How to hire a family law attorney for an annulment based on immigration fraud
Introduction
For victims of immigration marriage fraud, seeking an annulment based on immigration fraud is typically an excellent first step for holding the perpetrator accountable, minimizing your liability, and achieving justice.
Annulments are creatures of state law and requirements vary from state-to-state. In general, unlike a divorce which terminates a valid marriage from the date of judgment, an annulment invalidates the marriage ab initio (“from the beginning”).
Securing a final judgment of nullity in state court can have far-reaching consequences for both you and the perpetrator. For you, an annulment may invalidate the marriage, eliminate any spousal support, and protect your assets from the perpetrator. For the perpetrator, any immigration benefits they received as a result of the invalid marriage should be denied and/or revoked under federal law. This can also lead to their removal from the country.
Step 1 – Do you need a family law attorney?
Your first step is to determine whether you actually need a family law attorney. When it comes to any type of litigation, hiring an attorney is typically wise. In special cases, such as simple or stipulated matters, representing yourself may be a viable option. Annulments are generally not one of these cases.
Annulments are complex, uncertain, and require more time, money, and effort than traditional divorce cases. For starters, annulment law is often unclear even for family law attorneys. Unlike standard divorces, annulments have specific elements and standards of proof.
Although your state may have an annulment statute, understanding how the statute has been interpreted requires legal research based on the facts in your case. This research should be conducted by someone who is capable of determining answers to questions such as:
Are annulments governed by statute, common law, or both?
What are the grounds for annulment in your jurisdiction?
What are the elements, standards, and burdens of proof in your case?
How have courts interpreted the applicable laws?
What facts are relevant and material in your matter?
Has any of the source material been superseded or overturned?
Is there any persuasive precedent outside of your jurisdiction?
Is there any secondary source material that could be instructive?
More practically, the answers to these questions are often only found in special subscription legal databases such as Lexis-Nexis, Westlaw, and Fastcase which aren’t readily accessible to the general public (although you can explore free sites like CourtListener or FindLaw). Therefore, you may not have the capability of finding these answers yourself.
Even if you’re able to determine that an annulment is legally possible, you’ll need to understand the rules and procedures for the litigation. These rules and procedures must be carefully followed so your annulment will survive scrutiny by trial courts and future appellate courts. For example, you’ll need to draft and file a legally valid petition with the appropriate court. You’ll need to serve the petition on the perpetrator so they are notified of the action.
Once litigation has commenced, you’ll need to determine what evidence is available and/or desirable to help you prove that immigration marriage fraud occurred. You’ll need to understand the discovery rules so you can collect and analyze this evidence in advance of trial. Eventually, you’ll need to persuade the court that the evidence you painstakingly collected and organized can actually be introduced over the objections of your spouse and his/her legal counsel.
When it comes to immigration marriage fraud, obtaining an expert witness to testify as to the likelihood of fraud in your matter can be a critical and determining factor in securing your annulment.
Given the complexities of the law, rules, and procedures related to annulments, securing a competent family law attorney is typically one of the first steps on the path towards a successful annulment.
Step 2 – Understand the unique challenges
Your second step is to understand the unique challenges that you and your family law attorney are likely to face. Family law attorneys who handle divorces are a dime a dozen. Family law attorneys who handle annulments are rare.
Finding a family law attorney with experience handling annulments based on immigration marriage fraud is like finding a needle in a haystack. As a result, identifying and recruiting a local family law attorney to handle your annulment is likely to be your single biggest challenge.
Exercise caution and take this process seriously. After years of representing victims of immigration fraud, one of the most common complaints our firm hears from clients is about their own local family law attorneys.
Common complaints we hear include:
Strategy Disagreement: “My attorney wants a divorce, not annulment.”
Lack of Expertise: “My attorney doesn’t understand the immigration issues.”
No Investigation: “My attorney hasn’t done any investigation of the fraud.”
Lack of Empathy: “My attorney has no empathy for what happened to me.”
Weak Advocacy: “My attorney refuses to make relevant arguments.”
Poor Communication: “My attorney doesn’t respond to my inquiries.”
To be clear, a local family law attorney may have legitimate reasons for steering you away from an annulment and towards a divorce. For example, your attorney may conclude you’re not eligible for an annulment under state law. Even if you’re eligible, your attorney may conclude that your likelihood of success is so low that it’s a poor use of resources to proceed. In either case, your attorney should clearly explain their rationale. If their rationale is unclear or inconsistent, consider seeking other counsel before proceeding.
Unfortunately, some of the other common complaints are indicative of unethical behavior by local counsel. Any attorney you hire is ethically obligated to vigorously advocate for your interests, to keep you reasonably informed, to respond to requests for information in a timely manner, and to treat you with dignity and respect. If your attorney fails to meet these basic obligations, consider hiring a different attorney.
Examples of unethical reasons for not pursuing an annulment include:
Conflict-of-interest: A local family law attorney who also practices immigration law may be concerned about setting disadvantageous legal precedent for other clientele.
Laziness: A local family law attorney may prefer a divorce solely because it’s less work for them.
Biases: A local family attorney may have conscious or unconscious political or cultural biases that minimize harm done by foreign nationals seeking immigration benefits.
There are also more practical explanations for why a family law attorney may appear hesitant or uncertain when it comes to pursuing an annulment based on immigration marriage fraud.
Family law attorneys specialize in family law, not immigration law. Immigration law is one of the most complex bodies of law in the U.S. Code. Understanding how immigration marriage fraud works requires a deep understanding of the complex spousal-based Green Card process. A family law attorney can’t reasonably be expected to fully understand this process without additional expertise.
If a family law attorney doesn’t understand this area of law or how marriage fraud schemes work in practice, they will naturally be hesitant about pursuing an annulment. If they don’t know what evidence to look for, how to collect it, or what questions to ask the perpetrator at a deposition or trial, they’ll similarly be hesitant to conduct a meaningful investigation. They may even be unaware that expert witnesses can testify about immigration fraud on your behalf.
In addition, if they’re people-pleasers, they may be fearful of letting you down. If they’re prideful, they may be reluctant to admit they don’t have all the answers.
There’s a simple solution to these practical challenges. In our experience, the best way to maximize your chance of success for obtaining an annulment based on immigration marriage fraud is to hire a two-person legal team consisting of one local family law attorney and a non-traditional immigration attorney who represents victims of immigration fraud (not a traditional immigration attorney who represents foreign nationals).
Your two attorneys should work in tandem like two blades of scissors throughout the duration of your case. By adding an immigration attorney to your legal team, you reduce the impossible burden on your family law attorney and free them up to focus on what they do best – advising you on state law, navigating the court system, preparing court filings, representing you in court, and vigorously advocating for your interests before judges and juries.
While your family law attorney should take the lead role, your immigration attorney should provide litigation support, as needed, by:
Spotting issues
Advising on immigration-related issues
Sharing and conducting targeted legal research
Investigating immigration fraud leads
Preparing immigration-related discovery requests
Preparing immigration-related cross-examination questions
Identifying one or more expert witnesses who can testify at trial
Serving as a resource for the family law attorney
Understanding this ideal team structure for this unique type of case is important because it informs some of the characteristics you should seek in a family law attorney you choose to hire, such as the ability and willingness to collaborate within a complimentary team structure.
Step 3 – Develop a preliminary list of eligible attorneys
Your third step is to develop a preliminary list of 25 to 50 eligible attorneys in your local area, if possible. Consider using a simple Excel spreadsheet with initial headings for “Attorney name”, “Law firm name”, and “Website”.
Keep in mind, your goal at this stage is not to make a hiring decision, it’s simply to generate potential leads. This list is intended to be as broad as possible, focusing on three main criteria.
Jurisdiction: Is the attorney licensed to practice law in your state?
Practice area: Does the attorney practice family law?
Local area: Does the attorney practice in your local area?
To find attorneys who meet these initial criteria, you generally have two places to look – personal referrals or online research.
Personal referrals (or “word of mouth”) are typically the gold standard for finding quality service providers. Attorneys are no different. If you happen to know a friend, family member, or associate who knows and trusts a family law attorney in your local area, by all means add them to your list.
Otherwise, online research is typically your best bet. Start with an established search engine like Google to begin building your list. Consider using search terms such as “family law attorney in [city], [state]”.
The reason to start with a broad search term like “family law attorney” – rather than the more specific term like “annulment attorney” – is because some family law attorneys may not even advertise annulments as a service given their rarity. Therefore, if you narrow your search too much you may miss potential leads in search results. Instead, keep your search as broad as possible at this stage to maximize your initial pool of leads.
If you live in a big city like Los Angeles, Houston, or New York, you may not have the luxury of keeping your search broad. You may end up with thousands of results, making your preliminary list unmanageable. Use your common sense. If your initial results are overwhelming, narrow your search term to “annulment attorney in [city], [state]”.
Conversely, if you live in a small town, you may need to expand your geographic search to include a nearby metro area to generate a list large enough to be effective. Once you’ve optimized your search terms, start populating your spreadsheet.
Aside from Google, there are also online lawyer directories such as Martindale.com, Avvo.com, or Lawyers.com. These sites allow you to search and filter attorneys by practice area and geographical location. Continue adding eligible attorneys from these sources to your spreadsheet, ignoring any duplicates.
There is also one highly effective referral source to be aware of, although it typically is the most expensive. You can hire a law firm to search court records in your jurisdiction to identify attorneys who have successfully litigated an annulment. This serves as a de facto paid referral service, but can yield highly targeted results.
Step 4 – Narrow your list to qualified leads
Your fourth step is to narrow your list down to attorneys who are worth your time to interview. These attorneys may be referred to as “qualified leads”.
The three key criteria at this stage include:
Annulments: Does the attorney explicitly advertise annulments as a service?
Reviews: Have past clients provided positive ratings or reviews?
Credibility: Is their website indicative of a credible professional?
You could add additional columns to your spreadsheet at this time to reflect and track these additional criteria.
Start by visiting the websites of each eligible attorney on your list. If they don’t have a website, that can be a red flag. If they do have a website, gather background information about each attorney such as their experience level and what specific services they offer.
Pay special attention to whether the attorney explicitly list annulments as a service. If not, it’s not necessarily a deal-breaker, but you could deprioritize them on your list. On the other hand, if they do advertise annulments, make a note. If they provide examples of successful annulment cases, make them a high priority.
Aside from the content of the website, pay close attention to the overall design. How they present their law firm to the public can provide valuable insights into the attorney’s values, level of professionalism, commitment to security and confidentiality, clarity of communication, and attention to detail.
Some red flags for law firm websites include:
Lax Security: Default use of “http” (unencrypted) rather than “https”
Poor Performance: Slow load times, broken links, or other odd behaviors
Obvious Mistakes: Numerous spelling or grammatical mistakes
Confusing Layout: Confusing navigation or layout
Not Mobile-friendly: Not optimized for mobile viewing
Odd Typography: Use of illegible, inconsistent, or amateur fonts
Weak Branding: Inconsistent or outdated branding (e.g., logos, colors, fonts)
Once you have prioritized the eligible attorneys who have relevant experience, who advertise annulment services, and who demonstrate professionalism and credibility through their website, the time has come for external validation of their work.
For each attorney remaining on your list, check for any client testimonials on the attorney’s website. The presence of client testimonials can be good signal of prior client satisfaction. Conversely, the lack of testimonials could indicate the attorney has limited experience or, worse, has trouble meeting expectations of clients.
In addition, consider looking more closely at other public ratings and reviews of the attorney. The online sources you initially consulted (e.g., Google, Martindale, Avvo, and Lawyers.com) may have useful ratings and reviews. Other non-legal sources like Yelp and Facebook may be useful as well. Based on these sources, further prioritize the eligible attorneys on your list who have large numbers of favorable reviews, and deprioritize attorneys with a large numbers of unfavorable reviews.
The lack of reviews is not necessarily determinative when it comes to the legal profession. Legal clients can be hesitant to draw public attention to their personal and private legal matters. Consequently, there are typically fewer reviews in the legal industry than other industries. Since there are fewer reviews, there is a smaller pool of reviewers to draw meaningful conclusions from. Therefore, be cautious about drawing conclusions either way from a small pool of reviews.
Step 5 – Interview at least five attorneys
Your fifth step is to begin interviewing qualified attorneys. As a client, this is “game time”. Remember, one of the most important responsibilities of any legal client is to hire the right legal team. Do yourself a favor. Spend time at the beginning of the process to make the right hire. One of the biggest mistakes you can make is to hire the first attorney you speak to.
Ideally, you should interview a minimum of five attorneys before making a final decision. While this initial hiring process consumes valuable time and effort, it’s far better than the alternative. If you make the wrong hire, you can waste invaluable time, money, and effort trying to reverse your initial hiring decision. In fact, it can take months to realize that you made a poor hiring decision. It may take even longer to pivot and find a second attorney willing to clean up the mess.
By this time, decisions and actions that your first hire made in your case could have lasting negative impacts on both your family law proceeding, and also future immigration-related actions.
Aside from helping you make a good hiring decision, the interview process can also be a wonderful opportunity to speak to a variety of attorneys and learn more about the law and relevant experiences that could give you creative ideas for succeeding in your case.
Some attorneys and law firms provide free consultations. If so, make sure these consultations are with the licensed attorney, not a paralegal or legal assistant. Other firms offer only paid consultations. Paid consults can be, but aren’t always, indicative of high demand for the firm’s services which can be a good signal of a quality attorney.
Before each interview, prepare a list of questions that are designed to elicit tangible and intangible information from each prospective attorney. Below is an illustrative list of goals, and questions you could ask to achieve each goal.
Expertise: Determine if the attorney understands annulment law in your jurisdiction.
Are annulments governed by statute or common law in our state?
What are the grounds for an annulment in our state?
What are the basic procedures for obtaining an annulment in court?
Experience: Determine if the attorney has any experience handling annulments.
How many annulments have you handled?
How many annulments have you obtained for clients?
Have any of these annulments been based on fraud?
Strategy: Determine the attorney’s approach for strategy development, including whether they have any biases against annulments.
Can you explain what factors you consider when advising a client to pursue an annulment over a divorce?
Do you enjoy working on divorces or annulments more?
Have you ever advised a client to pursue an annulment rather than a divorce? If so, why?
Do you get paid more or less for an annulment rather than a divorce?
Problem-solving: Determine if the attorney is a creative problem solver who can ‘think outside the box’, and whether they view problems holistically rather than through the narrow lens of their specific practice area.
How do you approach problems that involve legal issues that fall outside your area of expertise?
Can you share an instance where you considered factors outside of your family law practice area to solve a problem for a client?
Can you share an example of when you recommended a course of action that was less advantageous from a legal standpoint, but beneficial for other interests of the client?
Have you ever had to adjust a family law strategy to align with a client’s larger goals? If so, can you give an example?
Timeline: Determine how long the annulment process could take.
How long does an average annulment take from beginning to end?
What are the factors that impact the length of the process?
Financials: Determine how much an annulment is likely to cost and whether the attorney’s billing practices are clear.
How much should I budget for an annulment?
What are your billing practices?
How frequently do you bill clients?
Do you itemize your invoices?
Availability: Determine if the attorney will have enough time for your case.
What does your caseload look like now?
Do you have any major matters on the horizon that could impact your representation in my matter?
How many hours per week could you devote to my matter?
Advocacy: Determine if the attorney will put your interests first, and whether they have any biases in favor of foreign nationals.
Can you provide an example of when you had to prioritize a client’s interests over your own interests?
How would you handle a situation where a client would prefer that you make a valid argument before a judge, but you have reason to believe the judge may not like the argument?
Do you have strong feelings when it comes to deporting foreign nationals who violate the laws of the United States?
Workflows: Determine if the attorney’s processes and workflows align with your preferences.
Will I have direct access to you as my attorney, or will I need to contact a paralegal or assistant first?
How can I schedule a meeting with you?
How do you prefer to communicate with clients?
If there is an emergency, is there a way to contact you after-hours?
Immigration experience: Determine if the attorney also practices immigration law. If so, this can create conflicts of interests because traditional immigration attorneys can be hesitant to establish precedent that hurts other immigrant clients.
Have you ever practiced immigration law?
Do you understand the spousal-based green card process? If so, can you explain the difference between Form I-485 and Form I-751?
Do you know what Form I-864 is and why it’s relevant to state-based legal proceedings?
Collaboration: Determine if the attorney is able and willing to collaborate with an outside immigration attorney.
How often do you represent clients as part of a broader legal team?
Would you be comfortable as lead counsel with an outside immigration attorney providing litigation support?
Communication: Determine if the attorney is a good communicator.
Does the attorney make issues more clear or less clear for you?
Did they listen to you or do they talk over you?
Professionalism: Determine if the attorney and his team demonstrate the type of professionalism you expect.
Did your interview start on-time?
Is the attorney someone you’d enjoy collaborating with?
Was the attorney’s support staff friendly and competent?
Onboarding: Determine the onboarding process for the attorney.
Do you have any hesitation about accepting my case? If so, please explain.
Can you provide a retainer agreement for me to review while I think more about our consultation?
If I decide to hire you, what does your onboarding process look like?
During each interview, make sure to take detailed notes. Unless you have a photographic memory, it is unlikely that you’ll remember each response from each separate interview.
Conclusion
Hiring a family law attorney is one of the most significant decisions you’ll make as a victim of immigration marriage fraud. If you make the wrong hire, you could end up wasting valuable time, money, and effort, as well as doing lasting damage to your family law proceeding and immigration objectives. On the other hand, if you exercise diligence, invest time to do proper research, and ask the right questions, you’ll be well-prepared for a battle of lasting consequence.