The Next day in court

Last week I went to court again. It was a great trip once again and proved to me that the family court in my county is very unorganized. We were scheduled to see the judge at 12:00 noon, I thought thet was funny since that is when they usually take lunch. Due to all the times they have changed the times with out notification I called my lawyer as soon as his office opened up. They checked the schedule to let me know there was no change. So at 11:00 am I left work and headed to the court house. I was checking into security and they looked at me funny. "what was your name?" I told them for the second time. "and you are suppose to have court today?" of course I responded, "that was the schedule." Then came the dreaded words, "we do not see you on the schedule." I then asked them if they could let me in so I could talk to the Administrative Assistant, they did so I quickly learned that the vacation time off of work is worthless.
I called my lawyers office to find out what they had to say. His assistant, great woman, checked the same online calendar that she had checked earlier in the day. We had been removed. She quickly got off the phone with me and within 10 minutes the court clerck came to me in the waiting room, "Mr. Topia, I just got off the phone with your Attorney and I am not sure how you were removed from the calendar but you will be seen at the scheduled time."

At this point I was a little stressed out, ther are two things to look for in an attorney when you are going infront of family court. The first trait that I noticed about my lawyer that helped me choose him was his compasion. I could tell right away that he understood how emotionally drained I was trying to save my marriage and that I didn't need the additional stress involved with court. He was the first one that would try to relax me and take away as much stress that he could. The only time he pushed stress on me was when I was on the stand and he actually made me cry. But he later told me that he wanted to pull that emotion from me to show the court I wasn't a heartless stereotypical man.
the second trait I noticed about him was he was always confident that his view on the subject was the same as the courts. There were a few times that he talked me out of leaving him because he was letting the ex-wifes lawyer hang herself. Everything she said eventually made my ex look worse and me better. He definatley had the view that if we did what was morally right we would win. It has worked.

So we sat there and waited until 45 minutes later when my name was called. I started to walk into the court room but was then told, "Lawyers only"

For benefit of the doubt I am going to say 5 minutes later, when waiting for court 5 minutes seams like an hour but it only felt like 5 minutes. My lawyer came out with a smile on his face and said let's go where we can talk. As soon as we were in the vacant stairwell he said, she is going to start paying $850/month as of Feb 1st.
So the story of the day ends with a temporary order of $850 Feb 1st, we go back to court in a couple of weeks and they will decide on how much back child support is due.
Keep the faith though all lifes battles and you will make it though.