Welcome to Family First, the official blog of The Yeatts Law Firm, a family law firm. This firm was founded by me, Patrick K. Yeatts, to assist Alabama families with family-related legal issues. These issues include:
- marriage, civil unions and domestic partnerships
- adoption, surrogacy and guardianships
- child abuse, child neglect and child abduction
- termination of relations and ancillary matters, including divorce, annulment, property settlements, alimony, child custody, child visitation, child support and alimony awards.
- juvenile adjudication
- paternity testing and paternity fraud
- legal issues surrounding LGBT relationships
While I am a new lawyer to private practice, I worked with Alabama families for years as a not-for-profit lawyer with The Legal Aid Society of Birmingham, an organization whose mission is to provide legal assistance to children who were removed from abusive homes or caught in the middle of custody battles. As one might expect, child welfare is some of the most heart-wrenching work that any lawyer can practice. However, its rewards far out-weighed its emotional costs when a child finally found a safe and stable home with either a rehabilitated parent or a new adoptive family.
Although I am no longer in civil service, my experiences as a child advocate taught me an important lesson: that a parent’s interests should always be aligned with the best interests of their children. This philosophy may seem obvious, but it is often lost when a parent’s marriage ends in divorce. My firm markets itself as “a boutique law practice with a fresh approach to family law in Alabama.” Barring the possibility that your spouse poses a real danger to your children, if you are a parent who is seeking a divorce attorney who can help you achieve retribution by slinging mud at your estranged husband or wife, then I am not the attorney for you. Like it or not, while a divorce may sever the legal relationship that you and your now ex-spouse once shared, in practice that relationship will always exist so long as a child was born of that marriage. Petty attempts to disparage one another will only result in heartbreak and more importantly, hurting your relationship with your children. However, if you a parent who is looking to divorce, but hope to maintain decent, amicable relations with your ex-spouse for the sake of your children, then call The Yeatts Law Firm. We can help.