Pittsburgh Family Law Services, P.C. Blog

Although the vast majority of family law cases settle without needing a trial, sometimes that question cannot be avoided and you have to decide whether you will continue attempting to reach an agreement or whether you simply need a trial.  Your lawyer plays a vital role in helping you decide which decision is in your family’s best interest.  Unfortunately, there is no simple answer that can be given in a blog post; every case is different and litigating may be right in one case but not in another, even if on the surface, the two sets of facts are very similar.  To help you decide what decision is best for you, here are three points that I always consider first when advising a client:  

1.    What is the goal?  Going to trial requires such an investment of your time and resources (both emotional and financial) that it’s really important to know what exactly you’re hoping to achieve.  For example, if you’re a plaintiff in a Protection from Abuse matter, your goal is likely to preserve your safety and give you protection.  Often in these matters, opposing counsel will say you “don’t have a case” or “a judge would never grant a PFA” in an attempt to get you to withdraw your petition.  It’s possible that lawyer is correct, but if your goal is protection, the only way you have a chance of that is to go to a hearing.  If you go to a hearing and the judge agrees, then you will receive a final PFA Order.  If the judge disagrees, then all that happens if your petition is dismissed and you’re in no worse of a position than you would have been if you withdrew it without even trying a hearing.  I always tell my clients that when deciding to litigate, having a goal is critical because it helps you understand why you believe it’s in your best interest.  

2.    Likelihood of success:  not all positions are created equal or have equal likelihood of success.  If, for example, you have a custody case where the other parent is generally a good parent, you have disagreements between the two of you but there’s no safety concern when it comes to your children, and you live relatively close to one another, it’s going to be a hard sell to convince a judge the other parent should only have supervised visits with the children.  You can certainly ask for that and at the end of the day, you don’t know what will persuade the judge.  But if a lawyer knows from their experience that a position is unlikely to succeed, they will heavily discourage you from pursuing litigation, or at least make sure you understand the likelihood of success if you still believe it’s the best option.  

3.    Cost:  It’s no secret that lawyers are expensive and trials are more expensive.  This becomes particularly important in a divorce where couples disagree about a specific amount of money.  It’s true that a difference of $5,000 is no small amount for many, many people.  However, if it will cost at least $5,000 to get an extra $5,000 (or to prevent losing $5,000, then most lawyers will discourage a trial.  Again, there is no way to predict with 100% certainty every single time what a judge or hearing officer would do with a given set of facts.  Most lawyers don’t look at it as giving an accurate prediction; they give you the information you need to make an informed decision and from there, you ultimately decide whether trial is the best choice.  

It’s important to note that every case is different.  There are other factors lawyers consider such as who the judge is, the personality of the client, whether there are likely to be problems in the future, and many others that are too numerous to name.  You as the client always make the final decision and if the lawyer is truly uncomfortable with it, because they know it’s an unwinnable argument, they can (and I have) withdraw from representation.  These points are not an exhaustive list of considerations for trial, but I hope they give you things to think about when deciding what to do.