The Script Lawyer

It depends. I think that if this is a situation where a government agency was having to approve the adoption (i.e., child protective services) really wanted a two-person family, then it could cause the adoption to be scrapped. If the child is particularly in need of two parents - because of severe behavioural issues or developmental problems - then that would be a problem. 

I also think it would depend on how far along the adoption process was, and how many other prospective families were out there.

A lawyer who’s disbarred is not allowed to continue to practice law (obviously) but people who have been to law school have lots of useful skills, such as critical thinking, research, and writing proficiency. Many law school graduates go into politics or business and never practice law.

But you’ve asked what they might do within law circles. I’ve heard of people who aren’t allowed to practice law anymore becoming paralegals or doing other quasi-legal work, such as becoming an advocate. 

Paralegals can fill out paperwork and assist people with legal issues. They are not allowed to give legal advice, but they do a lot of really important work at a far lower hourly rate than lawyers.

Advocates help people out who are dealing with bureaucracies, by coming along with them and talking to the right people, and helping them to get the results they need. They may work in immigration, mental health, etc. 

The main thing is that neither of these jobs are allowed to give legal advice, and they have to be careful not to accidentally misrepresent themselves as being lawyers. Otherwise, they can be sanctioned again by the law society for that. 

Yes, I am. :)

I’m afraid they would be expected to give their legal name, though once they had stated their legal name for the record, they could request to be called by their real name and that sort of request would generally be respected.

I haven’t run into this specific circumstance, but I have attended dozens of court procedures where women go by their maiden names, and it’s normal for people to say that they like to go by a shortened version of their name, or by their middle name. I know these circumstances aren’t the same, but I would think they’d be dealt with the same way.

Yes, this is very feasible, common, and not at all unusual. Any person can be awarded custody of a child. When the mother died, if she didn’t have a will that specified who should take care of the child, and there were no immediate family members able and/or willing to take her, then child protective services would look for another family to take her in. People like close friends and neighbours, if they were willing to take her in, would be looked at seriously. 

If the mother left intentionally she may have sent the child to the friend before going, or the child might have gone to the friend when she found her mother gone. So long as the friend took her in willingly, and made sure she was well-taken-care-of, no one likely would question it.

It would probably help you a lot to look through my custody tag as well.

Sorry... I got nothin’ :( 

This information website about the EU and human rights violations might help a bit?

Yes, they could do this. It’s... a tiny bit complicated by one factor.

A lawyer is sometimes tasked with holding valuable objects or documents for a client. We do this not really because it’s a big part of our job, but because we have a duty of loyalty to the client, tend to have very secure offices, and are overall ethical and trustworthy. Sometimes we might be the one who is in charge of keeping a person’s will safe - that’s a very common one. Once, I was asked to hang on to some jewellery for a client for a short time.

So yes, a lawyer could be asked to hang on to a letter or video in an “in case of my death” sort of scenario. As for what the lawyer would charge, that is up to the lawyer. If they’re just supposed to keep the item and not do anything with it, then it doesn’t seem to be a big burden to me. But lawyers usually charge by the hour - anywhere from $200 to $1000 - so think about how much work this lawyer is being asked to do. IDK, my vague, personal feeling is that somewhere in the neighbourhood of $500 would be reasonable. It could be more or less.

You tell me how the lawyer would know if the person went missing or died? If the lawyer is expected to check in periodically and make sure the person is OK, then that runs up the cost. I think it would probably be up to the person to contact the lawyer from time to time, or get someone else who would know when something happened to contact the lawyer on their behalf if something did indeed happen.

Years and years going by isn’t really a problem. You would want your character to actually retain a firm to do this, not just one lawyer. That way, even if the lawyer moved to a different firm, or died, the firm itself would hold the item. The character would sign a retainer agreement that said that the firm would hold the item either until she reclaimed it, or was known to have died, in which case they were to do X and Y. It’s no different from a will, actually - firms hold wills for decades, and then do stuff when the person dies.

It really depends on where the characters live. Where I am, in BC, the differences between married people and common law people are virtually gone. I married my wife in 2016 after 17 years of being together and it makes no difference at all to our lives. But I understand that in many parts of the US it can make a huge difference for tax reasons, medical reasons, and even custody of children.

You usually have to have some kind of ceremony, but not necessarily a wedding ceremony. In BC, there is a requirement that the two people meet with a marriage commissioner and perform a particular ceremony. You can strip it down to the very basics. In fact, that’s what my wife and I did.

We got married on a cruise ship, but you can’t actually get gay married at sea, because homophobia I guess. Maritime law has yet to catch up with civilized society, but we wanted to have our party on the water with the dresses and cakes and all that jazz. So we had to actually do the legal part before we left Canada. We did the absolute basic most bare bones of what was required, which was:

That’s it. That’s what’s required by law. Everything else is pomp and circumstance.

It depends on where the child lives and what the parents’ will says.

Yes they can be acquitted for lack of evidence. A child’s word alone is not necessarily enough. It happens all the time. The Crown must prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the abuse happened. A child could have lied or been mistaken, or been coached. If there is no other evidence at all of the abuse, then it may not be enough. It depends on how credible the child is.

This is happening with one of my cases right now.

It’s very likely that a lawyer who was found to have been abusive towards a child would not be allowed to practice law any longer. Lawyers are held to a very high ethical standard, and we are not allowed to commit crimes or bring the reputation of the legal profession into disrepute. 

Lawyers who lie, cheat, and steal don’t just get sanctioned for those crimes, but they may be sanctioned separately by our governing body, which is called the Law Society. The Law Society can impose fines, suspend lawyers, or outright disbar them, which means that their license to practice law is taken away.

However, if the lawyer was only accused and was later exonerated and regained custody, they likely wouldn’t be disbarred just for the accusation. The Law Society would certainly scrutinize the situation closely until the matter was straightened out. 

I think that’s up to you. In our world, there are no laws that govern this, because in our world no one can manipulate time. I would expect in a world where time can be manipulated, laws (such as employment law) would evolve to deal with this situation, so I think you can just do what you want with your story.

You’re so welcome!

Yes they can, though they may want to tell someone so that if their family reports them as missing they don’t cause a manhunt. If the police find them, though, and they don’t want to go back home they won’t be forced to do so.

There really isn’t a law that governs this specifically, so it wouldn’t differ by province. This person is under the age of majority (which can vary by province but is either 18 or 19), but is at an age that she is capable of caring for herself and from a practical perspective would be allowed to make her own choice.

She should probably have her paperwork, but if she doesn’t have it for whatever reason, she can get by for a while. She’ll want to order new documents in case she needs them as soon as she’s able, but you can get health care with just the number in a lot of places if you say you lost your card.

Neither. 

Trespass can be a criminal offence as well as a civil tort and it’s super complicated. In fact, there are like 8 types of trespass and only one of them is probably the one you mean. For example, Assault is a type of trespass (it’s one of six types of trespass to person).

What you’re talking about is trespass to land, which is where a person goes on someone else’s property where they’re not allowed. This is not a criminal offence, and so the state doesn’t file criminal charges. It is a civil tort, which means that the property owner sues the person who has trespassed, for damages.

Since the property owner is the one who has to file the civil suit, they will definitely be involved and must list themselves as the plaintiff. They won’t necessarily be in court all the time - usually their lawyer will deal with most of the work. But if there is a trial, it’s likely that the plaintiff would testify, because they must present evidence in order to prove that the character actually was there on their land.

I think it probably depends on where you live. In Canada there is no difference between someone who’s legally common law and someone who is married, so I would expect someone who’s engaged to qualify as common law. But I don’t work in a hospital and part of this may be policy-based. @scriptmedic would definitely know more.

I actually do really want to do a master post on research, but I just haven’t had the wherewithall. I want to give you a couple of tips, though.

Firstly, law libraries are awesome. Some of them have their contents online! Librarians can help you figure out where to look to find the information you need. They’re great!

Also, the internet really, really, really is useful. There are tonnes of websites that have lots of information which is created by government agencies specifically for lay people to read and understand. 

I also recommend that you listen to my podcast episode on legal research. It’s episode 9.

I agree that googling the city and the law is useless. There are a couple of reasons for that:

So you need to get more clear on what it is you want to know.

In doing research, particularly for this blog, I have found that the more specific the question you put into Google, the better the results. It’s actually possible to google entire sentences, and oddly helpful! For example, for a recent ask, I literally typed into Google “What happens to life insurance money if the beneficiary is dead” and got the answer instantly. 

If typing general information sentences into Google isn’t doing it for you and you need to get deep into the nitty-gritty legal stuff, you should be looking for websites that collate the legislation and case law. For Canada, you can use http://www.canlii.org. There are likely similar websites in different countries. Sometimes they are behind a paywall, but CanLii is free.

Websites like CanLii use boolean search strings to search the cases and legislation for what you’re looking for. For example, if you want to read cases on surrogate parents, you can just type that phrase in and see what happens. You can and should use modifiers like AND, OR, and quotations to help refine your searches. 

You can also do something called “noting up” with legislation. If you know the particular section of a piece of legislation that deals with what you’re looking for - for example, the person has committed treason and you want to know more about the kinds of cases that have been decided where people committed treason to get a better sense of what sort of evidence was used, what kinds of sentences were handed down, etc., you would do the following:

Keep in mind that just because a case mentioned a particular term or section of legislation, doesn’t mean it’ll be helpful to answer your question! Sometimes the case only mentions it to say it doesn’t apply, but it still shows up in the list.

Good luck!