Answer: Whenever you have questions or concerns. Meeting with a lawyer does not by itself commence any separation or divorce from your spouse. I meet with people who just want to know “what if?” and then return to their marriages.
So, you may just be interested in knowing about what your rights would be, or what your obligations may be, if the worst happened. You may want your marriage to continue and want to know what would occur if your spouse does not want it to continue. People are entitled to gather information even if they do not intend to act on it.
You may be concerned about your spouse’s learning that you met with a divorce lawyer. A meeting with a lawyer, as long as the usual formalities have been observed, creates an attorney-client relationship that is privileged and confidential, even if you decide not to hire that lawyer to represent you for anything beyond that one consultation. Privileged and confidential means you cannot be forced, and the lawyer cannot be forced, by legal process, to disclose what either you or the lawyer said during that meeting.
By “usual formalities” for a consultation, I mean that you made an appointment and are meeting without any third parties present. For family lawyers, the custom in this community is that we charge for consultations, they are not free. Those formalities create the expectation of an attorney-client relationship and help to ensure that the conversation is private.
In contrast, a “let me just get him on the phone for 10 minutes” may not be considered formal enough to have created a attorney-client relationship protected by the attorney-client privilege.
While you may not like paying for an initial consultation with a lawyer, particularly in the field of family law, your bang for the buck is great. In that first hour, you are likely to learn a lot of information about the law and how it may affect you. It is worth buying an hour of a lawyer’s time before you make a major decision about your family or your marriage.
