Samuel B. Johnson, Attorney, PLLC

Family Law   

    Family Law - Samuel Johnson's approach to family law, which makes up a significant part of his practice, is to work toward negotiated agreements and reasonable compromises.  

Family law, of course, includes issues of: 

Separation,
Divorce,
Spousal Support,
Child Custody,
Child Support, and
Property Division. 

    Issues of child support, custody, and property division can arise whether two people have been married or not. 

    Samuel Johnson is definitely not the attorney for a client who wants to wage legal war against his or her former partner.  He is not the attorney for the client who will pay a lawyer thousands of dollars in order to avoid paying a penny more to his or her former partner than is absolutely unavoidable.  He is not the attorney for the client who wants to deny the other parent absolutely all access to the children. 

    Samuel Johnson believes that litigation is the worst way to resolve family law issues and strongly supports different forms of alternative dispute resolution.  One model he supports is the mediated divorce.  In this model an experienced and trained, neutral mediator helps a couple work through the issues they face, be those issues entirely financial or be they also related to children.  Once the couple have reached their agreement, one member of the couple hires a lawyer to prepare the needed paperwork and to shepherd the agreement and the divorce through the court system.  The other member of the couple may or may not also hire an attorney as a check against legal pitfalls.  Even where both individuals have their own attorney, legal expense can be kept to a minimum since the agreement has already been worked out.  Samuel Johnson works with and recommends a number of local mediators for couples who want to go the mediation route. 

    Another model is collaborative divorce, and Samuel Johnson is an enthusiastic member of the Triad Collaborative Family Law Practice Group, www.triadcollaborative.com.  In a collaborative law divorce, each member of the couple is represented by an attorney, but the two members of the couple and the two attorneys together sign an agreement that all issues will be negotiated and resolved without litigation and without going to court except to finalize the result.  If the negotiation process completely breaks down, the attorneys are required by the initial agreement to withdraw, and if the couple wants to go to court after all, they have to hire new attorneys.  In a collaborative law approach, each lawyer serves his or her own client by advising the client of the law and about his or her rights, but the lawyers and the clients commit to an open and communicative negotiation process as a foursome working together. 

    If neither a mediated nor a collaborative law approach is used, Samuel Johnson will work with his client and the attorney representing the other partner, attempting to resolve whatever issues present themselves, again if at all possible without going to court.  In such situations, he encourages his client to negotiate directly with the other partner as constructively as possible and tries to bring the same positive and respectful style to his negotiations with the opposing attorney. 

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