs. LoStracco and I were shocked and angered by the defendant getting on the stand and stating that he was angry about our putting his daughter on the stand. In spite of his words to the contrary, the defendant never appeared emotional, and certainly never showed any real remorse for his role in the death of his wife and the mother of his children. This was no act of sudden passion. This was no act of insanity or desperation, no matter what the defendant attempted to tell the jury. This was a deliberate, cold, and calculated act, and the only one the defendant has to blame is the one person he is unwilling to blame — himself.”

One of the things jurors had to consider as part of Barnhill’s sentencing was if the crime resulted from a sudden passion, a cause from an immediate influence. LoStracco noted during her closing statement that the time from when Barnhill purchased the Russian rifle to when he shot his wife was three to four hours. She questioned how he would not have time to reflect on his actions during that time.

Jurors also heard several witness testimonies before going into deliberations on sentencing. Among them were two of Melissa’s coworkers at Nacogdoches Medical Center.

Joan Hill described Melissa as a good nurse whose patients loved her.

“I used to get on to her because she called all her patients ’sweetie,’” Hill said, adding that she would tell her she couldn’t say that, and Melissa would reply, “that’s just the way I am.”

Likewise, Teresa Ferell, who worked in the human resources department, testified Friday that Melissa was someone who had many friends at the hospital.

She said she was amazed at Melissa’s funeral by how many hospital employees from other departments were there. Melissa worked as a recovery nurse.

“They all knew her and knew how friendly and cheerful she was,” Ferell said.

On behalf of his son, Charles Barnhill also testified Friday, saying that Kyle “thought a lot of his children” and he had a normal childhood.

He said Kyle was very close to his children, and if the youngest one had been in court that day, she would have run up into his arms when she saw him.

Holding back tears when he talked about his son and the incident, Charles later noted that he was the last to know that Kyle and Melissa were having problems.

“I thought they had a pretty good marriage,” he said.

Charles said he had a good relationship with Melissa, and she often joked that as his only daughter-in-law, she was his favorite.

He said one afternoon he made a similar comment on how she was his favorite, and he could tell something was wrong, but he didn’t know what.

Barnhill’s fifth-grade teacher, Betty Young, also testified on Friday, stating that she had been in written correspondence with her former student since his arrest.

Young said for many years Barnhill had stopped in at her Sherwood, Ark., home to visit whenever he was in town, but their communication stopped a decade ago. She said she renewed their correspondence when she learned of his arrest, and they sent letters back and forth once week since,

She said the contents of the letters, which she agreed contained something similar to a confession, did not have a influence on her high opinion of Barnhill.

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The Texas attorney general argued the court does not have jurisdiction to hear the suit for divorce on the grounds that Texas does not recognize same-sex marriage pursuant to a 2005 state constitutional amendment banning gay marriage. As such, the court cannot possibly grant the two Dallas men a divorce since their marriage is not legally recognized by the state of Texas.

However, the Dallas district court Judge disagreed ruling that the court “has jurisdiction to hear a suit for divorce filed by persons legally married in another jurisdiction.”

While the attorney for the man who filed for the divorce says his client is “ecstatic”, Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott plans to appeal the court’s ruling in favor of gay divorce.

Written by Gabriel Dorman
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NACOGDOCHES — In the fourth day of testimony in the trial of Kyle Barnhill, the jury handed down a unanimous guilty verdict for the murder of his wife, Melissa Kesinger Barnhill.

After both the prosecution and defense concluded their cases Thursday afternoon, the jury of four women and eight men took only about 20 minutes to deliver their decision to the court. The case promptly proceeded into the punishment phase, which is expected to last through Friday. Barnhill is eligible for up to 99 years in prison for the conviction.
(ENLARGE)
KYLE BARNHILL

Thursday’s court proceedings also included emotional testimony from the defendant himself and from his young daughter, who told jurors of hearing the sound of shattered glass the night her mother died and finding her lifeless body on the floor of their Kings Row Street home last March. Melissa Barnhill was shot through her kitchen window as she prepared dinner for her two daughters. She and her husband were going through a divorce at the time.

Once the guilty verdict had been returned, the first witness prosecutors called up during the initial punishment phase was Melissa’s father, James Kesinger of Lufkin, who told jurors about the character of his daughter, who was also the mother of two of his grandchildren.

“She was a blessing to us from the very beginning,” Kesinger tearfully said of his slain daughter. “Her mother hadn’t had anything but boys until she was born. She (his wife) always wanted a daughter, and I prayed to the Lord that I could have a daughter.”

Kesinger said his daughter was very smart as small child and was always looking to help others, especially family members. He said Melissa, who was a registered nurse at the Nacogdoches Medical Center at the time of her death, was introduced into the medical profession through her mother, who fell ill with cancer when Melissa was just 9.

The last time Kesinger said he saw his daughter was about two weeks before her husband shot her with a rifle through a kitchen window at her home in Nacogdoches. Melissa was visiting her father with her two daughters. Right as she was leaving to head back home, Kesinger said Melissa turned around and told him for the first time that she had filed for divorce from Kyle. He said he thought she hadn’t already told him she was divorcing her husband because “she didn’t want me to get into trouble.”

The last time he spoke with Melissa was the night of her murder. Stricken with pneumonia, Kesinger said Melissa had told him she would bring him some medicine later that evening at around 8 p.m. But he called her back and left a voice message telling her that it was too late, and she should wait until the next day. She didn’t call back. About two hours later Kesinger said he received a phone call from Melissa’s church pastor telling him his daughter had been killed.

“She was a good mother, and she loved her children dearly — that’s one of the hardest things of all,” he said. “Her smallest daughter — my granddaughter — was at my house the week before last, and had another little friend come spend the night with us. She looked at Melissa’s picture on the wall and told this little girl, ‘You see this picture? That’s my momma.’ And I thought then, that’s all she’s ever going to have in her life (of her mother), a little picture.”

Before the guilty verdict was handed down, Barnhill’s 11-year-old daughter took the stand Thursday morning to give emotional testimony against her father.

Kyla told the prosecution that on the night of the murder, she was reading a book for school at home when she heard glass shatter, after which her younger sister, who was 3 at the time, excitedly called for her to come to the kitchen. There, Kyla found her mother lying in a pool of blood, dying from a gunshot wound to the neck.

Speaking through tears, Kyla said her first thought upon seeing her mother on the kitchen floor was that she accidently slipped and stabbed herself. She immediately called family friends for help, but when she got no answer, Kyla ran out the garage door to call for help, she said.

“I opened the garage and started screaming,” Kyla said. “I just stepped out and started yelling — something like ‘help me.’”

When neighbor Tom Brainard responded, Kyla she said she took him inside the kitchen, where he called police. He told them Melissa had apparently been shot. Kyla said it was not until Brainard’s call to police that she realized her mother had not slipped, but rather she had been shot. Several jurors and others watching the trial in the gallery were seen crying during this portion of the testimony, while Kyle displayed little outward emotion.

Kyla said she knelt down next to her mother and futilely attempted to save her life by pressing a towel against her wound.

“I got a towel and started trying to stop the bleeding, but it never stopped,” she said.

Brainard eventually took both young girls out of the kitchen and into his home. Kyla testified she had her mother’s blood on her hands and was hesitant to wash it off, because she wanted to remember her mother, she said.

Kyla said she had someone take a photograph of her bloody hands so that she would not forget the moment.

When asked by District Attorney Nicole LoStracco who she believed, at the time, had shot her mother, Kyla said, “I kind of thought my dad did it.”

Following Kyla’s testimony, the prosecution rested its case. Then, in an unexpected move, the defendant went against his attorney’s advice and took the stand to admonish LoStracco for making his daughter testify.

Barnhill’s attorney, Bill Agnew, surrendered his right to an opening statement and began his defense by asking Barnhill why he wanted to take the stand.

“Because, we’ve been sitting here for a good three-and-half days, listening to really ironclad, irrefutable evidence against me, and when they chose to put my 11-year-old daughter on the stand, it was totally unnecessary,” Barnhill said. “They made her relive this traumatic event.

“I’m sorry that she had to ever live through it in the first place,” he said. “But her coming back in here to relive this event, plus condemn her father, was really over the top — unnecessary. It was not needed to convict me.”

Barnhill was on the stand for more than 45 minutes before the lunchtime recess, during which time his lawyer allowed him to go into a lengthy explanation of the circumstances that led up to him shooting his wife. Barnhill implied and stated multiple times Melissa had been having an affair. He also testified that through their divorce proceedings, he had been treated poorly by Melissa’s attorney, Jim LoStracco, who is the district attorney’s husband and said there was no justification for the protective order that Jim LoStracco had obtained during the divorce proceedings on behalf of Melissa.

During the divorce, Barnhill said many of the church members had “rallied around Melissa” without knowing “the full story,” he said. During the recorded interview, Barnhill expressed regret for the families affected by his actions.

After the recess Barnhill took the stand for another 40 minutes where he was cross examined by the prosecution. On the stand he admitted to killing his wife.

Prior to the shooting he also admitted to sending numerous veiled threats via text messages to Melissa during the course of their divorce proceedings. Barnhill also said when he was delivered the notice of the final divorce proceeding that would make the separation complete he quickly left work and drove to Bullard where he purchased the murder weapon. While Barnhill said he remembered driving back from Bullard he said he has no memory of actually rasing the rifle, aiming it at his soon to be ex-wife and pulling the trigger, nor making it back to his car. He did say he remembered driving to the University Park Plaza and entering the woods around Lanana Creek with the weapon but does not recall breaking the back window of his truck trying to get the nearly six-foot long rifle out of the cab nor tossing the weapon into the area around the creek. Barnhill also said he did not remember driving back to his place of business, Zest-E-Burger located along South Street, but did maintain he was robbed there.

Barnhill said the morning after he killed his wife he borrowed a friends car and drove back to the Zest-E-Burger, then to a gas station where he bought a copy of The Daily Sentinel. On the front page, Barnhill said he read the paper had printed he was the alleged killer.

“I hadn’t even really thought of the events of the previous night but as I was reading the front page of The Daily Sentinel it said the ‘alleged killer was her husband.’ Or very close to that — it did say ‘her alleged killer’ and that’s when I left,” he said.

Barnhill said he was “frightened” after reading he was a likely suspect and purchased maps of Mexico and Central America. But with very little money and no identification Barnhill said he had a lot of trouble getting a motel room in the Texas border town of Eagle Pass where he said he spent over three days. When he was finally arrested in front of a public library, Kyle said he gave a false name to authorities and would have been happier to be apprehended after he had a chance to check his e-mail, which ultimately was how officials tracked him down.

It was revealed in court by the prosecution that Barnhill may have tried to kill himself while in the Nacogdoches County Jail and even plotted an escape plan sometime in early September. Barnhill admitted to delivering a note to the jail’s nurse that asked her to help him escape with “a little outside assistance.” Since then, Barnhill has been on lockdown at the jail and has not been permitted any recreational time he said.

Barnhill said he did not cross the border because he did not want his family to suffer from him being a fugitive but in later testimony under examination by the prosecution, he said that after he had been incarcerated he was fine with putting his family through an escape attempt and living on the lamb. He said he changed his mind because he was not happy that his trial was not moved from Nacogdoches County and that the lead prosecutor was married to Melissa’s divorce attorney.

When asked how he felt about the situation by his own attorney Barnhill said, “I’m not totally certain that the severity of it has hit me yet. It’s mind boggling. I think it’s just, it’s almost like it was an out of body experience. I can not fathom that I did this.” He added that he now feels “sad” not just for himself of the wife he killed but also for his children. “It’s a tragedy,” Barnhill said.

Also testifying Thursday was KTRE television reporter Jena Johnson, who conducted a phone interview with Barnhill while he was in the Nacogdoches County jail following his transfer back from Eagle Pass. The court heard the full 15-minute interview between Johnson and Barnhill in where he blamed The Daily Sentinel’s initial reporting on the killing for his reasoning for trying to flee across the border.

A forensic scientist also testified, linking the bullet fragments found at the scene to the murder weapon, a antique Russian infantry rifle, discovered later by a man walking near Lanana Creek behind University Park Plaza. Another forensic scientist gave testimony that linked the defendant’s DNA to DNA found inside one of the dark gloves that police recovered in their investigations of Barnhill’s truck and the area along Lanana Creek where the murder weapon was found.

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Dallas District Judge Tena Callahan said in the ruling that her court “has jurisdiction to hear a suit for divorce filed by persons legally married in another jurisdiction and who meet the residency and other prerequisites required to file for divorce in Dallas County, Texas.”

Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott immediately said he would appeal the ruling in the latest battle over gay marriage in the United States.

“The laws and constitution of the State of Texas define marriage as an institution involving one man and one woman. Today’s ruling purports to strike down that constitutional definition,” Abbott said in a statement.

“The Office of the Attorney General will appeal the court’s ruling to defend the traditional definition of marriage that was approved by Texas voters,” he said.

The divorce suit was filed in Dallas by an unidentified man and no details were available on where he had been married. An attorney for the man could not be reached for comment.

Forty U.S. states have laws explicitly prohibiting gay marriages and the issue, along with abortion rights, is among the most divisive in America.

Same-sex marriage is banned in Texas by a voter-approved state constitutional amendment.

A handful of U.S. states, mostly in the northeast, have approved gay marriage though it is being challenged in Maine.

The District of Columbia city council voted on May 5 to recognize same-sex marriages performed in states where those unions are legal, even although gay marriages cannot be conducted in Washington D.C., the U.S. capitol.
reuters

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He told me that if I ever tried to leave him, he would take my kids and get custody.

Now, a friend told me that when she got her divorce, that the first one that files gets to keep the kids and the house. Is that true? I don’t want to lose my kids.

— TORN IN THE COUNTY

Dear Torn: Your friend was partially correct; it is possible to get custody of the children and the marital home by filing first.

Often when a divorce is filed, several motions, including those for temporary custody and those for getting possession of the house, are filed ex parte.

That means the motions are filed without the Defendant getting a chance to respond before a court order is put on.

However, certain requirements must be met in order to get the ex parte orders.

The person requesting the order must swear an affidavit saying that they have been the primary caretaker of the children and that they currently are in possession of the children.

That means that a truck driver who is always on the road probably couldn’t file and get the kids and the house, as he is most likely not the primary caretaker.

The main purpose of the ex parte orders is to keep things as close to normal as they were before the divorce was filed.

Therefore, if the person who files first and gets custody isn’t really the primary caretaker, or shouldn’t have temporary custody for some other reasons, the defendant can request a hearing to be scheduled as soon as possible.

The court will use the hearing to get information from both sides, and can then leave the order as it is or change it.

Dear Lawyer Mark:

I’m mad. My wife and me tried to get a divorce together without hiring an attorney. We got one of those kits from the store, filled it out and filed it.

Well now, when we went to court, the judge told us that there was some things missing and wrong with it, but that he couldn’t tell us what all he needed.

He told us our best bet was to go hire an attorney.

Lawyer Mark, we know who gets custody and how we want everything split up. I thought we had a right to represent ourselves in court.

Why won’t the judge let us? I paid $20 for those forms, and they should be good enough.

— MADDER THAN YOU KNOW WHAT

Dear Mad: Well, first of all, you do have the right to represent yourself, but that doesn’t mean you don’t have to follow the law.

Ohio law requires some specific forms to be filed, as well as some specific language to be fled with it.

While the judges try to be as helpful as possible to those who represent themselves, the judges are not permitted do the legal work for them.

You may want to see an attorney about a dissolution if you have everything worked out–it will cost less than a contested divorce.

The attorney will be able to tell you at the initial conference how much it would cost.

As for the $20 kit, well, my parents always told me when I was growing up that you get what you pay for.

It’s The Law is written by attorney Mark K. McCown in response to legal questions received by him at LawyerMark@yahoo.com.

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