How can you get a divorce without a lawyer in the State of South Carolina?

This process is called getting a divorce “pro se” which is a Latin term that essentially means moving forward on your own as in you do not have legal representation and the first thing that I would encourage you to do is to go to www.scbar.org. That’s South Carolina Bar dot org and that’s a website for the South Carolina Bar Association which is the association that governs lawyers in the State of South Carolina.

If you look in the lower left hand corner of the website, you will see that there’s a packet that is specifically for people who want to move forward and get a divorce pro se.

The basis that you will be moving forward under South Carolina law is living separate and apart for one calendar year. What I mean by that is that both the husband and the wife are going to have to live separate and apart. Somebody is going to have to get an apartment and they’re going to have to move out of the marital home and they’re going to have to establish that they’re no longer residing with one another and they’re going to have to be able to prove that with an independent witness in court that they have lived separate and apart for more than one year.

The reason being is South Carolina as a state wants to encourage people to remain married and they want to give them a cooling off period and some time to think about whether they actually want to move forward and get a divorce or not. So that’s why you actually have to wait a year.

An important thing to note, when people call me, a lot of times they’re looking to get a divorce but they don’t have the necessary means financially to be able to afford it. So that’s why I’m giving this information out.

They can move forward under this basis and essentially pay the court costs and paperwork, administrative overhead and spare themselves the cost of actually getting a lawyer if they use this particular means to do so. The downside is it really boils down to where you have a husband and a wife who don’t have any children and essentially don’t have very much in the way of marital property because those are the things that tend to complicate divorces.

It’s really just where you’ve got two people who want the state to dissolve their civil union and they really don’t have a lot between them except the romantic interlude that has ended unfortunately and they’re just looking for a resolution to that.

The last point that we need to consider is something that people run into a good bit factually when they’re calling me about divorces and that’s if you’re in a situation where you’ve living separate and apart from your husband and/or wife, and you reconcile – by reconcile, I mean that the husband and/or wife comes over and they spend the night or you guys decide to try to get back together and you spend two weeks together, living at home and then you realize, wait a minute, this isn’t working out.

When you reconcile, it restarts the clock and that means that you have to again demonstrate that you guys are living separate and apart for one calendar year. So it’s important if you do decide to make this step and move forward on your own that you kind of go with your gut and you stick to your guns.

You live separate and apart. You fulfill the obligations required by the state and you move forward with the paperwork.

If you have additional questions regarding divorce or other legal matters call the Hartman Law Firm today at 843-300-7600.

What should you do if you’ve been involved in a multiple car collision?

I’m not talking about an instance in which it’s two or three cars and you’ve been hit from behind and you hit the person in front of you. What I’m talking about is the instance in which say you’re traveling on the interstate. There’s inclement weather. There’s standing water on the road. Somebody makes a mistake. They’re driving too fast for conditions or perhaps they’re driving too close to the person in front of them. They hit on the brakes. They do whatever it is that’s negligent that causes a chain reaction to begin.

So they hit the person to the right of them or possibly the person who’s in front of them and it causes that chain reaction in which everybody behind them sees that wreck happening and then they all adjust. Usually what ends up happening is you’ve got that initial wreck and then you’ve got maybe a person who’s coming up. They’re 50 yards behind them and they just – they don’t see it in time. They clip them but they’re trying to avoid them.

In these particular instances, you can have five, six, seven, eight different people all of whom have been involved in a motor vehicle collision. The downside of that is, is the police have to come in and try to piece together what actually happened by talking to all the witnesses, all the various parties and then you’ve got eight different insurance companies. You can see how it becomes increasingly more complex.

What the cops have to do is figure out what that initial instant of negligence actually was because essentially, the insurance is going to hinge on that person’s insurance. So whatever liability coverage they’ve got, the person who actually started that chain reaction, they’re the ones who are going to be on the hook.

All the other people, potentially depending on what they’re doing, it’s possible that one of them could potentially be found negligent as well, but typically it’s going to start with that first car. Eighty percent of people on the highways of South Carolina are carrying South Carolina minimum, which means they’ve got 25, 50 in coverage. They’ve got $25,000. They’ve got $50,000 from multiple people who are making claims against them.

So the pot is essentially $50,000. If you’ve got a wreck at a high speed on an interstate at 70 miles an hour with inclement weather, you’re looking at probably significant injuries and certainly significant collisions and property damage.

The injuries and the medical bills and the property damage are going to far outpace whatever that  

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initial car actually has in coverage. All of those various drivers going all the way back are going to hope to fall back on either their uninsured or their underinsured motorist coverage depending on how the numbers play out and what that initial driver has.

It’s very fact-specific and like I said, there can be other instances of negligence that occur but it’s really – the cops are trying to find a needle in a haystack because you’re trying to put something together that happens over maybe three or four seconds in time and you’re doing it with the spotty recollections and memories of people who are trying to protect their own interest because maybe they think they somehow contributed and God forbid their insurance premium should actually go up.

It’s a fact-specific inquiry and it’s certainly something that you’re not going to want to try to take care of yourself. I would strongly encourage you to seek out a lawyer. Lawyers, this is what we do for a living and we’ve met with these instances and we’ve worked through these incredibly complex scenarios. So we’ve been there and we’ve done that.

If you’ve been involved in a multiple car collision, I would strongly encourage you to pick up the telephone and contact the Hartman Law Firm at 843-300-7600.

What is a Transvaginal Mesh Claim?

As we all know, as part of the child bearing process, when the child grows within the womb, it actually compacts your internal organs and then you have your child and then everything can shift afterward. The problem that sometimes occurs is what’s called prolapse and what that actually means is where some of your internal organs can actually shift and fall into your lower region. It causes discomfort and pain among other issues, and potentially people really could get hurt or potentially die from contraindications of this particular issue happening.

The medical community came up with this concept of transvaginal mesh and essentially what they do is they go in there and they place a mesh and put everything exactly where it needs to be and then they attach it internally and then you back out. Hopefully all of your symptoms subside. 

The problem that they have found is not only with the actual product itself but with the implementation and the way that they suggested the doctors actually implant it. It was negligent and the way that they suggested that you go about doing it has led to both erosion and perforation.

Erosion is essentially where the mesh itself rubs against your internal organs and can cause the skin to become thinner and then you’re open to potential bleeds or infections and that sort of thing.

Perforation is where it actually cuts some of these internal organs that are shoring up and can cause internal bleeding and potential life-altering effects.

The transvaginal mesh is the subject of an ongoing mass tort litigation in America right now. It’s pretty cutting-edge and we’re still waiting to find out what the results are going to be as far as potential settlements, results, and more.

There are so many of these going on. In fact, currently the numbers are – there are about 40,000 ongoing cases against these particular companies that marketed transvaginal mesh to the American public and it remains to be seen what sort of settlements are going to come of it, what sort of negligence is actually being implicated.

My suggestion would be to keep up with the news to look out for yourself and loved ones, and then contact the Hartman Law Firm at (843) 300-7600 should you need representation for your personal injury.

Should you Allow the Police to Search your Automobile When you’re Pulled Over by a Police Officer?

The simple answer is no.

This brings into question the actual Fourth Amendment, which we’re going to (for our purposes for documenting history), we will discuss.

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

Historically, the British – and this was obviously prior to the constitution and the Bill of Rights – had a habit of coming in and simply taking things or taking people. They didn’t put it in front of a judge and obviously it angered the American colonials and that’s part of the reason why you see this represented in the constitution and in the body of the Fourth Amendment.

As we’ve moved forward and we’re 230 years into the founding of America, and especially in the 20th century, a large part of the meaning of the Fourth Amendment has essentially been taken away.

By that I mean by precedents that have been issued by the Supreme Court. Basically starting in the 1920's right up into the present and with each case and with each precedent, they carved out another exception to the Fourth Amendment that made it easier for police to move forward without a warrant, without probable cause. There’s something called reasonable, articulated suspicion which is actually a lower standard than probable cause and there’s probably 50 or 60 cases.

When you combine those bodies of cases together over a period of 40 or 50 years, for the most part, the Fourth Amendment in large part really doesn’t exist anymore. It exists on paper and you can certainly still make arguments in a criminal court but a lot of protections that we enjoyed as Americans have been taken away.

Eighty percent of the time when a police officer asks someone, “Hey, man, is it all right if I search your car?” and then just have a look around to make sure there’s nothing in there, more often than not because people are trying to cater to the police officer, they will simply say yes.

In doing so, what they’ve done is they’ve waived their Fourth Amendment rights simply because they don’t know their rights under the law. I would say something to the effect of yes-but or if you want to be more – because you can actually limit the scope of whatever it is that they want to do.

You could say, “Yes, but I don’t see any reason for you to actually go through my physical car. If you want to make a pass with your flashlight just to make sure that there’s no weapons or anything, feel free to do so.”

You can actually limit the scope of the search that the officer wants to do. That’s provided he doesn’t already have reasonable, articulated suspicion or probable cause.

Why is this important to you? Well, there’s also case law on the books that says that the Supreme Court and judges generally are not going to look to the subjective intent of the officer when he pulls you over. What does that mean? Well, there’s a case in which the police very clearly pulled somebody over. They had a taillight out which is a classic pretense for a police officer to pull somebody over.

They pulled the guy over for a taillight, knowing full well that likely he had drugs in the car and they used the taillight as the pretense for pulling him over because it was a technical violation of the law.

He stopped on the side of the road and allowed them to pass their flashlight through his car and ultimately finding whatever it was they were looking for.

Interestingly enough, a flashlight in your car actually is not a search under the technical term of the constitution nor is a dog actually walking around the outside of your car. That’s not considered search under the constitution either.

The point is, is – some people disagree – personally, I’m a civil libertarian and I think I read this I think literally. I think that should be the letter of the law.

The judges however set the law, the Supreme Court judges, and they set the precedent, and for purposes of essentially preserving evidence, the judges have allowed the automobile exception to essentially become the rule. The exception has superseded the rule and the rule of law no longer exists because there’s about 10 or 12 different exceptions that when you place them all together, when you’re in an automobile, you have an extremely limited sense of what your Fourth Amendment protections actually are.

It’s only when you actually get into your home that the Fourth Amendment becomes more relevant, because the home and an automobile are two different things and the reasoning behind it is the judges consider an automobile as mobile. In that respect, you could drive off with the evidence.

In large part, that is the reason behind all of these automobile exceptions and why you are subject to search when you’re pulled over. Keep a civil tongue. You can say, “No, officer,” or “Why is it that you want to search my car, officer? What’s the reasoning behind it?”

It’s a very fine line that you’re walking because obviously you want to be polite but you also want to let him know that you’re informed of your rights.

So be diplomatic and the important thing is, is don’t waive your rights by immediately consenting, like 80 percent of the people do, because again, this also implies the Fifth Amendment.

Now you’re providing evidence against yourself to the prosecution and making prosecuting yourself easier to do.

If you have questions about the Fourth Amendment, automobiles or auto accidents or law generally, contact the Hartman Law Firm at 843-300-7600.

Can you get a loan based on your auto accident claim and more importantly should you?

This is a topic that’s near and dear to my heart because invariably, I would say 50 to 60 percent of the people that I represent in car accident cases call me at some point usually at the beginning portion of their claims and they’re asked – they want to ask me for a loan.

Unfortunately South Carolina law prohibits personal injury lawyers or lawyers generally for providing loans to their clients based on any expected recovery that they might get from a personal injury claim which leaves my clients a little bit out in the cold.

Because of the fact that your lawyer cannot provide you with a loan directly, there are a lot of companies that have moved into this particular vacuum that want to provide my clients with loans while they wait for the cases to settle.

Classic examples would be 877 Cash Now, JG Wentworth, Blue Sky, which is the Indian reservation, Peachtree Lending, and a whole host of other companies that have moved into that particular area.

They obviously serve a purpose and they’re talking about structured settlement, this, that and the other. What they’re really kind of gearing that towards, where it really needs to be used is when someone is going to be receiving an extraordinarily large sum of money, i.e. a medical malpractice action or a large settlement based on mass tort. But it’s going to take them two to three to four years to actually get the thing processed.

That’s an instance where these particular companies might actually serve a purpose. The people who are in car wrecks unfortunately – obviously their cash reward is going to be considerably less and so what they’re ultimately going to walk away with is going to be – it’s not going to be millions of dollars. It’s going to be thousands of dollars.

So if you go out and you borrowed 1000 bucks, 1500 bucks, but you’re doing it at 120 percent interest rate which is the part that they fail to mention to you, then you’re going to be paying out the nose and what I often see is my clients are the victims of their own success in the sense that they go and they get this particular loan. They tell me about it. I facilitate it in some way, shape or form or basically just wash my hands off it. Then when it comes time to settle, invariably, I’m giving the overwhelming majority of their money to the company that they actually borrowed money from to begin with.

So let’s just say for demonstration purposes, they were going to walk away with a $3500 amount of money after I paid their medical bills and I take my legal fee.

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But they’ve got a $1900 outstanding loan plus interest with Bridge Loan, which is a local company. They’re looking at maybe $1300 in their pocket and that is a really bad situation not only for them to be in but for me to be in, because my job is based on good customer service and providing my clients with great results.

They’re not real happy at the end of the day when they’re walking with $1300, even if on some level they realize that the reason why that occurred is because they insisted on getting a loan that I told them really was a bad idea.

You need to be aware of these particular companies and you need to weigh the pros and cons about whether you actually want to borrow money because there’s a distinct possibility that at the end of the day, you walk away with nothing or very little. I don’t want you to find yourself in that situation.

If you have any questions regarding a car accident claim or loans in general, contact the Hartman Law Firm at 843-300-7600.