Fighting For Your Rights And Protecting Your Best Interests
At the Southern California Law Offices of James T. Raetz, our practice is devoted to family law. When you bring us your unique situation, whether it involves divorce, child custody, child support, visitation rights or other domestic conflict, our goal is achieving a positive outcome. Your success is ours.
Below are some examples of how Mr. Raetz has helped his clients:
Our client lost her home because her husband forged her name on the deed to their residence. At trial, Mr. Raetz successfully proved that the husband, who had died before trial, had committed or participated in the commission of the forgery. As a result, the entire property was awarded to our client. When the husband’s estate appealed, Mr. Raetz successfully defeated the appeal as well.
In another case, the girl’s mother blocked our client from being with his daughter on any visit past 6 p.m. once or twice a week. This particular case required an aggressive approach in which Mr. Raetz had to initiate contempt charges against the mother when she repeatedly obstructed our client’s visitation. As a result of Mr. Raetz’s hard work on his behalf, our client now enjoys joint physical and legal custody including vacation time and overnight stays with his daughter. Child support was also modified accordingly.
In another recent appeal filed and pursued by our office, Mr. Raetz succeeded in reducing his client’s spousal support obligation from $1,900 per month to $0. In this case, our client retired after entry of judgment of dissolution of his marriage. Upon retirement, he sought a reduction of his spousal support obligation. Although his ex-wife was earning more than him post-judgment, the trial court ordered continued spousal support at the same amount. Mr. Raetz filed a written appeal and appeared for oral agreement before the appellate court. He persuaded the appellate court to reverse the trial court’s decision. A new hearing date was set at the trial court level on the issue of reduction of spousal support. Before the hearing date, Mr. Raetz successfully negotiated a permanent termination of spousal support for our client.
In yet another rather difficult battle, Mr. Raetz represented the mother of two minor children. Our client’s ex-husband sought primary physical custody of the children a few years after the divorce was finalized. In addition, the ex-husband was self-employed and was concealing the extent of his income so as to avoid paying additional child support. We successfully opposed the custody issue so that our client retained primary physical custody of both her children. Upon uncovering his income after a thorough investigation and use of a forensic accountant, we substantially increased the monthly child support amount owed to our client and also recovered reasonable attorney fees and legal costs on her behalf.
If you need effective legal help to maneuver through difficult family law matters from contested divorces and equitable division of assets to enforcement of child support or questions of paternity, call the Law Offices of James T. Raetz at (310) 292-3087 or (949) 623-8410.