Houston, Texas
Harris County
Keep this where you can find it fast.
Divorce and custody
Injury claims
One attorney on every one of them.
Most people find a lawyer's number at the worst possible moment, on a phone with nine percent battery, standing somewhere they did not plan to be. This page is built to be useful in that moment: the number first, then the four things worth knowing before you say anything else, then the plain version of what actually happens next. Read the rest later, from a chair, when the phone is charged.
Four things worth knowing before you say anything.
Tap a card to turn it over. This is general information about how these situations work, not advice about your case, and it is written the way it would be said across a desk.
What you carry is usually all you have on you when it happens. Everything below fits in the same pocket.
If somebody is in custody right now
This is the call that comes in at an hour nobody planned for. Five things make that call useful instead of frantic, and you can gather all of them before anyone picks up.
The full legal name and date of birth.
Not the name everybody uses. The one on the identification, spelled the way the county has it, or nothing will match.
Which county, and which building.
Harris County is not the only agency that arrests people inside Harris County. Cities and constables have their own holding. Where somebody physically is decides who you talk to.
The charge as it was actually written.
What a family member repeats over the phone and what is printed on the paperwork are often two different things, and only one of them matters.
Whether a bond has been set, and at what.
If it has, the next question is the conditions attached to it. Those conditions are how people end up back in custody on a case that was going fine.
A number that will actually ring.
Calls out of a facility are short, and they land when they land. Leave a number somebody will answer at three in the afternoon and at three in the morning.
Most counties, Harris included, publish an online inmate search. It is worth checking before you call anyone, including this office, because the answer to the first four questions is usually sitting in it.
The questions everybody asks first
No number before the records exist.
A value put on an injury claim in the first week is a sales pitch, not an estimate. The medical records and the report come first, and then a number means something.
No handing the file to a stranger.
The attorney you talk to is the attorney on the filing. If that ever has to change, you hear it from her before it happens, not from a voice you do not recognise.
No telling you what you want to hear.
Some cases are harder than the person calling hopes. Knowing that early is worth more than being comforted on a Tuesday and blindsided in court.
Does it cost anything to ask?
No. Calling and describing what happened costs nothing. What representation costs depends on the matter, and it gets said out loud, in plain numbers, before anything is signed.
Can you tell me what my case is worth?
Not on a first call, and be wary of anybody who will. Before the records exist, a number is a guess in a good suit.
I already talked to the police. Is it too late?
It is not too late to stop. What was said is said. The next thing you say is still yours to control, and being honest about what already happened is more useful than trying to tidy it up.
What if this office does not handle my kind of case?
Then you hear that on the first call rather than a month in. A pointer toward somebody who does handle it is worth more than a file that sits in the wrong drawer.
Three kinds of trouble, handled by one person.
An arrest starts a clock, not a verdict.
From the moment somebody is booked, dates begin running: a bond setting, a first appearance, deadlines for the State to turn over what it has. Most of the damage people do to their own case happens in the hours before anyone explains that to them.
Bond is one question. Conditions of release are a different one, and they are the ones that quietly catch people out: a curfew, a device, an order not to contact somebody, a check-in that moved.
The first work is unglamorous. Find out exactly what the charge is, get the paperwork, find out what the State says it has, and make sure you are not about to violate a condition of release by accident.
Custody is a schedule with a judge's signature on it.
Divorce and custody are not arguments, in the end. They are documents: a schedule, a set of rights and duties, property, debt, and dates. The work is turning what a family already knows into language a court can order and enforce.
Temporary orders usually arrive long before a final decree, and they set the rules a family actually lives under in the meantime: who is in the house, who has the children on which nights, who pays what while the case is pending. People underestimate them because they are called temporary. They are not.
Bring the papers you were served with, even the ones you have not opened. The dates printed on them matter more than almost anything else you will say in the first meeting.
The evidence leaves before you feel better.
Vehicles get repaired or crushed. Intersections get repaved. Witnesses move. The insurer, meanwhile, calls early and calls friendly, and there is a reason for both.
Get the crash report number. Photograph the vehicles and the scene before anything is moved. Keep every bill and every discharge sheet, including the ones that look unimportant.
What a claim is worth is a separate question, and no honest lawyer answers it on the first phone call. Before the records exist, a number is a guess wearing the clothes of a promise.
You are hiring a person, not a firm.
There is no intake floor here, because there is no floor. The attorney who answers the questions is the attorney who reads the file, stands up at the setting and signs the filings.
The practical version matters more than the principle. When you call back in three weeks, nobody has to be brought up to speed. When something changes on a Friday afternoon, the person deciding what to do about it already knows your case. And when a matter is not a fit for this office, you hear that on the first call instead of a month later.
A one-lawyer office also has an honest limit, and it is worth saying it plainly: the calendar is finite. That is the trade. What you give up is the appearance of a large firm. What you get is that nobody has to explain your case to anybody.
Leave your name, a number that will actually ring, and what county you are in. If somebody is in custody, say where. That is enough to start.
What happens after you call
Every matter runs on its own clock, so treat this as the ordinary shape of it rather than a schedule. It is still better than wondering.
You describe what happened.
Out loud, in your own words, without editing it into something that sounds better. The unflattering parts are the ones a lawyer needs first, because those are the ones the other side already has.
The paperwork gets collected.
Charges, conditions, petitions, reports, records, photographs. Half of the early work in any of these cases is simply getting hold of the documents that already exist and reading them properly.
You get told what this looks like.
What the realistic paths are, which one is likely, what each would take, and what it would cost. Plain numbers, plainly said, before anything is signed by anyone.
Somebody shows up.
The setting, the hearing, the mediation, the call with the adjuster. The name that goes on the filing is the name of the person who was standing there.
Where the office is
8866 Gulf Freeway, Suite 211
Houston, Texas 77017
The office is on the Gulf Freeway itself, in the south east of the city, which is the entire reason it is there rather than in a tower downtown. People who need a lawyer in this part of Houston should not have to take half a day off and pay to park in order to ask a question.
A photo ID, and every piece of paper anyone has handed you: the citation, the bond conditions, the petition you were served with, the crash report, the letter from an insurer. If you have none of it, come anyway. Nobody is going to send you home for arriving empty handed.
The back of the card
Law Office of M. Elena Navarro
Maria Elena Navarro, Attorney at Law
Tex. Bar No. 197264
8866 Gulf Freeway, Suite 211
Houston, Texas 77017
