Your Trusted
Family Law Attorney

PRS (Professional Research Services) announced that Grand Rapids attorneys and judges have selected David C. Sarnacki as one of Grand Rapids’ Top Lawyers. Local judges and attorneys made the confidential selection for excellence in both Family Law and Mediation, especially in litigating and mediating high-asset estates and high-conflict custody disputes. This honor will appear in…

The Decision-Maker’s Attention: Grabbing It, Keeping It & Winning with It It’s worth revisiting Trey Cox’s “Winning the Jury’s Attention: Presenting Evidence from Voir Dire to Closing.” In less than 200 pages, Cox covers 7 key principles of communication and persuasion in the courtroom. “We must realize,” Cox says, “that a juror’s attention is a…

“Wait, What?” Moments in Trial: Here’s Our Home Base Problem. It is easy to be confused in the courtroom. We are juggling a lot of balls in the air, building our client’s case and dismantling the adversary’s case. There are multiple variables hitting us at each moment: the testimony, the emotional atmosphere, objections, evidentiary foundations,…

Up and Down The Ladder of Abstraction “The rungs of a ladder are not a place to make one’s home; they are for passing by. Fortunate are those who learn this. The long road becomes short for them, and they do not waste their lives upon the steps.”—Rumi David C. Sarnacki With a regular ladder,…

Persuasive Writing: A Few Big Ideas to Use Today Effective briefs start and end with persuasion. Simply put, the key elements for developing core messages and for drafting briefs include Messenger, Messaging, Melody Makers, Mapping, and Quality Standards. Messenger: To be persuasive in brief writing, we promote our case as remarkable and worthy of attention…

PERCEPTIONS OF FAIRNESS: MEDIATING THROUGH DIVORCE CONFLICT A good mediation process is a path through the pain of the past and the conflict of the present so each person can embrace a future filled with possibilities. To help move everyone along this path, we strive to bring gifts of fairness. “Perception is Reality,” right? So…

The Valley of the Shadow of Divide: Building Conversations   In the divorce world, there is division. In mediation, there is division. And more broadly, in our world, there is division. Despite the shadow of divide, there is hope for building conversations. At Columbia University, the lab of Dr. Peter T. Coleman and his team…

The Problem. We lose track of and lose control of time in a trial. The one more question, one more point, one more witness begets a second. Trials almost always take longer than expected, and the judge’s time is a terrible thing to waste. Efficiency and impact are tied to keeping interest. Efficiency is one…

Understanding Child Support in Grand Rapids: A Practical Guide   Child support issues can be overwhelming, especially during an emotionally charged divorce. At Sarnacki Law Firm, we aim to make this process as clear, simple, and stress-free as possible for families in the Grand Rapids area.   Here’s a practical guide to understanding child support…