Published By Countrywide Pre-Paid Legal Services, Inc.
It would be nice to think that being together during a quarantine would make a married couple closer. Sadly, this is not the case for all people. The enforced isolation can put a severe strain on a relationship and lead to divorce. Experts in domestic social behavior are predicting there will be a significant increase in divorce filings because of the enforced isolation. People can use some help in these cases, but many group legal plans do not take into consideration the need for divorce counsel.
Taking Care of the Ordinary
Understandably, a group legal plan might not include the help of a divorce attorney. The pre-paid legal services benefits are intended to help with ordinary situations such as consumer protection. Divorce is a different breed of cat. Moreover, divorce attorneys do not come cheap and their rates are expected to rise because of the sudden demand for their expertise. Countrywide Pre-Paid Legal Services knows that a basic group legal plan cannot cover all areas of law. Consequently, we provide a benefit option that helps a person get reduced rates.
The Details of the Service
Countrywide has a nationwide network of attorneys that provides the pre-paid legal services of our benefits. Whenever a Countrywide attorney is not able to provide specific assistance, we offer a referral. It means we will refer the plan member to the divorce attorney who practices law in the community where our client organization does business. We will go a step beyond the referral.
Whenever a plan member needs the services of a referral, that person will get a 25% discount on the hourly and scheduled rates from the participating attorneys. If there is a contingency fee, those will be provided at a 10% discount from the standard consistency percentages. To prevent hidden fees, Countrywide requires that the referred attorney provide a detailed fee schedule, assuring that our members get a reduced price upfront.
People can be concerned about working with somebody outside of the network. Countrywide insists that a referral attorney provides the same quality of service we ask from our network. The same priority and the same quality event will be given to any of our plan members.
Our Clients Design the Benefit
The referral reduced rates option is only one of the benefits we provide within the framework of the group legal plan. We have other services that client employees can take advantage of in dealing with legal issues.
We freely admit that we do not know everything about a client’s workforce. We understand that each organization will have different types of people in different service needs. We make things easier by asking the client to tell us what options should be in the group legal plan document. We explain all our services in detail, answer all questions, and allow decision-makers to select what they want. We follow all of this up with superior customer service and administration that is streamlined for efficiency. We include courtesy and respect as intangibles for any service we provide.
Divorce is a complicated matter for even the most straightforward situations. There is alimony, child custody, visitation rights, division of property, and many other details that must be negotiated. All of these are the reasons why divorce lawyers can charge high fees. A Countrywide plan member is given a benefit that can reduce that cost by hundreds and perhaps thousands, of dollars. It makes the benefit worthwhile to employees and they respect an employer who will offer such assistance. Countrywide knows from experience that employees are grateful for any legal help.
If you have any questions about our pre-paid legal services benefits, please feel free to contact us at your convenience. The coronavirus pandemic is a tough challenge and we can help make things easier for your employees. We want to help.