Product Information

Family Law Practitioner's Apprentice

Proof the Law Not Grammar

Why not spend your time doing what you were trained to do – practicing law – instead of checking grammar and spelling. That’s what FLPA2 allows you to do. It automates the preparation of your family law documents and pleadings so you don’t waste time on non-legal issues. If you use word processing templates or old documents to create new ones, there's always a risk. Who hasn’t called their client in to sign a document or taken a document to Court for filing and noticed the word “children” when the parties have only one child, or the wife being referred to as “he?” Ouch! We hate when that happens! And it won’t with FLPA2.

One way FLPA2 helps to eliminate mistakes is by providing worksheets for basic information. That information is automatically transferred to the various family law documents you create: Petition for Dissolution, Separation Agreement, Judgment Entry. As a result, you only need to get it right one time. You’ll never worry about introducing errors the third or fourth time you type something like the parties’ names, the case number, or the many other pieces of information that repeat from one document to the next during the course of a case.

FLPA2 lets you to set global defaults that populate the 30+ available documents. So, for example, if you always include certain provisions in your separation agreements, you can create a default file that includes your custom language. You can even create more than one "default" file, i.e., one for each county in which you practice. These “seed” files are powerful tools; and if that's not enough customization, you can also modify the FLPA2 templates so that your personalized provisions can be made permanent instead of requiring insertion on a document-by-document basis. By modifying the FLPA2 template, the desired provisions become part of FLPA2.

The Drawback of Using Old Documents or Find/Replace

One drawback of using old documents to create new ones, or using your word processor's find/replace function to create new documents from old ones is that changes related to gender and number can be difficult to track. It's pretty easy to end up with embarrassing, typographical errors like the ones we mentioned earlier - referring to the husband as "she," or referring to "children" when the parties have only one child. As time goes by, proofreading these law-office-familiar documents becomes increasingly difficult as constant and repeated exposure makes errors harder to spot.

Another drawback relates to global variables—that is, information that remains constant from one document to the next in the same case (for example, the case number, the parties' names and addresses, and a host of other items). Even with excellent word processing templates and unerring proofreading skills, by the time you get to the end of the case, you're got a collection of separate documents that contain much of the same information that has been retyped again and again. With FLPA2, from the initial complaint or petition to the final judgment entry, all your documents are part of the same file and are created from the same set of worksheet data. Therefore, your documents are less prone to mistakes and are quicker to draft.

For instance, FLPA2 handles these issues by having you make one-time selections as to the gender of the parties and then FLPA2 consistently changes all the nouns, pronouns, verbs and adjectives to agree with your selections. Other basic information is handled the same way. Global variables are administered globally.

In other words, once you enter the parties' names and case number in the worksheet, the information populates all the forms and pleadings automatically. Formatting and typing captions will be a thing of the past. You enter repetitive information once! When it's correct the first time, you save time. No more brainless grammatical errors in an otherwise perfect document.

Going Global

The faster you can generate perfect documents, the more you save in case preparation time and staff time. That's why we give you the added ability to (1) set global defaults via our DEFAULT.FL2 file and (2) modify the program templates to customize documents for your specific uses. So, if you have certain, personalized, provisions in a particular document, you could alter our Separation Agreement template to include your specific language—permanently.

Feature List

• In addition to completing all the documents listed below, FLPA2 produces sets of blank worksheets that can be given to clients for completion.

• FLPA2 is able to extract information from Ohio Spousal Support Calculator (MA) so you only need to enter data one time and both programs can use it. It's no exaggeration to say that with the client worksheets and our 3-pack of family law programs (FLPA2, MA & WROCSG), you'll be preparing for the final hearing in the initial interview.

• FLPA2 can extract child support amounts from Revised Ohio Child Support Guidelines (WROCSG). It doesn't stop there, however, because FLPA2 can also create and seed a child support file, leaving very little to do but review and print the child support worksheet. WROCSG is required to utilize this feature.

• FLPA2 is a trial preparation tool that can organize and print marital assets, marital debts, income information, living expenses, and more.

• FLPA2 works seamlessly with any Windows word processor capable of opening RTF files, including Microsoft's Word for Windows and Corel's WordPerfect.

• FLPA2 works in all 64- and 32-bit Windows systems (Windows 7, Vista, XP, 2000 and 98SE) and is available in network versions.

List of Included Forms

• Answer
• Arrearages, Agree Motion to Correct
• Arrearages, Judgment Entry on Motion to Correct
• Bond, Judgment Entry - Order to Post
• Child Support, Motion to Modify
• Continuance, Judgment Entry on Motion for
• Continuance, Motion for
• Counterclaim
• Dissolution on Marriage, Petition for
• Divorce, Complaint for
• Divorce, Judgment Entry on Complain for
• General Information
• Health Insurance Investigation Form
• Motion for Specific Acts
• Parental Rights and Responsibilities, Motion to Modify Allocation of
• Pretrial Statement
• Relocate, Notice of Intent to
• Residential Parent, Affidavit
• Restraining Order, Motion & Affidavit for Temporary
• Restraining Order, Temporary
• Separation Agreement
• Shared Patenting Agreement
• Show Cause, Motion to
• Standard Visitation Guidelines
• Support Pendente Lite, Answer to Motion for
• Support Pendente Lite, Answer to Motion for
• Support Pendente Lite, Financial Disclosure Affidavit
• Support Pendente Lite, Motion for, with Notice
• Temporary Custody, Motion for
• Withholding, Judgment Entry - Order to Terminate

Better Documents Faster

The whole point of FLPA2 is to produce better documents faster and present them to you in your own word processor. That makes it especially user-friendly to law offices. Why law offices? Because regardless of computer skill level, they are always expert word processors! And why not? Documents are a law office's stock-in-trade.