Family law help in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania
The hardest part is not knowing what happens next.
If your marriage is ending, or someone is asking a court about your children, you are being asked to make very large decisions with almost no information. That is the part that keeps people awake. Not the law. The blank space where the next step should be.
Michael Sowinski is a partner at Rosenn, Jenkins & Greenwald, LLP in Wilkes-Barre. He handles divorce, child custody and support, spousal support, and domestic violence matters. Start with one phone call.
(570) 826-5654 is Michael's direct line at the firm. Making a call is not the same as hiring a lawyer.
2011
Admitted to practice law in Pennsylvania
Partner
At Rosenn, Jenkins & Greenwald, LLP in Wilkes-Barre
1954
The year the firm was founded
The questions you are asking at two in the morning
You may not have said any of these out loud yet. Most people have not.
- Do I have to move out of my own house?
- How many days a week will I still see my kids?
- Can he take money out of the account before I do anything?
- If I hire a lawyer, does that mean we are really done?
- What does something like this cost, and can I afford it?
- She already talked to someone. Am I behind?
- Do I have to go stand in front of a judge?
- Who do I tell first, and what am I allowed to say?
Every one of those has an answer. Some answers are better than you fear and some are worse, and nobody can tell you which is which from a web page. But they are the kind of questions a family lawyer can talk through with you in plain words. Right now the worst thing you are carrying is the silence.
The hard part is usually not the law. It is the order things happen in.
Almost nobody has done this before. So people guess. They move out when they did not need to. They agree to something on a Sunday night because the fight was exhausting. They wait six months because they are afraid that making one call makes it real.
None of that is a character flaw. It is what happens when a person is handed a process nobody ever explained to them, at the worst month of their life, and told to make decisions that will still matter in ten years.
You are not behind because you are slow. You are behind because nobody has sat down and told you what the steps are.
That is a fixable problem, and it is fixable early. It is fixable with a phone call, before anything is signed and before anybody moves anywhere.
Where you might be right now
People call a family lawyer from a lot of different places. See if one of these sounds like yours.
A divorce is starting
Someone has said the word out loud, or papers have arrived, and you do not know what the first move is.
Custody is the real worry
You are less worried about money than about how many days a week you get with your children.
Support is on the table
Money that used to run one household now has to cover two, and nobody has explained how any of that gets decided.
There is a house, a business, or a retirement account
You do not know what is yours, what is shared, or who keeps paying for it while this is going on.
You are afraid of someone at home
This is not only a legal problem and it should not wait. If you are in danger right now, call 911 first.
You are not sure this is a legal problem yet
Nothing has been filed. You just want to know where you stand before you decide anything at all.
If none of those fit, call anyway. Part of what a first call is for is finding out whether yours is the kind of matter Michael takes, and if it is not, whether he can point you somewhere better. Nobody expects you to know that in advance.
What actually happens when you call
For a lot of people this is the scariest fifteen minutes of the whole thing. It should not be. Here is the shape of it.
- 1
Call the number on this page
It is Michael’s direct line at the firm. You do not have to explain the whole story in the first thirty seconds. "I think I need to talk to someone about a divorce" is a complete sentence and it is enough.
- 2
If he is not free, leave your name and a number
Lawyers spend a lot of the day in court and in meetings. Not reaching him on the first try means nothing at all. Leave a number you actually answer, and say whether it is safe to leave a message there.
- 3
Have three things ready for when you do talk
What has happened so far. The one thing you are most afraid of. And your question about what this is going to cost. Write them down first if it helps. People forget everything the moment they start talking.
(570) 826-5654. If you would rather speak to someone at the front desk first, the firm's main line is 570-826-5600.
About Michael Sowinski
Michael J. Sowinski, II is a partner at Rosenn, Jenkins & Greenwald, LLP in Wilkes-Barre. His work covers family law and commercial litigation, and the firm has a family law practice group.
He has been admitted to practice in Pennsylvania since 2011. He is also admitted in the United States District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania. He went to Widener University School of Law and, before that, to King's College.
Before he went into private practice he worked as a prosecutor at the Luzerne County District Attorney's Office. He is a member of the Pennsylvania Bar Association and the Luzerne County Bar Association, and he serves as Vice President of the Luzerne County Child Advocacy Center.
About the firm behind him
The firm was founded in Wilkes-Barre in 1954 by the late Max Rosenn and Harold Rosenn. Max Rosenn later served as a Senior Judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit.
The firm is not only a family law office. It also has lawyers working in business and finance, real estate, estates and tax, labor and employment, oil and gas, personal injury, litigation, and workers compensation.
That matters more than it sounds. A divorce is rarely only a divorce. There is usually a house, or a small business, or a retirement account, or a will that was written for a life that is now changing. At a firm this size the lawyer who knows that part is down the hall.
You can read about the whole firm, every attorney in it, and everything else it does at rjglaw.com. This page is only about the family law side, because that is probably the only part you can think about today.
The office
Rosenn, Jenkins & Greenwald, LLPCross Creek Pointe, 1065 Highway 315, Suite 200
Wilkes-Barre, PA 18702
If you have never been inside a law office before, that is genuinely all it is. A waiting room, a table, and someone taking notes while you talk.
A few honest things before you call
- Calling is not hiring
- You can ask a question and then go home and think about it. That happens all the time. Nobody is signed up to anything by picking up a phone.
- Ask what it costs on the first call
- It is a fair question and you are allowed to ask it plainly. Ask how the fee works, what a first meeting involves, and what it would take to get started. If an answer does not make sense to you, say so and ask again.
- Nobody can promise you an outcome
- Not from a phone call, and certainly not from a web page. Any lawyer who tells you how your case ends before hearing the facts is telling you something they cannot know.
- It is fine to talk to more than one lawyer
- You are about to trust someone with your children and your money. You are allowed to see who you can actually talk to. That is not disloyal and no decent lawyer is offended by it.
This page is attorney advertising. Nothing on this page is legal advice. Reading it, or sending a message through it, does not make Michael Sowinski your lawyer and does not create an attorney and client relationship. Every family is different and every case is different. Nothing here is a prediction about what would happen in yours.
You are not falling apart. You are handling something hard, one step at a time.
The first step is small and it is not the one you are dreading. It is a phone call to find out what the steps even are.
Call Michael Sowinski(570) 826-5654 · Rosenn, Jenkins & Greenwald · Wilkes-Barre, PA
If you are not ready to call, send a short message
Some people would rather write it down first. That is fine. Keep it short, and give a number or an address that is safe for someone to use when they reply.
Michael Sowinski, direct line. The firm's main line is 570-826-5600. His email is msowinski@rjglaw.com.
Rosenn, Jenkins & Greenwald, LLP
Cross Creek Pointe, 1065 Highway 315, Suite 200
Wilkes-Barre, PA 18702
This page is attorney advertising. Nothing on this page is legal advice. Reading it, or sending a message through it, does not make Michael Sowinski your lawyer and does not create an attorney and client relationship.