Divorce and Your Finances: Ways to Protect Yourself
Divorcing can be really expensive, but it does not have to be. This is true for even complex cases involving multiple issues. There are a number of steps to help make sure that your focus remains on rebuilding your life, not paying huge legal fees just to get revenge.
The best result of a divorce is for you to be in a position to resume your life and be able to begin again pursuing your hopes and dreams. There is no such thing as a victory in family break ups. Both sides will likely get something,
meaning both sides will likely lose something. The worst result, however, is that a divorce is so costly financially to you both that rebuilding your life becomes unlikely.
The people most likely to come out of divorce the best are the ones able to understand how to divide what they once held in common. For instance, while it is possible to put pressure on your spouse by getting a mental or a custody evaluation, and then an independent medical examination to determine parental fitness, but is this truly in the best interests of your child or yourself? Absent extreme circumstances, a court is almost always going to find that the two of you should split custody. Additionally, you two used to live together, and you probably already understand what the best way to divide custody is based on everybody’s schedules.
Dividing child custody is similar to splitting community property. It is almost always the case that the property earned during the marriage will be subject to some sort of equal division. You probably do not need experts to testify as to the value of certain objects at tremendous costs to you. In fact, with a little thought and work with your divorce attorney, you probably can fairly easily come up with an equitable property division scenario.
A bad scenario for dividing community property is where one spouse stubbornly refuses to cooperate resulting in community property being sold and liquidated. For instance, if one spouse has a large retirement or 401(k) that is not divisible, that spouse can put a lot of pressure on the other spouse to sell all of the community property if an equal property division cannot be done.
In order for you to accomplish the above goals, you will likely need an attorney who does not encourage the two of you to fight, but one who looks to the larger picture. It is important to have an attorney when getting divorced because of how emotional divorce is. However, it is your divorce attorney’s job to remain logical and focused on your best interests. Hiring an attorney whose sole beneficial attribute is that they are a bulldog will probably hurt you in the long run. It is usually against this type of attorney’s nature to figure out advantageous ways of settling issues.
It is usually fairly clear to all sides involved how a court will rule. The laws on divorce are usually clear because they have been litigated so often. You are aware of the facts that will be presented at a hearing. And so what is the purpose of a trial, if you and your attorney are already aware of what the likely outcome will be? Hearings are even more nonsensical when you consider how tremendously expensive it will be and how much damage litigation could be to your future well being.
The above material is intended for information purposes only. It is not intended as professional legal advice and should not be construed as such. Attorney Will Beaumont practices in New Orleans, La.
