DAILY TOOL: Funding Justice — Where Do you Go When You Don’t Have the Money to Hire an Attorney?

TOOL OF THE DAY: Crowdfunding Tools – Money to Hire an Attorney — FundedJustice

CATEGORY: Family Law

Funded Justice is a crowdfunding site started by Attorney Michael A. Helfand in Illinois. This site is unique to those needing to raise money for legal needs. Other crowdfunding sites like GoFundMe do not specialize in this area. And sites like Kickstarter and Indiegogo are more for creative projects. So Funded Justice hits the niche market that is important to all of our readers — where do you go when you don’t have the money to hire an attorney.

Michael writes on his blog that he started this site because “At least once a day, I would receive calls from good, honest people with lots of problems who were getting screwed over by the legal system.  A person in need of a divorce who couldn’t afford a lawyer due to a spouse taking all of the marital funds.  An older gentleman, who committed a crime as a teen but had turned his life around, and couldn’t afford to get a pardon.  A consumer who was being bullied by a large corporation.”

Michael believed that many of these people would prevail if they could just afford the right legal assistance. He realized that he couldn’t help them all and that “What typically happens is one of three things: people just give up, they try and represent themselves but end up digging a big hole, or they hire a cheap attorney with no experience who makes the situation worse.   was frustrated not being able to help people who came to him with issues that he felt they would prevail in if they just had the money to get a lawyer.”

So Michael started Funded Justice, a crowdfunding site focused on helping people with these legal issues. This is a site dedicated to helping you raise funds for your legal cause. You will still have to do all your own marketing and post your campaign to your friends and supporters just like you would on any other crowdfunding site. It is free to sign up but there are fees on the back end after you have raised money. You can read their terms and fees when you start your campaign.

You might be wondering, “Does this site work?” I did find some successful campaigns on this site.

One mother successfully raised funds to help her get away from a narcissist who had seized all of their money and assets. She just needed funds to help her pay an attorney to file with the court to gain access to these funds so that she could pay for representation during her divorce. She vowed to pay everyone back for assisting her in this. It is not a requirement, by the way, to promise to pay anyone back. This mother just did this because she wanted to and perhaps it helped her raise the funds that she needed, as I noticed she did mention that she had already gotten a thousand loaned to her from her mother, but still raised the full amount she asked for on the campaign.

And just like any other crowdfunding site, your campaign is only going to be as good as your marketing and how many people you have to share it with, and how good the people you share it with are at sharing it with others and getting others to take interest in funding your campaign. Of course, we never know which ones might go viral. That’s always nice since you don’t have to market those. But don’t count on it. It has been common for most divorce legal issues to not stir much support or interest from the general public. We are excited to see if creating a campaign on this site will be any different.

BOTTOMLINE: Regardless of how much money you have, this doesn’t mean that you will be hiring an attorney who knows how to incorporate the constitutional arguments to protect you from excessive legal expensives and unnecessary government intrusion. I’ve known people to spend over $100,000 and they didn’t get this protection, but instead the attorneys just caused that parent to pay for every known study and discovery method that they could employ. They just created more paperwork and more litigation.

For all of you wanting to protect your constitutional family rights and avoid the devastation that still happens to even people who have money for the legal battle, money alone is not going to fix that. This funding site does not change the fact that even if you have money for an attorney, that most attorneys are not protecting your constitutional rights to be free from government intrusion into your private family decisions. So use your money that you raise wisely or you won’t be able to raise enough money to restore the rights that you just paid to have stripped away from you. Frame your case up right by planning to raise enough funds to also invest in learning your family rights (your constitutional parental rights and your child’s rights).

We work with you and your attorney to integrate your constitutional protections into your written pleadings, oral pleadings, and presentation of your case. So don’t forget to add into the cost for your legal representation the cost to train your attorney on how to protect you from undue burdens and unnecessary process. This investment could save you hundreds of thousands of dollars.

You can find the crowdfunding site here: Funded Justice

Thanks Glen Gibellina with Why Dads Matter for telling us about this tool!

 

*We are not attorneys so you need to seek legal assistance and ask an attorney about your rights.