[excited2adoptsoon]

I finally found out who my baby's lawyer is...yay!!!! My question is did you all get to meet with the lawyer themselves or did you meet with a representative of the lawyer?

For my last fosterchild I had the lawyers assistant come out many times and I met with her.

For my current child I was told it's a social worker that works for the lawyer.

Is that normal or should I be meeting with the lawyer themself??

[carlychan]

My FS lawyer sent her high school son and her high school "intern." Seriously! So, I guess it is kind of normal to not meet with the lawyer personally. Not so normal to meet with her highschool aged helpers.

[EandDmom]

Our fkids lawyer doesn't even look at me in court. I have a subpeona to appear June 3. I was told if TPR fact finding still goes through that day he will meet with me and talk about what to expect. Middle of May and they still don't know if they are going to cancel it or go with it.
I am hoping if it still goes through he does actually meet with me and I'm really nervous about saying something wrong.

[Chancey]

We have ALWAYS met with the lawyer themselves. They generally come to our home to meet their client. We have had a couple that never make it to our home and never meet their client - which borders on unethical.

I'd say that sending others is somewhat unethical too. My opinion is that the actual lawyer should at least meet their client once.

[Boulderbabe]

Whoa. Not meeting the kid or seeing where the child is placed? That doesn't border on unethical, it IS unethical!

We've been so lucky with my kids' GALs. They have been absolute angels--superinvolved and always 100% for the kids. But if one of my kids had a GAL who never even met his client, I'd show up in court and announce that fact to the judge.

[DoYaReallyThink]

Ours have always come to the house. They meet with us and then are required to meet with the kiddos in private. This new one also took a tour of our home and made sure we had food in the house.

[mamachell]

Our GAL hasn't been to the house but has sent her investigator to the house twice. She did see the baby when I brought some documents to court one time but otherwise wouldn't have met her.

[Yash]

Originally Posted by excited2adoptsoon

I finally found out who my baby's lawyer is...yay!!!! My question is did you all get to meet with the lawyer themselves or did you meet with a representative of the lawyer?

For my last fosterchild I had the lawyers assistant come out many times and I met with her.

For my current child I was told it's a social worker that works for the lawyer.

Is that normal or should I be meeting with the lawyer themself??

I don't know anyone in LA who met the lawyer. The lawyer sends out his or her investigator. The only time I saw my children's lawyers was at court. And the lawyers only saw pictures of my kids, never met any of them in person.

Whenever I emailed the lawyer, I also emailed the investigator too. The investigator usually comes out every six months.

[Nevada Jen]

I am a child lawyer and it is totally and completely unethical not to meet with the child personally. I would say that it is unethical to not meet privately with a child who can talk. The child is the lawyers client. I would not consider sending a non lawyer to meet with "my kids" although I suppose as long as I had met them at least once it would not be illegal or unethical. I would also add, a lot of GAL's are not actually lawyers at all and they are not truely the child's lawyer. They are really more the judge's lawyer as they are charged for representing the child's best interests.

You should ask the "lawyer" who their client is and what it is they are charged with advocating if you can bring it up in a non-confrontational way. Don't get me wrong, my experience has been that lawyers are generally supportive of foster parents and tend to be on their "side" but it really makes my blood boil that folks are passing themselves off as the child's lawyer without meeting their clients.

Of course, as I type this, I realize I have a child client I have never met. I should get around to that!

[greenrobin]

In the 10 kids we've had over 3 placements, I've only had one attorney come to the house. She came, looked around, talked to us and the kids, asked Bubba if he wanted to go home and he said yes. Told me that she felt the kids were in a great placmenet and thanked me for having her here.

In court, she told the judge that she felt it was in the kids' best interest for them to return home--Bubba wanted to go and it was her job to represent her client and follow his wishes. Her client was a 4 yr old boy who was missing his mom--the same mom who physically hurt him and used whatever substance she could find.

The judge disagreed, by the way.

That attorney ran for and was elected to a county position. They have a new attorney now. He's never been to my house, but he visited with the kids after every family visit they had. I have his address, email and phone number.

[Happy_Cat]

Our GAL, the kids attorney, is wonderful, but she has never come to our house. The kids have met with her at her office and we have had numerous phone conversations about the children. She has argued vigorously on the kids behalf concerning some of the crazy things they were doing with visitations. Judge seemed to really listen to her.

[excited2adoptsoon]

So the "rep" showed up and her title was "investigator" just like you said Yash Apparently it must be a county thing and it's done this way in L.A. She did say there's an offical letter I should have received with all the lawyer's contact info so I can contact them direct. I never got the letter so she plans to send me another.

[ScrapMonkey]

For our first adoption, we met with the lawyer for the first time walking into court. For the second, he met us in his office and entertained my children BRILLIANTLY while we signed paperwork. My oldest two still talk about the jelly-ish eyeball he pulled out of his desk drawer! Needless to say, we were much more comfortable with THAT lawyer.

BTW, we adopted from foster care so rules may be different but an adoption is an adoption. AS1 was 3.5 when adopted and DS2 was just shy of 2 years.

[MamaS]

Spiderman had a GAL for 18 months. She never met him, never spoke to me, never visited or sent a representative. She did come to court for every session, and spoke to my lawyer. The only time she spoke out in court was when Spiderman's b-dad requested that I be required to bring him to prison for visits once a month. (Four hours to the prison, two hour supervised visit and four hours home on Saturday.) She couldn't object fast enough and the judge said "No Way."