Your friend's divorce is not YOUR divorce

Several years ago I started running for exercise.  Sometime in about 2005, I started having pains in my right side oftentimes when I was running.  I had some other friends tell me it was probably just "a stitch."  I talked with my doctor, and he was concerned it was a problem with my appendix.  I, however, am stubborn and decided to go with the suggestion that it was probably just "a stitch."  I liked my friend's diagnosis better.  It made me feel better about things and, if correct, it made my life easier.  What did that doctor know anyway?

It turns out, that doctor knew a lot.  A week later, I was laying in a hospital bed with a 3-4 inch cut in my side where my appendix used to be.  I had ignored my doctor (who I paid good money to) and my appendix had started to rupture.  My wife tells me I came close to dying during the operation.  You are probably reading this and thinking I was pretty foolish to listen to my friend.  You are right.  Remember that thought if you ever hire an attorney.

I cannot tell you the number of times I have had clients relate a story about a friend, relative or friend of a friend who had a different result than what was ruled on in the client's case.  Does it happen?  Yes.  Do you know why?  Because every case is different.  The facts are different.  The parties are different.  The lawyers are often different.  The judge is different.  The judge's mood is different (judges are human after all).

Even the law may be different.  Between July 2010 through January 2013, Kentucky debated and radically changed the procedural rules that apply to family law cases twice.  That is not counting the weekly updates and interpretations made to the laws by the court of appeals and supreme court.

Add into this chaotic stew the fact that it is human nature to skew facts in a light that most favors the person telling the story.  Couple this with the confusion that can result from simply retelling a story (remember the old childhood game of telephone?).  You can quickly see how things may shape up quite differently in your case than the story you have been told about your aunt's nephew's sister-in-law's best friend's divorce.

Here is a fact you can rely on.  If you have hired an attorney to represent you in your case, hopefully you did it after researching the attorney, meeting with the attorney and developing a sense of trust in that attorney's abilities.  Presumably, you are paying that attorney for his/her advice.  You should listen to it.  If you do not trust what your attorney is telling you because you have a non-attorney friend who is telling you something different, perhaps you do not trust your attorney as much as you should or as much as you thought you did.


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