The Law Office of Russell Knight
Divorce Attorney Naples FL
The Law Office of Russell Knight is based out of Naples, Florida and serves all of Southwest Florida’s family law needs and matters. We recognize that divorce and other family law issues are a stressful and sensitive situation that requires both professional expertise and compassion. You don’t just need a divorce lawyer in Naples, Florida. You need legal advice and representation by someone who recognizes exactly where you are, the next steps to take, and where you need to be at the end of this process. Call us today to talk about how your family got to the point of divorce and how I can help you have a successful Naples divorce.
The Law Office of Russell Knight
Divorce Attorney Naples FL
The Law Office of Russell Knight is based out of Naples, Florida and serves all of Southwest Florida’s family law needs and matters. We recognize that divorce and other family law issues are a stressful and sensitive situation that requires both professional expertise and compassion. You don’t just need a divorce lawyer in Naples, Florida. You need legal advice and representation by someone who recognizes exactly where you are, the next steps to take, and where you need to be at the end of this process. Call us today to talk about how your family got to the point of divorce and how I can help you have a successful Naples divorce.
Call (239) 202-0455 for a FREE No Obligation Consultation.
Work With Attorneys Who Know Naples, FL Family Law
Why Hire Our Naples FL Divorce & Family Law Firm
Free Consultation
Contact our Naples, Florida office for a no-charge, confidential and discrete consultation. Russell Knight will explain where you are at, where you need to be and how you get from here to there. You’ll finally feel relief knowing there is a plan for your family law matter.
Trial Experience
Russell Knight and his staff have extensive trial experience. While compassionate negotiation is an important strategy it is not the only strategy. Your Naples family law lawyer should be stepping away from negotiations and pressing your case in front of a judge or magistrate.
Attorney and Staff Are Spanish Speaking
Russell Knight and his staff are fluent in Spanish. Russell, raised in Canada, is also a French speaking attorney.
Russell Knight y todo su personal hablan español. Podemos hablar con usted en persona, por teléfono o a través de correspondencia escrita en su idioma natal.
Naples Florida Divorce & Family Law
Every married person contemplates divorce. It’s not unusual to imagine your future without your partner. Unfortunately, instead of imagining peace and new opportunities, people simply imagine the divorce process and the parade of horrible possibilities. What if you could ask someone “What will really happen if I get divorced?” and you could get a real, informed answer from someone who cares.
Russell Knight has counseled thousands of families in the last thirteen years as to what they can expect in a divorce or family law matter in Naples, Florida.
Russell Knight clearly and concisely explains a potential client’s right, their spouse’s rights and their children’s rights under Florida’s family law statutes and case law.
Potential clients also receive an immediate and long-term strategy based on Russell Knight’s years of experience, thousands of cases and constant divorce and family law research.
Russell Knight and his staff will ask questions like, “In a perfect world, what kind of schedule would you like for your children? Do you want to stay in the marital home? Do you want to move with your children? What do you imagine your post-divorce life to be like?
At the end of a consultation with Russell Knight, you will finally know the range of possible outcomes in your pending Naples divorce or family law matter. You will know your options as mediation, negotiation and litigation approach. You will finally know what will happen if you get divorced.
The Law Office of Russell Knight, Naples Family Law Attorney
Experience
Russell Knight has been licensed to practice law since 2006. Russell has litigated and settled over a thousand of divorce and family law cases and thousands of families. Creative family law strategies that only experience can teach.
Client Focused
A firm that keeps the family law and divorce CLIENTS as the primary focus. We will protect YOUR RIGHTS, do what YOU need for YOUR case. YOUR best outcome is OUR focus.
Families Come First
Our office prioritizes the needs to protect and put children first in any family law or divorce matter. You’ll find that every conversation will begin with the best interests of the children and every conversation will end regarding the best interests of the children.
Commitment to Value
The billable hour system for divorce and family law lawyers is ripe for misunderstanding and abuse. With our firm, you’ll find clear, reasonable invoices that reflect our commitment to providing value.
Meet Russell Knight and Dustin Sedor
Russell Knight
Primary Areas of Practice:
Specialization: Divorce, Child Support & Child Custody
Dustin Sedor
Primary Areas of Practice:
Specialization: Divorce, Child Support & Child Custody
Speak With A Naples, Florida Family Law Lawyer
Schedule a FREE, no-obligation consultation with one of our attorneys.
Divorce & Family Law in Naples
Is What We Do
Family Law refers to Florida law, rules, regulations, and court procedures involving the family unit when that unit comes under the purview of the courts.
These laws, rules, regulations and procedures cover everything from who gets to visit children to how a privately held business gets valued and divided.
These determinations must be made, negotiated in the clients favor and, failing that, proven in a Florida court of law.
This requires a body of family law knowledge that is both broad and deep.
Russell Knight’s has years of experience, has worked with thousands of families and developed a near obsession with family law.
Put your family in the hands of someone who values your family as it exists now and will exist in the future.
Put your family and your family’s future in our firm’s hands.
How We Charge For A Naples, Florida Family Law Matter
Beyond the anxiety of losing parenting time, assets or alimony is the fear of an attorney’s bill.
Russell Knight and his team are committed to providing real value to their clients and our invoices will reflect that value.
There are always upwards of 5 people on staff in our offices in Naples, Florida and Chicago, Illinois. The majority of the staff are college educated professionals in Chicago, Illinois and, therefore, most of the work happens in Chicago.
You will be assigned a paralegal who will do the bulk of the work in your case in order to reduce fees, increase efficiency and provide immediate feedback.
The rates are as follows
$ 385 an hour for Russell Knight.
$ 300 an hour for associate attorneys or co-counsels.
$ 125 an hour for paralegals
These labor rates are accounted for on a six minute basis and are explicitly explained within the invoices that are distributed on a monthly basis.
Child Support
Child Support in Florida is determined by a multitude of statutes. The first step in determining child support in Florida is determining whether the non-primary parent has substantial or non-substantial parenting time with the child.
Alimony
In 2011 The Florida legislature made extensive revisions to Florida’s alimony statute but, despite that, alimony in Florida is not calculated in a predictable fashion.
Parenting Time
Since 2008, there is no “visitation” in Florida law. It is instead called “parenting time” which is both a clearer definition of what visitation really is.
Division of Marital Assets
In a Florida divorce, a couples’ assets and liabilities will be totaled and categorized as either being marital or non-marital. Once property is identified as marital the courts will find that, upon divorce, the property should be divided equally.
Top Naples Florida Family Law Articles for 2022
This website will give you a general view of the law matters that a top divorce lawyer in 2021 will view as pertinent content to our practice areas — joint child custody child support, full child custody child support, financial areas, estate planning, and more. Please take the time to view some of the online content we’ve prepared for you. You can search the internet for legal advice, but wouldn’t you rather get your professional association – or P.A. – to provide resources about law matters? This site provides high value resources from one of the top divorce lawyers in Naples and Fort Myers area.
All of these law matters apply to the state of Florida, but we service the Naples and Fort Myers areas. The actual location of our office suite is in the Naples Area. If the articles seem long or use terms you need to understand more about, just chat with us to schedule a free consultation or appointment so we can review those terms and your questions.
Florida Child Support After Age 18
Child support is money owed by one parent to the other parent for the purpose of supporting the child that the other parent is caring for. “In a proceeding under this chapter [DISSOLUTION OF MARRIAGE; SUPPORT; TIME-SHARING], the court may at any time order either or
My Spouse Is Pretending He/She Doesn’t Make Any Money To Avoid Paying Alimony. What can I do in the Naples, Florida courts to stop this?
Divorce is hard. In fact, it’s devastating. While some people distract themselves by throwing themselves into their work, others let their work suffer while they go through the divorce process. So, your spouse may indeed be reflecting this life change in his or her financial situation.…
Bigamy And Divorce In Florida
Bigamy and divorce in Florida. How does bigamy affect a divorce under Florida law?
Cheap Divorce Lawyer Naples FL
Unfortunately, cheap divorce lawyers are not common in Naples, Florida or anywhere else. Still, there are many things you can do to conduct your divorce in such a way so as to minimize costs.
Simplified Divorce
The cheapest divorce lawyer in Naples, Florida is forgoing the use a lawyer entirely.
The Florida family law code of civil procedure specifically contemplates a cheap, uncontested, simplified divorce with its simplified divorce forms.
Truthfully, these simplified divorce forms will provide you with a divorce when there are minimal debts or assets to divide and the division of those assets is crystal-clear. For example, a simplified divorce will allow one person to keep the 401k and the other person to keep the marital home but a simplified divorce form won’t provide any of the necessary instructions on how to do those things exactly, like signing a quit claim deed to transfer the ownership of the house.
If, in fact, the parties wish to split any whole asset, like a 401k, the simplified divorce provides absolutely no instruction on how to process that (you have to divide most tax-deferred accounts via a Qualified Domestic Relations Order if you don’t want to incur a tax penalty.
Additionally, a simplified divorce doesn’t provide forms for allocating parenting time when the parties have children. Children’s lives and a parents’ relationship to them are simply too important to leave to any form especially a simplified one. Each parenting plan should be crafted individually for every particular family and that parenting plan should be expected to be amended as time passes.
Online Divorce Forms
There are numerous services that will take information from you and populate final divorce documents which you are then left to file. These forms are, typically, identical to the simplified divorce forms that the State of Florida provides for free.
Furthermore, these online services presuppose that you are agreed with 100% of the clauses that will be included in the final divorce documents. If you are divorcing your spouse, your days of 100% agreement are probably long over.
Online services do not walk you through the process. They just give you the forms and its presumed that the circuit clerk of court employees will help you take the forms through Florida divorce process.
Mediation
Mediation is mandatory before any actual court hearings (beyond temporary motions) occur in a Florida divorce.
If you make less $ 100,000 in annual income as a couple, you can take advantage of the court-provided mediation at the collier county courthouse. The court provided mediation charges a mere $ 120 per person to use their services for three hours.
The mediator will go back and forth between the two parties as they sit in separate rooms to try to arrive at final agreement between the two parties. Once that final agreement is achieved, the mediator will even write up the final documents and file them in the court for you. The only final step is for the petitioner to ask for and attend the final hearing which the judge or magistrate will usually walk you through.
If the parties have a joint income of more than $ 100,000, the county mediator will not be available and the parties must hire a private mediator. At this income level the parties almost always hire an attorney to represent at least one of them.
How To Hire An Affordable Divorce Attorney in Naples, Florida.
If divorce attorneys are hired in Naples, Florida, you’ll find that they have many different characteristics in how they charge.
Different divorce lawyers charge different retainers to begin a case. A retainer is a requested sum of money that the divorce attorney deposits in a trust account and withdraws as the divorce lawyer earns the money.
In theory, the amount of the retainer should be an estimate as to what the divorce will actually cost. This is rarely the case, however.
A case may be agreed, likely agreed, contested or highly contested. A contested case will almost always exceed any divorce lawyer’s retainer
The better indicator of the cost of a divorce lawyer in Naples, Florida is their hourly rate. Hourly rates seem to vacillate between $ 200 and $ 450 an hour for the lead attorney. These rates are high for any profession and lead to the next logical question: how to reduce the hours an attorney bills on a divorce case in Naples, Florida.
There is only one way for a divorce lawyer to reduce his or her hours and thus be more affordable or even remotely cheap and that is to have staff. Support staff are the people without a license who are supervised by the divorce lawyer. Support staff may be called administrators, secretaries, law clerks or paralegals but they are all doing the same thing: working on a case under a lawyer’s supervision.
This support staff should have a billing rate significantly lower than an attorney’s hourly rate. The more support staff, a divorce attorney indicates that the divorce attorney relies on the support staff to do the bulk of the work.
A licensed attorney should be doing all of the strategy and court work but virtually all other aspects of a divorce case can be done by the cheaper support staff (under the supervision of the licensed attorney, of course).
A divorce attorney should be issuing invoices every month with detailed descriptions of what the divorce attorney and their staff did at specific intervals. If an error or miscommunication happens regarding billing, it should be easily verified and corrected with complete and current invoices.
A good divorce attorney is almost never cheap, especially in Naples, Florida. Costs can be managed and expectations can be set, however. Every person going through a divorce, whether it be in Naples or elsewhere, deserves that from their divorce attorney.
To learn more about the cost of divorce and how to minimize those costs, contact my Naples Florida family law firm to schedule a free consultation.
Call (239) 202-0455 for a FREE No Obligation Consultation.