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. 

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. 

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.

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.

Sorry... I got nothin’ :( 

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.

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:

Apply for and obtain a marriage license

Pick a location (we went to the marriage commissioner’s house) and pay a nominal fee

Sign a form which gets sent off to Ottawa to register the marriage.

There had to be two witnesses present, who signed the form also. They were the commissioner’s husband and friend.

My wife and I had to each speak an oath, basically the “I do” part of the wedding ceremony. The full text of what you have to say is here.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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:

Chances are, laws don’t differ by city. Unless you’re talking about municipal bylaws, most laws are enacted either by the state/province, or the federal government. For example, in Canada the Criminal Code is a federal code, and is the same throughout the country. Googling the city adds nothing to the search. 

Googling the crime itself wouldn’t really tell you much other than what it is. 

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:

Figure out what section of the Canadian Criminal Code deals with treason. (It’s s. 46)

Look up that section in CanLii.

Click the little link next to the section, or if it’s not there, click the “note up” tab at the top and enter the section number you want.

You will get a list of cases where that section of that piece of legislation was considered, and can read for days!

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.