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What To Do When… You Can Come to an Agreement or Not.
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The objective of the What To Do When… podcast is to discuss common legal scenarios faced by everyday citizens in Virginia. Critzer and Cardani practice law throughout Virginia and focus their practice around the state’s capital of Richmond, in the Piedmont region. Tune in and subscribe to learn about legal topics such as reckless driving by speeding, bad lawyers, Will Knows Weed, juvenile defense, juvenile sex crimes, reckless driving, the legalization of marijuana in Virginia, divorce 101, Child Support, There is Still Hope, and others.
What To Do When… You Can Come to an Agreement or Not.
On this legal video podcast chat with a Family Law Legal Agreement subject matter in our What To Do When… podcast series, please join our hosts Jackie Critzer and Scott Cardani as they share about What To Do When… You Can Come to an Agreement or Not. This video and audio podcast episode focuses on a family law and legal process slant when you’re navigating coming to an agreement or going to court.
Tune in today for not only our top 3 take-aways, but also some chat about the following subject matters and other helpful action items from a ‘legal chat slant’ from Critzer Cardani’s legal partners.
* Reaching an agreement in family law can be beneficial, but it’s important to consider when and how to do so.
* Court procedures for child custody cases.
* Agreements require both parties to sign and accept terms for them to be legally binding.
* Jackie Critzer and Scott Cardani explain that it’s possible to reach an agreement in court without a judge making decisions for you and your family.
* The importance of having an agreement drawn up by an attorney who knows the formalities to make it enforceable, and to avoid going back to court in the future.
The objective of the What To Do When… podcast is to discuss common legal scenarios faced by everyday citizens in Virginia. Critzer and Cardani practice law throughout Virginia and focus their practice around the state’s capital of Richmond, in the Piedmont region. Tune in and subscribe to learn about legal topics such as reckless driving by speeding, bad lawyers, Will Knows Weed, juvenile defense, juvenile sex crimes, reckless driving, the legalization of marijuana in Virginia, divorce 101, Child Support, There is Still Hope and others.
Thank you for sending us your feedback, questions, or topic suggestions for future #WTDW | What To Do When… episodes by emailing [email protected].
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Transcript:
What To Do When… Intro 00:01
Welcome to What To Do When… A podcast from real lawyers with real perspective, where we explore a variety of legal issues and scenarios. Each week we focus on a new topic and discuss what to do when and if any of these legal scenarios ever happened to you or a loved one. With over 40 years of combined legal experience, our hosts offer their unique perspectives and insights on a range of real life legal situations.
Jackie Critzer 0:28
Hi, there. Welcome back to Critzer Cardani and law firm here in Richmond, Virginia. I’m Jackie.
Scott Cardani 0:34
I’m Scott. Jackie, what’s on the docket for today?
Jackie Critzer 0:37
What To Do When… Can You Reach an Agreement or Not? The real question is, can you reach an agreement and avoid going to court? Can you reach an agreement? Once you file paperwork in court? Can you reach an agreement? When you’re standing in the courtroom? I get this question. I think Scott does too all the time. What happens if we just reach an agreement? And my short answer is when it comes to family law, if you can reach an agreement, your family is going to be better in the long run by a longshot.
Scott Cardani 1:08
Absolutley.
Jackie Critzer 1:08
Are there times when you’re under duress, you’re being coerced? And there are agreements you should not enter into? Sure. Let’s not let’s not digress into the when you shouldn’t make an agreement. But one I just received the question again today. What happens? I mean, we’ve already filed the paperwork and there’s a court date coming up. Can we just reach an agreement? Yes. What happens when you reach an agreement? So if you mom and dad, mom filed for custody, and they go into court, and they set the next court date, right, because we never do anything on the first court date, you can have at least two, sometimes three, or four or five. And so you you’re getting ready to go to trial. That’s your second date. It’s the date you want to put on evidence to evidence to us, we get a lot of questions. Well, what about these text messages? I want to show that’s evidence. What about pictures I want to show that’s evidence. Your testimony becomes evidence once you’re sworn in, and you swear to tell the truth. So you get to put on evidence if you don’t have an agreement. If you do have an agreement, there’s no reason to put on evidence the judge doesn’t need to hear and probably doesn’t want to hear the reason why you’re in court, the text messages the Yeah, but we had a baby. But we haven’t lived together. We had a baby, but he’s not on the birth certificate or we had a baby and she disappeared. And I’ve had the baby ever since the judge doesn’t need to hear any of the details of you’ve reached an agreement, as long as I mean, it’s a reasonable agreement. So can you reach an agreement to avoid the judge making a decision? About your case? Absolutely. You can.
Scott Cardani 2:38
And remember – real quick, it’s really important that if you can reach an agreement, you know, better than this judge better than us often were people want to get a snapshot of your life when you go to court even with the best evidence in the world.
Jackie Critzer 2:51
Yes.
Scott Cardani 2:51
They’re only seeing a think about it as a snapshot, a picture of your life, in a whole scan of your life. They’re taking one picture and making a judgment about what’s best for your family, for your finances for your life.
Jackie Critzer 3:04
It impacts you for a long time. These are not like this isn’t a traffic ticket. Right? Well, in a few years that will fall off your driving record you can do driving school, know when when you’re asking a judge to make a decision in your family law situation, whether it’s custody, child support, visitation, even divorce, when you’re asking the court to divide assets divide liabilities and to divide parenting time. I think dividing children is just awful, even though most attorneys really approach it that way for their clients. So we need to divide this child’s time. No, you need to divide the parenting time. But I digress. The point remains that yes, you – you know better than any judge in any courtroom, what’s better for your family. Every judge we’ve been in front of from the beach all the way to the Blue Ridge will tell you the exact same thing. It is better for you and your children and your family to make a decision and to reach an agreement. But what do we do once we reach an agreement? We put it in writing.
Scott Cardani 3:58
Yes.
Jackie Critzer 3:58
You probably should call a lawyer to have it drawn up. Although they’re going to make it a lot more complicated of an agreement than the agreement you’ve reached your agreement probably has four or five lines. And yes, we agree to this. And we agree to that and this and this and this, then you sign and date.
But why is it not an agreement in that situation? What’s the key? This always missed by people, one person will sign it or they’ll send a letter the other person I agree to this, this this this, both people have to sign it for it’s an agreement. Remember, offer acceptance, it’s still a contract. It’s still an agreement.
Correct.
So both parties have to enter into that agreement by signing the document saying yes, I agree to this. So remember that if you plan on doing it yourself or somewhere other place but didn’t mean to interrupt you.
No, I think it’s great.
Scott Cardani 4:40
We run into it all the time here where some of it bring us an agreement that only one person, maybe it’s what I call a letter of agreement. But really that’s an offer.
Jackie Critzer 4:49
It is an offer.
Scott Cardani 4:49
It’s not agreement until you sign it say yes, I accept.
Jackie Critzer 4:52
Even if the person says they’ll come in and they’ll bring the letter or they’ll bring the email this right here it says this is what this is what we’re going to do. We might say, Well did you respond and say, Yes, I agree to your terms? Or did you print it out? Sign it? Well, no.
Scott Cardani 5:05
Well, He said so.
Jackie Critzer 5:06
But that’s what Scott’s talking about is for it to be an agreement. You need it to be in writing. There’s so many formalities. But in writing signed, most of the time, we have our agreements, notarized their data, they have proper formalities, and then to prove to really protect you and protect the other person, and to make the contract or the agreement enforceable. So yes, you can reach an agreement even up until even when you’re standing in the courtroom, you can reach across the aisle and say, Hey, can we talk for a moment? Most judges are going to say, Oh, sure, you think you can reach an agreement? Well, I’m glad to give you five or 10 minutes, and sometimes in lawyer time, that’s like 30 or 40 minutes, maybe longer. But it’s always better that way. So the short answer. And all of that is yes, you can reach an agreement, you can avoid a judge making those sorts of decisions for you and your family. But it is best to have that agreement drawn up, I would argue by it by an attorney who knows what they’re doing, who knows the formalities of making the four corners of the document, we call it enforceable, and not just unenforceable. So give us a call when you have questions about agreements and what needs to be in them and, and we’ll be glad to help you walk through it. But more than likely, we’re going to suggest that you let us memorialize or put into writing the agreement you’ve reached. And sometimes oftentimes, you can even avoid going back to court, going to court the first time or even going back to court can be avoided entirely if you have that agreement drawn up.
Yeah it’s a it’s a really good thing. It’s really positive. And like Jackie said, Number Two about this is don’t feel forced into an agreement. You know, that’s another good thing to come to a lawyer and just talk to him say, we want to do this agreement. Here’s what we’re thinking of. And sometimes we’re thinking about things you’re not thinking about, because we’ve done hundreds of these.
OR thousands…
Scott Cardani 6:46
So it’s really important to reach out to Critzer Cardani, and get really good legal advice. So you know what you’re signing, you may think you know what you’re signing. But in the end, you may not know what you’re signing. So that’s really important. In the future, we’ll probably talk about specifically marital agreements, custody agreements in the very specific nuances, but today, we just wanted to talk about – Can you reach an agreement? We hear that all the time, you wouldn’t believe how many often when we’re introduced? Are you a lawyer? Hey, I have a question for you. And it’s often can we reach an agreement we’ve been fighting for years. Can we just agree? And the answer is always yes.
Jackie Critzer 7:21
If if both parties do agree. We appreciate you listening today. We look forward to chatting with you again. Be sure and like and subscribe.
Scott Cardani 7:28
Have a good day. Thank you.
What To Do When… Outro 7:30
We hope you’ve enjoyed this episode of What To Do When… For more episodes, be sure to subscribe to our podcast and we encourage you to check archives to listen to previous topics. Tune in next week for a new episode and some fresh perspective from Critzer Cardani.
Need Legal Representation? Contact Critzer Cardani.
We look forward to helping you in this venture and Good Luck!
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