Robots or People? We Made A Choice

If you've been following our blog for a while, then you know the familiar rave against government forms. Divorce forms are a particularly curious piece of work. For example, in New Jersey, the various sections of a Financial Affidavit for divorce are indexed by number or letter- not using a far more sensible, humanized system.

It's as if we were living in a 21 st century of robot divorcé(e)s.

To keep things streamlined (if not absolutely simple) for our customers, Easy Soft's wildly popular CIS ( Case Information Statement) also collected your clients' data under indexed tabs. The tabs' labels were-you guessed it-numbers and letters, in deference to the New Jersey form.

Before, you'd have to go into each section separately to enter child support information, case management information, etc.

But then, we woke up from the universal robot dream.

Now, CIS, New Jersey's most popular family law software , presents a new, Consolidated Case Info section. It's easy to find, and it indexes your data collection efforts by the very-human, very simple name of the party- not by robot number.

For our attorney clients, this makes things far more intuitive.

There are now tabs for general information, court information, plaintiff's information, defendant, children, your firm, opposing counsel, miscellaneous parties, and even miscellaneous values. All of the tabs are located in the same spot in the software. You needn't hunt, click in and out, tear your hair, or turn into an automated robot to track anything down: it's all right there at your fingertips.

Easy. Just like we always promise.

To learn more about our entire suite of family law software, call 800-905-7638. We promise you'll get a person on the line who can answer all of your questions.

Individual Historical Expenditures: Useful for All Sorts of Reasons

As a divorce attorney in New Jersey, you know this. Financial Affidavits are tricky to fill out. A critical component of the form is monthly expenses (also known as Lifestyle) which plays an important role in spousal support negotiations. Part of the problem is that official form ( New Jersey Family Case Information Statement ) only documents expenses for joint family and current party. That leaves out important parameters such as expenses for other party or even separately itemized expenses for each individual party (plaintiff, defendant and children).

Once upon a time, this odd setup required divorce attorneys using New Jersey family law software to create a manual worksheet-separate and apart from the state Financial Affidavit form. It was a pain in the you-know-what. Even CIS—Easy Soft's raucously popular New Jersey divorce software —used to provide just two columns under costs (Part D): one for joint historical expenditures (for the intact family), and the other for current expenditures (for your client, the filer). But this wasn't sufficient for spousal support negotiations.

Not anymore.

Now, the all-new CIS 2.2 B provides a new option: "Show Individual Historical Expenditure." Click the checkmark, and your family law software suddenly gives you the capacity to break your clients' historical expenditures down-by each party. Yes indeed, we've added three extra columns in which you can include historical expenditures for the Plaintiff, the Defendant, and the children. Separately.

And voila! Suddenly, you have a baseline that tells the whole picture—for both parties.

You can use the new tool to print a separate lifestyle / historical expenditure report in five separate columns rather than two, and bring it with you during your spousal support negotiations.

You can use the new tool to create exhibits for your court documentation—whether it's for motion practice and/or trial.

You can use the new tool for setting a more accurate baseline for future modifications in the event of changes to the financial picture of one party.

That's Easy Soft: improving our divorce settlement software every single minute.

To learn more about our entire suite of family law software, call 800-905-7638. We promise you'll get a person on the line who can tell you about our software, and answer any questions you might have.

The New CIS Includes Optional Family Docs Module

Great news. Along with the release of CIS 2.2B, Easy Soft's latest New Jersey family law software , New Jersey divorce lawyers and family law firms can license FamilyDocs. That's over 130 New Jersey Family Law Forms published by New Jersey ICLE— built into the CIS program for a nominal licensing fees.

What this means: You can now generate your forms from a common set of data automatically—without the need for laborious data transfer from program to program or manual copy-paste from one file to another file. If you need to track data or make corrections, you won't need to hunt for it in multiple locations. You simply enter the plaintiff's, defendant's, children's, and financial information just once —and it's populated throughout this streamlined family law software : accurately, completely, and cleanly.

Along with this addition to CIS, you can also customize any form, and add unlimited numbers of your own forms. Existing forms include practice-related topics such as high-quality retainer agreements, and court forms such as complaints, pleadings, orders, etc. The forms come pre-populated to the extent possible—meaning that they pretty much fill themselves out.

Your entire practice group can use a single set of standardized forms—eliminating work duplication and errors, and increasing consistency.

You can view merged documents on-screen, and make any needed changes directly.

You can also save all of your prepared documents within the same CIS file. You can also save prepared forms as PDF or Word files, and email them directly from the program.

Finally, the forms come with a built-in editor and spell checker—eliminating the need for external word processing software.

To learn more about our divorce software for attorneys , call Easy Soft at 800 905 7638.

Put Your New Jersey Divorce Clients To Work!

Problem : As a divorce lawyer in New Jersey, you spend weeks chasing down your client's information, and then double checking to make sure that all the information is entered accurately.
Solution : Those days are gone. Now, you can finally put your divorce clients to work!

Easy Soft's popular New Jersey family law software is out with its newest version, CIS 2.2B. In addition to many other new features, the program comes with the optional CIS lite module, which enables your clients to gather their own information. They then supply you with a form that gets uploaded—automatically—in all the right places.

Your data entry problem? Gone!

First, you email your client the CIS lite form (go to File -> CIS lite -> Save CIS lite as a Word document). Instruct him or her to open it in Microsoft Word, and fill it out in the convenience of his or her home or office.

Next, look for the completed form in your email inbox. Give it a quick read to make sure all the fields are complete. If there's anything missing, let your client know.

If it looks good, import the form into CIS 2.2 B (File -> CIS lite -> Import CIS lite ).

If it's a new client, the software prompts you for the client's position: Plaintiff or Defendant? Click Continue, and then upload the form.

That's it! The file's been imported. All of your new client's data is now in the system. Case forms such as Confidential Litigant Sheet, Case Information Statement, Insurance Certifications, etc. are nearly complete. You can start figuring out optimal NJ child support payments, maintenance, and all the rest: using our easy-to-use, uncluttered Easy Soft interface.

To learn more about our entire suite of family law software, call 800-905-7638. We promise you'll get a person on the line who can answer all of your questions.

Family Laws Software Simplifies Life For Lawyers

Though revised from time to time, family laws software still have archaic roots and are interpreted differently in each state of the US. This makes life difficult for family law attorneys and lawyers who have to keep track of many issues while handling family legal cases covering divorce, child support and custody, marital discord and abuse, pre-nuptial agreements, marriages and adoptions. At times case data collection becomes so involved that it actually hinders legal professionals from focusing on the core issues, greatly impeding progress and affecting productivity as well as revenues. There is no need to be bogged down in clerical work when computer technology is here to help. As a busy legal professional, make a wise decision, invest in the right family law software and notice the huge improvement in every sphere of your operations.

Ideally speaking, family law software includes case data collection through a simple Word document form input supplied by the client that is integrated into the software to form a basis for the client's case. The software generates all forms required for the case, statement of net worth, child support calculator software and spousal support statement, divorce financial settlement, assets and liabilities distribution report, lifestyle expenditure document and other documents that take hours, if not days to prepare. The right family law software does all this and lets attorneys work out various “what if” scenarios by altering variables. That really boosts a lawyer's capabilities and helps him and his clients. Further customization in the form of specific modification of the family law software for use in various states is a welcome and necessarily desirable feature.

For instance, NY Family Law Software modified to suit New York's laws should have features to generate New York specific divorce forms, statement of net worth and temporary maintenance worksheet as well as child support worksheet (UD-8).

AZ family law software makes life easy for lawyers through automating all calculation based on local laws and generation of forms from single point entry of data. PA family law software is slightly different as regards child support and other computations. NJ family law software also follows the broader outlines but with specific modification of forms and calculations in line with local NJ laws.

A high degree of flexibility and customization is what makes family law software all the more easy and convenient to use for legal professionals. Family law software makes life simpler for lawyers and helps them grow exponentially on their career path and, in today's age, is indispensable.

Family Law Software Enhances Productivity of Legal Professionals

Family Laws in the US govern pre-nuptial agreements, marriages, domestic relationships, adoption, spousal abuse, dissolution of marriages and consequent issues like support, property division, child support and custody. What makes family laws in the US even more complicated is that the laws differ from one State to the other. Even on a generalized basis, for a lawyer to keep track of each issue in a family law dispute for each client can become harrowing over time and will take up most of his time. Today, with technology, lawyers can use family law software that automatically keeps track of all related issues and generates individual, detailed reports for a particular case. Family law software is further customized for use in different states considering the applicable laws unique to each.

Divorce financial settlement and child support calculator software pertinent to various states is included in the common family law software. Common features are the case information statements, centralized data entry screens and reports on assets and liabilities. The family law software includes forms, insurance certification and other matters related to family law dispute cases. The family law software enables lawyers customization and they can save it either in word document format or a PDF format. Extended features include apps for mobile phones so a lawyer on the go can check and work on his case sheets. There is no doubt that the right family law software helps lawyers and attorneys increase their productivity, concentrate on their work and improve interaction with clients, leaving it to technology to take care of data, calculations, forms and records.

Customization of AZ family law software helps professionals in the state collect and enter data, calculate child support , divorce financial settlement , generate forms, experiment with what if scenarios and also add customized forms applicable for laws specific to the State. NY family law software helps lawyers in the State collect and store data, generate automated New York divorce forms and related documents and New York statement of net worth along with integrated temporary maintenance worksheet and child support worksheet (UD-8) with automatic calculations.

PA family law software has the same features but with child support and other computations modified to be in line with Pennsylvania laws. NJ family law software has the same general features but with modifications to consider calculations, generate forms and documents in line with laws of New Jersey . Computations, data entry and management as also retrieval, filling of forms and keeping of records becomes automated and so easy that one wonders how legal professionals have managed to do without such a family law software for so long.

New Laws, New Party Titles. Easy!

Great news for New Jersey divorce lawyers and family law firms! The newest version of Easy Soft's New Jersey family law software, CIS 2.2 B, is now compliant with relevant legislative changes in effect as recently as September 1, 2011.

First, a little background to catch you up. In 2006, the New Jersey legislature passed the Civil Union and Domestic Partnership Act, recognizing civil unions in New Jersey. This law gives legal recognition to civil unions—although proponents of gender-neutral marriage have made it clear that it's not exactly the same thing. But we digress…

September 1, 2011 (just last week) saw day one of a 2011 Omnibus Rule which (among other things) requires a change in the terminology used in divorce documentation—including your clients'. From the passage of the Civil Union and Domestic Partnership Act until last Thursday, this change had not been mandatory.

In the most basic sense, what this means is that your divorce forms, financial affidavit ( new jersey case information statement), and other documentation can no longer use the terms “husband” and “wife.” Instead, all such documentation must use the words plaintiff and defendant in describing the parties to a divorce action.

As always, Easy Soft comes to the rescue. Our popular divorce software, otherwise known as Case Information Statement or CIS, has many new features (CIS 2.2B) which—among many, many other things—niftily replaces the old terms with the new. Instead of using the outmoded husband and wife terminology, we've employed “plaintiff” and “defendant” everywhere necessary: including the case data collection section, all worksheets, forms, pleadings, and template correspondence.

CIS 2.2B populates the fields with the proper terminology. Even some of our blog entries and examples have been changed. We're not trying to brainwash you…we're just helping you to keep up with the times which are a-changin'.

And with that, once again, Easy Soft has made compliance with new laws as easy and breezy as turning on your computer.

For more information about CIS 2.2B and our other family law software, including our national divorce settlement product Divorce Financials, call Easy Soft at 800.905.7638.

Balancing the Impossible—NJ Equitable Distribution Made Easy

Remember the old fable about King Solomon and the mystery baby? Two mothers claimed the same baby, and so the wise king said, “let's slice him in half.”

One of the mothers said, “okay.” The other said, “absolutely not. She can have him.” Of course, the latter turned out to be the baby's true mom.

If you're a divorce lawyer in New Jersey or another state, you know just what we're talking about. You can split a bank account in two, but you can't do the same with the house. Ditto with your prized sports car, your artwork, your dog. You've got to let one spouse claim these things in full (okay, you might share custody of the dog), and then credit the other spouse with his or her “equitable” portion. Divorce Law 101, right?

Not so fast. If you're like us and you don't love math, it's a nightmare trying to keep all of your client's valuations straight-especially if the spouses are changing it up every two seconds.

That's why we're so proud of our Statement of Assets balance sheet-now a standard feature in the latest release (CIS 2.2 B) of New Jersey's no. 1 family law software.

The sheet allows you to click on Asset Distribution (or liabilities distribution), and then-with a flick of your mouse click-"effectuate" distribution, just like the judge you were born to be. If your client wants to keep the house, then you assign him or her 100% distribution of that item, and assign 0% to his or her spouse. The worksheet crunches the numbers, then spits out a few key numbers-letting you see at a glance whether your client has a surplus or a shortfall of the whole.

To change it up is as easy (and dare we say, fun?) as taking another shot with a brand new digital camera.

Our Divorce Financial customers have long loved this feature of their divorce software. And if you're a divorce attorney in New Jersey, you will, too.

For more information about CIS 2.2B and our other family law software, call Easy Soft at 800.905.7638.