Q: I’m in Nassau county for divorce. My appointed lawyer doesn’t answer anything. How to get rid of him

A: You are going to have to hire a private attorney at your expense. If there is a great dispaity in income you may be able to request that your spouse help pay some of the attorney fees.

A: The law provides that up to your full attorney fees could be paid by your spouse if she is sufficiently "monied" to do so in the discretion of the court. I am not sure how you got appointed counsel on a divorce, but absent your hiring one you like, you can represent yourself or raise the issue of incompetence with the court.

A: Today's divorce court set up does not depend on things being told to a judge. Instead, today's divorce court has a one-size-fits-all model for the typical white working middle class family hip deep in debt with little accumulated wealth and a child or two.

It is highly unusual for anyone in Nassau County to get an "appointed" lawyer for a divorce. Lawyers charge a lot for divorce representation, and perhaps the only way a divorce litigant can get a free attorney is when faced with jailable contempt. Otherwise, the asker gets what she pays for.

Professionals in this field call this type of case a "cookie cutter" where all outcomes are essentially identical. The young mom gets the child(ren), the home, support both child and spousal, while dad gets visitation and persistent exposure to jail either through non-payment of child support or a violation of an order of protection.

Attorneys for the children still run the domestic relations courts. The policy is that the child's words are louder than those of the parents. Parens patriae is a policy where the government owns the child. When parents come to court, they surrender their parental autonomy to the state (the judge) and the judge grants a representative to the child. In the vast majority of cases, that lawyer will say the mother is the better fit for custody. This is intended to knock the wind out of the father's sails and make him more amenable to "settle" his case with the mother essentially giving her everything.

Trials mean very little in divorce cases. When the only issue is custody, there is always more than enough information for the judge to grant custody of the young child to the mother. Personalty like automobiles and furniture are not the issue for divorce court. In higher net worth cases, both sides are always very well represented and a trial will yield noteworthy outcomes for both litigants. However, this is not the case here with this question. The nature of a typical middle class marriage lends itself to the cookie cutter, and even judges are often times baffled why young fathers want trials.

Orders of protection are a standard feature throughout the U.S. as crafted by the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA). This is a procedural gimmick made up of upside down litigation steps: first comes an order, then comes an investigation, and then follows a hearing to determine whether the up-front order was valid to begin with. If to, then the order is vacated, and the claimant goes unpunished for lying. An order of protection is an obstacle to success in a divorce court and it is a persistent risk of jail throughout the proceedings.

As for this asker's question, we do not understand how a divorce litigant got a free lawyer. Getting rid of such an attorney perhaps by a motion to disqualify that lawyer means having to pay for another lawyer. Fees are huge because of the risks each divorce lawyer faces in every court in every case. Activist clients who successfully sought and obtained punishment for their lawyers have elevated fees to astronomical levels and filtered out all but the most determined divorce lawyers to remain in divorce courts.

No matter how the asker proceeds, he must expect government to do all his thinking for him, enter an order of protection for the woman's asking, have a lawyer testify against him on a custody issue, and provide him a trial where nothing happens except loss.