About Attorney Rachel Rust and Her Law Practice

Attorney Rachel Rust is an of counsel attorney with the law firm of Wadler, Perches, Kerlick. Rachel has been a practicing attorney licensed with the State Bar of Texas since 1995 and with the Virginia State Bar since 1996. She represents clients in a wide range of family law matters, including pre-nuptial and separation agreements, divorces, custody modifications, probate issues, collaborative law, and she is a trained mediator. Ms. Rust works to resolve issues in ways that are respectful and productive.

My goal with any family that I work with is to help my client get through the divorce with the least amount of harm and help the client and the family be in a situation where there is a next chapter and they can go forward and still have productive lives and have kids who have productive lives who aren’t irretrievably scarred.

Attorney Rachel Rust

Here’s her description of her background and divorce practice. Contact Rachel Rust by calling 800-929-1725.

Summary of the Video About Rachel Rust and Her Law Practice

Her Background in Social Work Helps Her Do Divorce Differently

I have a kind of unique background in coming to the law. I started my professional life as a social worker. I got a degree from UT in social work and I spent two years as a therapeutic counselor at a wilderness camping program in East Texas where we chopped down trees and skinned poles and lived out in the woods with behaviorally challenged girls.

Then I went back to school to get a master’s in special ed. I started while I was still out there at the wilderness camp, studying by kerosene lamp. I know, it sounds like Lincoln. I worked for a year at a residential treatment facility as a case manager, went back to school again.

I got a master’s in social work so I could do counseling and then went back to work for the original agency I had worked for earlier that had the camp out in the woods.  I worked as a counselor, and the parents had to agree to participate in family counseling for their kids to be in the program. I did that for nine years in the Dallas area.

As a Family Counselor I Saw Divorce Attorneys Ignore My Therapy

While I was in that position doing family counseling, I was often subpoenaed to come to court by arrogant attorneys who often didn’t even have the courtesy to talk to me to find out what I had to say without trying to screw up my good therapy. So, I made up my mind that I would try to learn what the law was to see if I could do it differently.  I was going to turn my life upside down, then I might as well live in a different place so, off I went to Virginia to study law (at Washington & Lee University School of Law).

I think I always wanted to do family law because it just kind of made sense given my background. I wanted to find a way to help people get divorced if they wanted to get divorced and not screw up their kids.

Attorney Rachel Rust

That was 25 years ago. I can’t say I’ve accomplished that goal. I think I have some skills that will assist people to choose a different path in how to dissolve their families, but it requires people willing to do that and people willing to put their kids’ interest ahead of their own.

I’ve done volunteer work. I did some mental health rescue work with the Red Cross during a couple of hurricanes in the Caribbean. I served on the Red Cross board when living in Charlottesville, Virginia. I’ve served on my local school board for nine years now and I think all of those experiences bring me to a different place to offer perhaps a different perspective from the normal family law person who doesn’t come from those backgrounds.

I’ve been accused of not sounding like an attorney. I’ve been accused of asking questions that people didn’t expect an attorney to ask, such as what kind of relationship do you want to have with this person five years from now that cause people to think, perhaps, differently and ask themselves those questions.

What Is Doing Divorce Differently

I strongly suggest to people to do whatever they need to do to decide that they’ve done what they could do and need to go forward. And I think the best example I can give of that is that if you are looking backwards and still trying to walk forwards, you’re going to hit a tree. If you’re not ready to turn your head around, then do whatever you need to do to make peace with that. If you’ve done whatever you could do and this is the choice you’ve made, then you understand who to get through your divorce in the least harmful way possible. I would say my goal in any family that I work with is to help my my client through the process with the least amount of harm to the kids and future relationships with the spouse.

I work to help people be in a situation where there is a next chapter and they can go forward and still have productive lives and have kids who have productive lives who aren’t irretrievably scarred.

Attorney Rachel Rust

If you have kids, you cannot afford to make a mortal enemy of the other parent. You just can’t. The younger the child is, the more crucial that is. And even for your older children, because you don’t want to put your kids in a position where they’ve got to decide who to invite to law school graduation.

I can’t tell you how many of my law school classmates really agonized because they were afraid that one of their divorced parents was going to cause a scene at their graduation and how sad that is. Who’s going to be at the wedding? What about the christening or bar mitzvah?

What’s going to happen for the rest of these children’s lives if you cannot find a way to conduct yourself in public with that other person present in a way that doesn’t embarrass you and the kids?

The current legal systems sets people up to be adversarial, when in truth we have a family that may look different after the divorce, but which, nevertheless, is still a family. When you have to be adversarial with people with whom you’re supposed to have an ongoing relationship, well, what kind of sense does that make?

Graceful Divorce Solutions by M. Marcy Jones

It starts with the way you get divorced. How you get divorced makes a huge difference in how things go from then on and so I knew that as a counselor and that was reaffirmed as an attorney, that how you get divorced and who you choose to guide you on that path determines in the large part where you end up.