Q. Does your firm offer free consultations? Yes, we offer one free telephone consultations in Franklin County and Fairfield County Cases, as well as for dissolutions in Delaware County and Licking County. If your situation is in a county or legal area in which we do not practice, we will do what we can to point you in the right direction to find the help you need. You will give the some information about your case to a legal assistant, and then the attorney will call you back at another time for a free 15-20 minute legal consultation. If you and the attorney are missing each other when you return calls, the legal assistant will schedule a time for you to talk.
Q. Does your firm handle cases in my city or county? Or do you only work in Columbus and Franklin County?
Our firm helps clients in Franklin County and Fairfield County. We also handle dissolutions in Delaware County and Licking County.
Q. What is an Ohio State Bar Association Certified Family Relations Specialist?
Approximately 100 attorneys in Ohio have been designated as OSBA Certified Family Relations Specialists. In addition to numerous other requirements (how long the attorney has practiced law, how much of the attorney’s practice is family law, additional continuing legal education classes, recommendations of peers, judges and/or magistrates, being in good standing, etc.) , to become an OSBA Certified Family Relations Specialist, an attorney must take and pass a written exam administered by the Ohio State Bar Association covering multiple areas of family law in depth, including:
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CALL NOW at (614) 225-9316 or contact us by e-mail.
Q. If I request a consultation, does that mean I have to hire you?
No. It means that you have questions that you would like us to answer for you.
CALL NOW at (614) 225-9316 or contact us by e-mail.
Q. Should I send you an e-mail, documents or information about the facts of my case?
You should not send us an e-mail with the details of your case until you have called our office and let us do a conflict of interest check. We need to make sure we have not had a consultation with anyone else involved in the case. We cannot agreed to confidentiality regarding your facts or documents until we have done a conflict of interest check. If you e-mail us about your case, just give us your name and the type of case, and a phone number and/or e-mail where you can be reached. Likewise, don’t mail, fax or deliver any documents or information until you have spoken to a member of our office and they have confirmed we do not have a conflict of interest. We do not do e-mail consultations.
CALL NOW at (614) 225-9316 or contact us by e-mail.
Q. If I have court documents that related to my consultation, what documents should I send you?
If you have court documents, or papers from the child support enforcement agency, discuss those with the legal assistant when you call. Those documents may be relevant to your legal consultation.
The attorney may need to look over these documents during your consultation and discuss your options with you. If you prepare a list of all of your questions, bring it with you to the consultation.
CALL NOW at (614) 225-9316 or contact us by e-mail.
Q. Will I be involved in my own case?
YES! Regardless of which area of family law you need our help with, we need your help to be the best attorney we can be for you. We want your help gathering and organizing information and documents. We want your help to put together the history of your case. You need to be an active member of your legal team to get the best result.
Q. Does your firm use mediation?
Yes! Where the parties have a good faith desire to resolve the matter, mediation can be very successful. Even before the parties try mediation, they can simply have a meeting with both parties and a mediator to try to work things out. If you start with the small thingsand work your way up to the big things, you’d be surprised what you can reach agreement on. If you can agree on some things and leave the rest for the court decide, you can still save yourself a lot of time, heartache and money.
Unless the case is truly unresolvable by agreement and mediation is being offered simply for purposes of delay, mediation is a good thing. If you want to go to mediation quickly, and on your own terms, rather than wait for mediation to go through the courts, you can hire a mediator on your own. We would be glad to give you a referral for this. In some ways, this is preferable, because the mediator does not make a report to the court about whether an agreement was reached. Mediation can resolve a lot of conflicts without the expense of a trial. Even where the conflict is not resolved, mediation rarely makes the conflict worse. For more information on mediation, see this article:https://cornwell-law.com/07/ohio-mediation/
CALL NOW at (614) 225-9316 or contact us by e-mail.
Q. How long have you been practicing Family Law?
Virginia Cornwell has been practicing family law since 1999. She has been a Ohio State Bar Association Certified Family Relations Specialist since 2007.
Q. Is your firm able to argue my case in the Supreme Court of Ohio?
Yes. Virginia Cornwell is able to argue cases before the Supreme Court of Ohio.
CALL NOW at (614) 225-9316 or contact us by e-mail.
Q. My daughter or son’s school and/or pediatrician will not give me any information about my child. Is this the type of case that your firm handles?
Yes.
Q. Does you firm accept credit cards?
Yes. We accept Mastercard, Visa, Discover and American Express . We also accept cash, cashier’s checks, personal checks and money orders.
CALL NOW at (614) 225-9316 or contact us by e-mail.
Q. Do you give consultations over the telephone?
Yes, we give telephone consultations.
Q. What are your hourly rates?
As of May, 2020, Virginia Cornwell’s hourly rate is $330 per hour.
Q. How much is your retainer? How much will my case cost?
Our retainers vary from case to case, depending on the issues we believe may be involved in your case. That decision is made by Virginia during the consultation, after discussing the issues in your case, the position taken by the other party, the obstacles to resolution, evidence issues in your case, etc.
Just as people are unique, each case is unique because of the people involved. During the initial consultation, you will go over the facts of the case and discuss the dynamic between you and the opposing party. You will discuss your goals, and one of our Ohio Family Law Attorneys will discuss how to best meet your goals. We will discuss how the facts of your case mesh with the current state of the law. Based on our experience, we will give you our advice, and discuss the challenges in your case. The attorney that you meet with will give you a retainer quote. A retainer is a deposit toward your total fees. Without a consultation, we cannot give retainer quotes for contested matters. We know you would like a more concrete answer, but it really does depend on the issues in your case.
Most family law cases are not flat fee cases, they are hourly cases, and the number of hours depends on the case.
CALL NOW at (614) 225-9316 or contact us by e-mail.
Q: Will my spouse or the other party have to pay some or all of my attorney fees?
Sometimes the court will order the other party to pay some of all of your attorney fees. Sometimes the court has discretion to order attorney fees, but in some family law cases, the court MUST order reasonable attorney fees. To discuss the law of attorney fee awards in Ohio Family Law cases with one of our lawyers, you must schedule a consultation.
Q. How long do I have to live in Ohio to file for divorce? How long do I have to live in my county to file for divorce?
Ohio Revised Code 3105.03 states that to file a divorce, a person must have lived in the state of Ohio for six months. Generally, you must have lived in the county you want to file in for 90 days.
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