Elizabeth, NJ Divorce Law Firms & Lawyers

Generally, property division is not modifiable after a divorce. Matters relating to the children are, however. Your out-of-state decree can be registered here and enforced. It can be modified here under certain circumstances, as well.

The first question is whether or not the information was pertinent to your case. If it was, then the next question is whether or not the billing was reasonable. In most law offices .1 hrs is the minimum billing unit (6 minutes) and most fee agreements will spell that out rather clearly, it simply is too cumbersome to try and bill in units of less than tenths of an hour. It sounds like you had three billing increments of .2, .1, and .1 with an attorney billing rate of $350 per hour, which is about the minimum possible billing for something like what you have described. In my practice, I frequently round these down or combine something like this into one entry, but some people insist on seeing every individual charge, which is your right as the client. If this truly bothers you, then you and your attorney should have a meeting regarding going forward because in most cases billing entries like this are very common and you and your attorney are likely going to run into a number of difficulties in the future if you find this billing to be "ridiculous". You have not mentioned how far you are in the proceedings, but in the scheme of most litigation an entry of .4 hours is a small fraction of the overall cost. I am a sole partner and owner of my firm so I have the ability to absorb or give a courtesy to the client for entries like this but depending on the content or nature of the information exchanged in your 10 sentences I would consider the billing within the bounds of reasonable. Obviously if it had little to no bearing on any issue in your case, this would be a different story. You certainly have a right to ask to have the amount reduced, but if one of my clients questioned my bills over something like this, I would likely refund whatever retainer was remaining and request that they find different representation because the two of you are obviously not on the same page.

In order for the divorce to go through, he will have to prove that he has served a copy of the complaint on you.  You will have to make sure that the court orders that the insurance stay in place until the divorce is finalized.