Like any good woman, I was watching a repeat of Snapped this morning. It’s a eerily popular Oxygen TV show about everyday women who are accused or have been convicted of murdering their husbands. This particular episode told the story of a female attorney from Texas who had moved with her husband to Richmond, Virginia and raised a family. She never took the Virginia bar or practiced law after she relocated. After their marriage fell apart years later, her husband was awarded the marital home and custody of their 3 children largely because of her unemployment. She was ordered to pay child support. She returned to Texas where she was admitted and attempted to start her own law practice, but after being away for so many years, she found it difficult to do so. She quickly became $10k behind in child support. Eventually she snapped and killed her husband for whatever reason.
Rather than focusing on the heinousness of the crime, I found myself questioning why the court ever thought this housewife could make enough money to pay such as large amount of child support when she hadn’t held a job in so long. She had to start over from scratch…a monumental task for a woman in the legal profession. While this certainly would never justify homicide, it definitely made me think about opportunities available to someone like me restarting her legal career.
I suppose she could have looked for contract work in Texas or in Virginia to be near her children. For the last 2 years, I have been working as a contract attorney. It was difficult to for me to get work even with 3 out-of-state licenses (before my 4th admission), and I did have practice experience when I came here. While this job pays okay, it certainly isn’t the kind of salary that could afford thousands of dollars in monthly child support payments.
She could have taken the Virginia bar or returned to Texas and looked for a job. Of the many other attorneys of varying levels of experience have come and gone from my temp project these past 2 years not one of them has left for more money…most significantly less and largely because they had been out of practice, so I’m thinking they couldn’t afford massive child support payments. As for those who have gone solo (definitely something I see in my future), like our homicidal Texas mother, they have struggled to support themselves, let alone 3 children, for the first couple of years and relied on substantial savings and referral bases to make it.
Because of my law school graduation year I have found it difficult to find suitable permanent positions. The entry level jobs I want assume I want to be evaluated as someone with 4 years experience. The jobs opportunities I don't really want but feel I have sufficient experience to do offer me entry level salaries because I have been temping...as if temping has erased my past experience. I assume things would be worse for me had I just been unemployed for 2 years…maybe I’m wrong. So as I sat their watching Snapped, I wondered why the court considered this housewife’s out-of-state law license as an instant source of considerable income, when I have found that not to be the case. I guess she couldn’t figure it out either. I’m going need some time to reflect on this…
