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Bonnie Mantel here from Primus Family Law, and this is another episode of Family Law Matters. Today we are pleased to have with us Tanner Songer. He is our senior, senior, senior paralegal.

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He’s like, he’s really the shizzle, people. Okay, this guy is amazing. And for all of you out there who are trying to poach him, lay off.

Tanner, how are you doing today? I’m doing well. How are you doing? I’m okay. As you know, Michael is not here.

He has not been fired. He’s just on a plane coming home from the East Coast. So it’s just you and me today.

All right, that sounds good. All right. So as I said, you’re a senior paralegal at Primus Family Law Group, and you are intricately intricately involved in all aspects of the cases you work on, right? Yes, definitely.

Okay, so what can you tell us? You know, you see a lot of people starting their divorce process and they, do they, they come straight to you or they go to the attorney that you work with? Which, by the way, is Corinne. He works with Corinne from our office. Yeah, so generally they talk to the attorney first.

It’s kind of like an introductory meeting after their consultation. And then after that meeting, generally they come to me and I get them started on all of like the paperwork and everything that we need to actually get everything filed with the court and get the case started. What would you say are some of those things that you really, you know, when they come to you or if you speak to them on the phone and you’re like, let’s set a meeting, I need these things.

What would you say are the five most important things that you need from your clients? Well, Koryn likes to get the case started, like focusing on the financial stuff. So we make sure that the mandatory disclosures and everything get done first. So that requires a lot of different documents.

And I would say like the five most important things or the five most helpful things that we need to start with are their tax returns, like two tax returns, like the two most recently filed tax returns. Also, like current bank statements are always helpful, especially if they can run those little reports where the bank will actually categorize your expenses for you. Just like, you know, rent or groceries or phone bills and that type of stuff is always helpful for the forms that we have to fill out, you know, statements for your bills, especially like if you have like a mortgage, those are helpful because we will need those sooner or later anyway.

So it’s always good to have them at the outset. What about any like documents regarding, I mean, besides documents, do you want to know about, if they have children, what their usual routine with the children is? Is that something you’d want to know up front? Generally, yes. And, you know, we always, usually the attorneys probably talked about that with them already.

But if I don’t have that information, then I’ll probably ask about it. So, you know, if somebody can just, you know, in the process of sending us stuff, if they have any concerns about custody and visitation, sending us an email with their normal routine would certainly be helpful. Would it be helpful also if they had sort of a calendar that they’ve kept showing what that routine is and how long a period of time would you love to see that for? If they’ve kept a calendar, that would be nice.

I haven’t seen too many clients actually providing that, but it would be certainly be helpful to know, especially if there’s any conflict going on or they anticipate conflict starting, it’s helpful to have all that information because then we’re not, it saves clients time and money because then we’re not chasing them for information. So just to recap, I think we’ve got four out of those five. You had said, you know, the financial documents, the tax returns and like their monthly statements.

Do you have any specific amount of time you’d like to see bank statements? Is it like three months or six months? You know, what would be best for you in doing what you do? I would say ideally three months would be helpful. It gives us a good snapshot of what’s been going on leading up to when they actually are going to be filing this stuff. And then it has to be disclosed to the other side, you know, anyway, within probably 60 days or so.

So it’s just better to gather all that stuff up for us at the beginning. And then, like I say, we’re not constantly, you know, chasing the client and asking for more stuff. Because when we ask for the initial, all of our clients, at least in my case, they get a detailed email exactly what they need to provide to us.

So if they can get us all that stuff on the front end, then I don’t have to call and bug them all the time. And that certainly helps save them with some fees, doesn’t it? If you’re not having to redo. So you guys prepare a detailed letter.

So whenever a client comes to Primus and you want these items for them, it’s not like they’re having to take notes, you send them a detailed letter with a list of documents that you guys need to do your job for them. Yes. So they always get, like I say, a lengthy email, it has all the details, like the documents are attached, blank versions, so they can see why we’re asking for these things, what we’re going to ask them to fill out, a list of telling them what documents have to be attached to each form, so they can start gathering those.

And it’s, you know, it’s a lot of stuff. So it usually takes at least a couple weeks for most people to start gathering it. Tanner, that is amazing.

Once again, you know, you’re helping to show how Primus differentiates ourselves from other people and the kinds of things that we do to make it easier for our clients to reduce their stress in this process. Letters with detailed lists and document examples are an amazing way to help our clients. And thank you very much for doing that.

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So if you want to reach out to Primus and see how Tanner or Koryn or anybody else at the office can help you get through this process, you just feel free to call us at 619-574-8000 and we offer a free 30-minute phone consultation. Or you can fill out the form that’s on our website at www.PrimusFamilyLaw.com. Thank you. Thank you.

Bye Tanner.