Divorce and Family Law
Attorney in Livonia, Michigan
I handle divorce, child custody, parenting time, child support, and spousal support for families across Metro Detroit, based in Livonia, Michigan, with a second office in Farmington.
Livonia office at 18306 Middlebelt Rd.
Admitted to the State Bar of Michigan in 1990.
Divorce, Custody, Parenting
Time, and Support
If you are reading this, something in your family has already changed or is about to. You may not know yet whether what you need is a divorce, a custody order, a change to an order you already have, or just an honest answer about where you stand before you do anything at all.
I handle divorce, child custody, parenting time, child support, and spousal support.
- Divorce
- Child custody
- Parenting time
- Child support
- Spousal support
If there is a specific set of circumstances I cannot align with, I will tell you that in the first conversation rather than have you learn it at your own expense.
What Happens First, in Plain Language
The first thing that happens is a conversation, not a filing. You tell me what is going on. I ask questions, and some of them will feel intrusive, because in a family case the details that matter are usually the ones people would rather not say out loud.
Then I tell you what the process actually looks like from where you are standing: what gets decided, in what order, which parts you can influence, and which parts are not in anyone's hands. If there are children involved, that changes the order of almost everything, and you will hear that from me at the start rather than discover it three months in.
Pending attorney review: divorce process and timelineYou will not hear a legal term from me without an explanation attached to it. If I use a word you have not heard before, stop me. There is no version of this where being confused helps you.
Custody and Parenting Time
Custody and parenting time are the parts people lose sleep over, and they are also the parts where bad information does the most damage. Friends, family, and the internet will all tell you what the law is. A lot of them will be wrong, and some of them will be confidently wrong.
What I will do is explain how these decisions actually get made, what the court is looking at, and where your situation is strong and where it is not. You will hear the weak parts from me first, because those are the ones we have to plan around.
Pending attorney review: custody factorsI do not tell parents what they want to hear about their children. Nobody can promise you a custody result, and an attorney who does is selling you something. What I can do is make sure your position is presented accurately and completely, and that you understand every decision in front of you before you make it.
Child Support and Spousal Support
Support is where a family case turns into arithmetic, and it is usually the part a client understands least well walking in.
I will walk you through how support is worked out, what goes into it, and which of those inputs are actually in dispute in your case. Most support disagreements are not disagreements about the law. They are disagreements about numbers, and numbers can be checked.
Pending attorney review: support calculationChild support and spousal support are different questions decided on different grounds. If someone has told you they are the same thing, they are not, and treating them as one is an expensive mistake.
You Have the Final Say
In a family case the decisions are yours in a way they are not in other kinds of cases. Whether to settle. Whether a particular week of parenting time is worth fighting over. What you are prepared to live with for the next ten years, and what you are not.
My job is to make you smart enough about your own case to make those decisions well. Not to make them for you, and not to talk you into whichever outcome is easiest to litigate.
"My goal is to make clients as smart as we are so they can make a final decision. Clients have the final say."
That means you get the real picture, including the parts you were hoping not to hear, and you get it early enough to do something about it. An honest read on a difficult position is worth more to you than an optimistic one, because it is the only kind you can plan around.
What I Will Not Promise You
I do not guarantee outcomes, and that matters more here than anywhere else in my practice, because what is at stake is not a number on a page.
No attorney can promise you custody. No attorney can promise you a parenting time schedule, a support figure, or how a judge will read your family. Anyone who tells you otherwise is telling you what you want to hear in order to be hired, and you should treat that as information about them.
What I commit to is this. You will know where your case actually stands at every stage, including when the news is not what you were hoping for. You will never be surprised by something I saw coming and did not tell you. And the decisions that are yours to make will stay yours.
The Same Attorney, Before and After
Family cases rarely arrive by themselves. A divorce can put a house, a business, a retirement account, or an open injury claim in play at the same time. Sometimes there is a criminal charge sitting alongside it, and the two affect each other in ways that are easy to miss when two attorneys are handling them separately and neither one is looking at the whole picture.
I practice in six areas of law, which means the problem sitting next to your family case does not send you off to find a second attorney and start explaining yourself from the beginning.
It also means that when your family case is over, you are not starting again with a stranger the next time something happens.
Where I Handle Family Law Matters
My office is in Livonia, Michigan, at 18306 Middlebelt Rd. I handle family law matters in Wayne, Oakland, Macomb, Washtenaw, Monroe, and Livingston counties.
Family court is local in a way that surprises people. The written law is the same everywhere in Michigan. How a particular county runs its docket and schedules its hearings is not, and that difference is not a small thing when yours is the case on the calendar.
I have been appearing in these courts since 1990. Knowing how a given county actually works is something I already have rather than something I would be learning on your case.
Detroit Metro Area
Wayne County
Washtenaw County
Monroe County
Macomb County
Oakland County
Photos via Wikimedia Commons: Detroit skyline (Detroit Metro Area) by TheWxResearcher (CC BY 4.0); Wayne County Building by Joshuay04, Washtenaw and Monroe County Courthouses by Charles W. Chapman, Macomb County Administration Building by WeaponizingArchitecture, and Oakland County Sheriff's Office by 42-BRT (all CC BY-SA 4.0).
Common Questions About Divorce and Custody in Michigan
Yes. Robert Akouri handles divorce, child custody, parenting time, child support, and spousal support matters from his Livonia, Michigan office. Family law is one of six areas he practices in, alongside criminal defense, personal injury, civil litigation, business and transactional law, and insurance defense.
Robert Akouri handles family law matters in Wayne, Oakland, Macomb, Washtenaw, Monroe, and Livingston counties in Michigan. His main office is in Livonia, Michigan, with Farmington as a second location, and he has practiced in Metro Detroit courts since being admitted to the State Bar of Michigan in 1990.
Ready to Talk?
Akouri Law offers a free initial consultation.
Call the Livonia office and describe what is going on. You will get a plain answer about whether this is something I handle and what the next step looks like. If it is not something I handle, you will be told that too.