My father abandoned my mother and started living with another woman. Apart from the bigamy case under 494 and 498(a) sections that we filed through police, we've approached a Lawyer and she initially suggested that we will file DVC and Maintenance. Later she told me that it's better to go with only DVC because court may think that only to harass my father we've filed so many cases on him, since there's already a bigamy case filed by police. And she told us that maintenance can be asked under DVC itself. It's been almost a year since the case is filed in a local district court without any hearings and no notices served yet.
The case is passed over with dates since a year as PO is vacant. The only one time when the judge was present, the lawyer intentionally passed it over since he had to attend another case. We got to know this, because despite our mother being present in court, it was updated in case history that both the parties are absent. We've lost trust on the Lawyer because of our experience so far with her.
My queries are as below, I would really appreciate your clarifications to these individual questions and advice based on your practical experiences:
1. Is it normal to seek maintenance under a DVC case without going for a separate Maintanence case? If it is not normal or not recommended, is it better to file Maintenance separately?
2. Since lawyer is not responding properly on whether the notices were served or not yet, I luckily got to know a mutual friend who's a staff in that court. Through him, I could somehow open our case file on a hearing date (pass over date as judge is vacant anyways). I was told that no notices served yet in the matter. I was told by the staff member that the lawyer should've been proactive in these things, because since a year no notices were served. He should check whether notices are served or not, and if not then insist on taking judge sign and serve notices via Registered Post.
My question is, in general, do lawyers take care of these things to ensure notices are served? Or is it the responsibility of the court staff to serve notices and lawyers generally don't involve in these things?
3. I was also told that Lawyer should insist on speeding up the case, if there is no PO repeatedly then she could proactively insist for expedition and take it to the bench. Is there a lapse on part of my lawyer in this case?
4. I was told the total fee for my case is 1 lakh INR, and she took 30k INR in advance. All she did was file the case and left it to it's own fate since a year (that too not properly, because when I opened the file I got to know initially filing was made without sworn in affidavit. Due to this the court returned the documents. Then the lawyer took sworn in affidavit from my mother and then it was accepted. I understood why my mother was called two times to the court before filing. This delayed the filing by a month.) I was told that I was charged heftily by the staff who are experienced with cases on a day to day basis. Probably in 30k INR entire case will be charged, not the advance. Considering the kind of service I'm getting, am I really overcharged, in general?
