Speaker A: All right, it is Wednesday, June 15, June 15, Wednesday, June 15. And I say that is Wednesday, June 15. That means it is Wednesday Blitz Wednesday. And that means, like every single Wednesday we're going to be interfacing with Lord and Randy over at and Seven to Blitz and taking uh questions, calls, comments. Uh it's become a mainstay, I think, on their station and really, frankly, a mainstay in my professional and personal life, I truly enjoy um my interaction with The Blitz and The Blitz audience. One of the things I look forward to every single week. So if uh those who are listening it's already after the fact, I get it. I record this and it comes after the fact. Don't think I don't know that I understand. But um if you didn't get in at The Blitz last week or whenever you last uh tried, no worries, you can go to lawyertarkpodcast.com. I realized that there are lots of listeners at The Blitz and only limited amounts of minutes allocated towards what uh I respectfully think is the best segment they have every day, all week. All right, I said it. So anyway, if uh you didn't get through, no big deal. All you got to do is go to lawyer talk Podcast.com. We've got an uh interface here. You just submit me a question. I confess I'm a tablet behind. I've got one waiting in the wings. It's going to drop probably next week. I might even get to it yet this week. And then I've got one after that uh that somebody actually, I know sent in. And that's a little more directly legal oriented. But anyway, simple enough to submit a question. So, like every Wednesday, I'm not going to beat her on the Bush too much longer here because it looks like they're trying to interface. So here we go right now.

Speaker B: Absolutely. Our buddy, Steve Palmer. How are uh you doing, man?

Speaker A: Hey, how are you guys doing today?

Speaker B: Good to have you on, sir. Uh were you affected by the power outages?

Speaker A: I was not, fortunately. In fact, I feel sort of uh foolishly, ignorant. I didn't realize how um big of a problem it was across the state.

Speaker B: Dude, I wanted to sue somebody yesterday, man. I was so hot on the golf course, I couldn't believe it. I was like, pouring sweat. Steve, I mean, I almost called you.

Speaker A: Yeah, you should blame the government.

Speaker B: I probably should. Something with global warming or something, man. It's going to be another hot one today and tomorrow. And then we're going to get a little bit of relief just so everybody out there knows. Line one, we have Brandon waiting to uh talk to Steve Palmer. Hey, Brandon, you're on the air. What's your question for Steve?

Speaker C: Hey, how are you guys doing?

Speaker B: Great.

Speaker C: I got a question. Uh what can I do? My relationship is basically failing, and I don't want my girlfriend to take my daughter away from me. I don't know what to do.

Speaker B: Okay.

Speaker A: Is your girlfriend? I don't mean to be uh foolish here, but is your girlfriend the mother of your daughter?

Speaker C: Yes.

Speaker A: Okay. Well, it sounds like you're not married and you guys have a child together, a daughter, and that's awesome. Um and it's you're breaking up and you want to establish what the rules of play are, you can still go to court, um not just like a divorce, but the domestic relations court will have jurisdiction to allocate various parental rights and responsibilities as they would if you guys were actually married. You just don't need to go through that extra step of getting divorced. Like any situation uh involving kids, it's always easier if you guys can reach an agreement. It's always easier if you can say, all right, we're going to be responsible adults here. We're not going to bicker about uh the stupid stuff, and we're certainly not going to do it in front of the daughter. Uh we're going to reach an agreement on how it's going to work, and we're going to split up the time and we're going to cooperate. Even though we're not getting along personally, we're going to get along at least enough for uh the benefit of our daughter. So if you can pull that off, all the better and you wouldn't need any uh court intervention. But if uh you can't pull that off and or you want to set up the rules of play, understand the court can get involved. And what they will do is they will allocate time for each parent. They will allocate who or whether both are going to be what uh we would call the residential parent for purposes of school, or if you're the custodial parent for purposes of making decisions solely without the other input, or if it's a shared parenting situation where you both have input on decision making, they will also get involved and establish child support and determine whether one should pay the other or nobody should pay anybody. It'll just sort of work out based on various formulas and some voodoo that they do. And uh you'll uh have those rules in play. So if uh you want to get the court involved, you got to go to the domestic court in the county where you reside or where the child resides and uh get it moving.

Speaker C: Okay. Where are your offices located? In Columbus.

Speaker A: My office is down on South High Street, right downtown in Columbus. And if you need a referral for domestically, I don't do that kind of work specifically. But if you need a referral, give me a shout. 614-224-6142.

Speaker B: Thanks, Brandon.

Speaker D: All right, this uh person wrecked their car three months ago into a guardrail, left it there, and the cops found it, had it towed. It's been over three months, but should I expect to get a bill for the guardrail and a ticket for filling the scene, even though it's been this long?

Speaker B: Do they still have the guy's car, I wonder?

Speaker D: They're probably like, we didn't know you got into an accident. Was it right? You left the car there?

Speaker A: Yeah. So let me just talk generically here. If I get into a car crash and I leave the scene, it's a crime. It's called leaving the scene of an accident. Or the slang would be hit skip. The maximum penalty in Ohio anyway is six months in jail, $1,000 fine carries with it a mandatory six month driver's license suspension. If you caused physical harm to somebody else as a result of the accident, it gets infinitely worse. Most of the courts are going to look at this as a DUI that got away. They're going to think, well, there's a reason this person didn't stick around. It's because they were drunk and trying to avoid detection for being drunk. So they're just going to presume that it was a DUI that got away. And it sometimes dictates or influences, rather, how the prosecution in the state or the government pursues um it. So what I have done in the past, people call me and say, Look, I was in an accident. I left last night. Nobody knows that it was I that crashed. What do I do? And then I will call the prosecutor and play this cat and mouse game where I say, Look, I represent a client. I'm um not going to identify my client. My client wants to make this right, but my client also doesn't want to get charged with the serious crimes here. My client um had insurance or has the capacity to pay the damage that was done, etc, etc. And sometimes I'm able to negotiate just a minor traffic violation and get the case resolved. This has festered now for it sounds like a while in this particular situation, but it still may be possible to do that. Um as far as the bill for the guardrail, if you would expect to get out of this and get your car back and identify yourself, et cetera, there uh may be a way to do that without coming clean that you're the one driving, because owning the car doesn't necessarily mean that you were driving the car, um but it gets a little bit dicey. I can't suggest this strongly enough. Don't try to navigate this minefield on your own. I tell people to picture it this way. You are in World War II in the middle of a minefield, and you got dropped there and you woke up and you have no idea where the minds are. You have no idea where you can step without getting blown up. And the only way to do that is to find a guide that can get you through that. That's the attorney. So don't try to get out on your own. It will be a mess. You have um a right to remain silent. You're not forced to confess any crimes, but you're also not allowed to cover up any crimes and make it worse. So you're in a real sticky mess. If you want some help, 614-224-6142 happy to help out on that.

Speaker B: All right. Oh, sorry, man.

Speaker C: What's?

Speaker B: That? Okay. We'll go to the next one. Eight, two, uh 199, 7808, 2199, seven. We have Jeremy stand by online, too. What's up, Jeremy?

Speaker C: Hey, how's it going?

Speaker B: Hey, good man. What's up?

Speaker C: Um i just have a question. I know that there are some new laws that were just taken into place about having a concealed carry permit. Um i have been diagnosed with post traumatic stress and I previously had a cannabis card that expired. Am I allowed to carry?

Speaker A: I think this came up last week, too. I believe the rule is going to be this. Whatever rules were in place with the old carrying a concealed handgun license structure are going to be still in place. It's just that you don't need to go get the license and go through the formal um uh training. It's called constitutional carry. I don't believe that formerly having a medical card would preclude you from constitutional carry. But again, this is like whenever I get uh questions like this, something in the back of my head always screams that I should do the research and I should double check before I give any firm advice. So please don't consider this firm advice. But it is something I can find out. What you're going to uh want to do is research or hire. Look, we can do it for you, but we need to do some research on whether your prior cannabis card or medical marijuana card will preclude constitutional carry under the new set of rules. My guess is if you have a current at a minimum, if you have a current cannabis card or medical marijuana card, then you will not be able to constitutional carry because under the old structure, you could not whether a former cannabis or medical card precludes it. I would reserve formal answer complete or final answer until I do the research. But something to be cautious about. And certainly you want to get an answer before you start carrying a gun around concealed.

Speaker C: Perfect. Thank you so much.

Speaker B: Yes, that's been a big question as of late, right. I mean, especially with the law that went into effect last week where you can now carry a weapon.

Speaker A: Yes. I'm going to do a series I'm going to find out the answer and do a legal breakdown on that and make sure everybody can get their questions answered that way. Because I get it's a common question. There's a lot more questions on other areas within the constitutional uh carry structure uh that people are asking about. So it's an important topic these days.

Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely. I think people want to be able to defend themselves if they're medicating at night at their house. I think it's different than if you're out and about and you get mugged and you have to pull your weapon or something like that. Here's uh Randy, with a question.

Speaker D: Okay. This person wants to know the difference between a divorce and a disillusion going through uh one soon.

Speaker A: Yeah, divorce and disillusion. So it's just a different path to reach the same end goal. A divorce uh is generally would be considered contested, where you have to go file a complaint for divorce, suing your spouse and saying, I want to be divorced in Ohio, you really don't have to have grounds other than say, you're not compatible, but uh it's not like you have to prove that somebody cheated on the other or vice versa. So you can just go get divorced. Now, this happens a lot when people can't reach an agreement, and the agreement we're talking about would be a dissolution. So if you and your spouse can sit down at the kitchen table and say, all right, we don't want to spend thousands and I stress to you thousands of dollars on Attorney's fees. We are capable as reasonable and rational adults of uh looking through our financial arrangement, coming up with an equitable division of our assets, uh an equitable division of our liabilities, and presenting those our division to the court, our findings to the court, our agreement to the court and have the court approved it. That's a disillusion. So if you go to clerk of courts in most counties now, they'll have paperwork you can fill out that gets you started. You can also go online. I'm sure Google will uh reveal all sorts of opportunities to purchase and or maybe even for free get a form for a dissolution. Here's a trick. You can even go to most clerk accords now have documents available online, uh and you can just try to find somebody else's dissolution and mimic what they did as far as their paperwork. But you're just going to want to find an agreement or see if you can reach an accord on your debts, your assets and the stuff that uh you have as far as investments, cars, uh house and do a division. Now, if you have kids, you can still agree. You can still go through and reach an agreement on parenting time. You reach an agreement on child support and the court will dissolve uh the marriage without a formal divorce. If you can't agree and you got to sue the other side, you're still going to end up uh divorced. It'll just cost a lot more, take some more time and uh maybe create some more headaches and emotional distress. But there's also something called an uncontested divorce, where you file for a divorce initially and then you reach an agreement and then it's uncontested. Uh so it sort of ends up like a dissolution. That's maybe middle ground. If you can't resolve everything in advance and also understand that even if you don't have an agreement on everything, you uh can't do a dissolution or even if you have agreement on most things, but not everything, you still can't do a dissolution. Everything has to be resolved. Otherwise you file for divorce. But the inverse of uh that is if you're going to have a divorce, you don't have to have a trial or contest every single issue. You can just have the judge decide a narrow issue uh of like what's the house worth or what's my business worth or what's the child support number. And that can um help limit the cost and expense of litigation. So, like the other caller, give me a shout. 614-224-6142. Happy to refer you to a good attorney, and I would highly recommend whether it's divorce or dissolution. Get the help of an attorney. Obviously a lot cheaper if it's dissolution, but there's always issues out there. You don't want to step on a snake in the grass that you didn't see. So there's lots of people uh willing to help for a reasonable fee.

Speaker B: All right, final call here. Let's go to Tommy on line one. You're on with us. Loper and Randy and Steve Palmer.

Speaker C: Thanks, guys, for taking my call. I got a question about, like, judgments and uh lean. So I had a local door and window company and some doors and windows. I'm pushing two years, and they're still not done. My concern is that they're going to slap a lien or a judgment on my house to try to recoup the money because I still have half the money and I want to pay it, but they haven't done the work.

Speaker A: Well, I would start here with your contract. It's probably one of the big window door companies around. Start with the contract and read the small print. There's probably some terms and conditions there. I can't tell you you're not supposed to pay all of it until it's done or not done, et cetera, because I don't know the terms of the agreement. As far as getting a lien against you, most of the time you can't get a mechanics lien on a house unless you file it in advance. So once the work has begun, uh I'm pretty sure uh that the rules and the regulations on mechanics, lean and mechanic doesn't mean that you're a car mechanic. We call them mechanics liens or construction leans. So if you're going to have your roof done, sometimes they'll go give you advanced notice that they're going to put a lien on your house, and then they go file uh that. And if the payment isn't satisfied, then they can enforce the lien uh or at least encumber the house. But they can't do um that after the fact. So if there's no lien right now, there's not going to be one. I don't believe now whether they could um sue you for the money without the work being completed. That seems questionable to me because you paid for a job and you paid for uh products and it's not done. So my guess is that the contract uh doesn't require full payment in advance. If it does, then I'd have to see the terms uh and how it's going to work. Uh i've talked to some other people who had windows and doors done, and just because of the supply chain, it has taken forever. But either way, uh if you run into trouble with it and need a lawyer on a lawsuit, give us a shout. 614-224-6142.

Speaker B: All right, the one and only Steve Palmer with us each and every Wednesday, giving us legal advice. And to you guys, if you ever want to reach out to Steve off the air Steve, break them off with that number. So they have it already in their phone.

Speaker A: Yes. Put in your phone right now. Plot your phones and just enter this number, 614-224-6142. That way, if you ever get in trouble, heaven forbid, all you got to do is hit send. You don't have to Google my name and number. You'll just have it. Just put super lawyer there and you'll get me. Look us up at uh Highlegaldefense.com if you want to check out the website.

Speaker B: My guy, Steve Palmer. Thanks, ma'am.

Speaker A: Hey, thank you. All right, another great blitz wrap up. One of those questions. I thought Warren is a little bit of extra comment, and that is I think it was uh actually I'm uh not going to mention the name because I don't remember it. It had to uh do with the hit skip and hitting a guard rail, etc. And I think one of the things implicit in what I was saying that maybe I didn't make clear enough is that we all enjoy the Fifth Amendment right to remain silent. What that means is we're not obligated as citizens of the United States of America to go confess. Uh we're not obligated to make statements to the police. We're not obligated to offer explanations. And what that means is, believe it or not, if a police pulls you over, if a policeman pulls you over and says, do you know why I pulled you over? You can just look at the cop and say, you know what? I hereby Cert my right to remain silent under the Fifth Amendment. They're going to look at you like you're wearing uh donkey horns or something. But you can do that. They're not going uh to like it. They're going to pressure you. They're going to Jedi mind trick you and to try to make statements. But you don't have to confess to anything. And the same is true if you committed a hit skip. I can't condone it, right? I mean, you've committed a crime, or at least in Ohio, what uh we'd call a traffic violation. But that doesn't mean you have uh to go in order to make it right. Confess. You don't. I always tell people, look, I tell other lawyers this rather our job is to um help people defend the mistakes they made or if they're wrongfully accused, defend what they're accused of. We are not allowed to help you commit or cover up crimes. I can't do that. But the Fifth Amendment is, by definition, you're not engaging in a cover up by asserting your Fifth Amendment right to remain silent. However, say you drove a car, you hit a rail and you did something, and then you drove home and the police are knocking on your door and they want to know if the car that was registered to you was in an accident. You cannot lie. You cannot say no. You cannot say yes because if you say yes, you're admitting to a crime. If you say yes, rather if you say yes and I was driving or admitting to a crime if you say yes, but I wasn't driving. Now you're lying and committing another crime. So you can't do any of that. You're stuck in the minefield here and you have to assert your right to remain uh silent. What are the police going to do? They're going to get pissed. They're going to get pissed off. They're going to charge you with crimes. They're going to maybe put you in cuffs and drag you into the police station for more whatever they do. But at least you will not have confessed to crimes. And then when you call me, hopefully you've called me before then. But if you call me, I've got something to work with there. And there is a way to make uh it right. Let's just do it the right way. So I like the way that sounds. There's a way to make it right. Let's just do it the right way. Um always understand you have a path out of the minefield. You just don't know what it is. And typically the lawyer has the roadmap. All right with that, I'm going to wrap it up another great blitz Wednesday, June 15, 2022, where we took all uh callers. All questions didn't get through. No big deal. Lauretalkpodcast dot, uh.com, submit your question there or wait around if you're patient until next week on the blitz. Or maybe it's two weeks, whatever the lag time is for the show. And maybe you'll get through them and have the pleasure of talking to uh us all live on the air. So for now, this is uh lawyertalk Wednesday off the record on the air at least until now.