Should I represent myself during my child custody case?
In a lot of these difficult cases where there is a lot of litigation, one of the strategies is to wear down the other parent with needless litigation, constant and chronic papering the other client. People will often run out of money and they are not lost if they have run out of money because they have a legal right to go to court and present their case. It's called being in pro per, or in the East they call it pro se. It's Latin for "I'm my own attorney". Many of the clients that I've had have been in court a lot and have seen how it works, how to behave there, and the importance of filing papers, and what the rules are about that, and the timing of all of these things. I tell people you can work with a paralegal that knows how to do all of that stuff that's far less expensive, and you can learn how to present your own case so you're not paying exorbitant attorney fees and the other side may have, worst case scenario, mean attorney, but that doesn't mean that the judge is going to see it always that person's way. The judge may very well see it your way, so not to give up just because you can't afford an attorney. There's a saying that a person who is their own attorney has a fool for a client. And it's true, the person just doesn't know what they're doing, then they're a fool as a client. But I've seen people many times over the years that have learned how courts worked and have represented themselves very successfully.
