Posted on October 17, 2017 in Property Division

It is easy to think of a divorce settlement in terms of winners and losers. You may feel like you won the negotiations if you obtained most of the marital properties you wanted and secured favorable support payments. However, there is more to a divorce settlement than the initial financial totals:

• Property ownership can come with additional expenses;
• Some properties have more potential for growth; and
• How support payments are structured can favor one side in terms of taxes.

You need to take a broad perspective of the financial consequences of your divorce settlement.

Pursuing Your Home

Your marital home is probably the most valuable property from your marriage, so obtaining ownership feels like a huge win. Keeping the home is most crucial if your children will be living with you for a majority of the time after the divorce. However, owning the home can be costly and risky:

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 Posted on October 13, 2017 in Divorce

People who are going through or have completed a divorce often turn to comforting activities to help them cope. Divorce is a significant source of stress, anxiety and depression. Divorcees are experiencing a life-altering process with an uncertain outcome. The stress increases if the two parties are hostile and combative with each other. Thus, it seems more important to be able to enjoy themselves when they have free time. However, overindulgence can lead to addiction, even for those without a history of addictive behavior. What started as a coping mechanism becomes a compulsion that is difficult to break.

Types of Addiction

People most commonly associate addiction with alcohol, tobacco products and drugs. All of the them have addictive properties and can become a chemical dependency for the users. Substance abuse is also directly linked to health complications and changes in behavior. However, addiction is broader than substance abuse, including:

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 Posted on October 10, 2017 in Children and Divorce

There is no denying that divorce is a negative experience for your children. You can rationalize how your children will be better off because of the divorce. From their perspective, they have witnessed the end of a relationship that defines their lives and are faced with uncertainties about their futures. However, divorce can have both a positive and negative effect on your children. They may not see any immediate benefits, but the experience can teach lessons that help them become better adults.

Healthy Relationships

Your marriage has a great influence on how your children will view and treat their own relationships. By witnessing your unhealthy marriage, they may unwittingly pick up your bad habits and make the same relationship mistakes that you did. The first lesson your divorce teaches is that your marriage was not a healthy relationship and that it is appropriate to end a relationship that makes you miserable. However, you also need to demonstrate a healthy relationship if you do not want them to repeat your mistakes. In interacting with your former spouse and potential new romantic partner, show that a relationship requires:

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 Posted on October 05, 2017 in Divorce

Your emotions can be one of your greatest adversaries during a divorce. It is common to feel anger and resentment towards your spouse when deciding to divorce, but those emotions are counterproductive when trying to reach a settlement. Though divorce is personal, you should try to keep your divorce negotiations impersonal. Here are five ways your emotions can work against you during a divorce:

1. Refusing to Negotiate: Sometimes our anger leads us to avoid the people we are mad at. After a contentious breakup, you may dread the thought of having to negotiate your divorce settlement with your spouse. However, refusing to negotiate takes away your power to decide how to divide your marital properties and allocate your parental responsibilities. Instead, a judge will make those important decisions for you, without the intimate knowledge of your best interests.

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 Posted on October 02, 2017 in Children and Divorce

For parents who are considering divorce, there are practical benefits to waiting until their children are adults before ending their marriage. Without legal dependents, the divorcing couple will not need to establish child support payments or the allocation of parental responsibilities. As adults, the children are thought to be more mature and capable of accepting their parents' divorce. However, people of all ages can struggle with the news that their parents are divorcing. Adult children of divorce may feel emotionally and financially vulnerable. Yet, their feelings may be treated with less care because they are supposed to be more mature and independent.

Emotional Impact

Parents who are getting divorced should not assume that their adult children will accept their decision with calmness and understanding. Part of the difficulty of telling younger children about divorce is explaining the concept and what it means for them. Adult children know what divorce means, but that knowledge may not ease their emotions. Many negative thoughts can plague them, such as:

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 Posted on September 27, 2017 in Domestic Violence

Domestic violence between spouses can lead to or result from divorce. A person may choose to end his or her marriage because his or her spouse is abusive. In other cases, asking for a divorce may trigger a spouse’s threatening behavior. Either way, domestic violence changes how a divorce is settled. The divorce court will likely favor the victim in matters of allocation of parental responsibilities and division of property.

Order of Protection

With any case of domestic violence, the victim’s first responsibility is to protect him or herself, as well as other victims. A victim spouse should immediately seek an order of protection against the abusive spouse. The order includes several benefits for the victim spouse, such as:

• Forcing the abuser to leave the marital home;
• Prohibiting physical or electronic contact with the victims; and

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 Posted on September 25, 2017 in Prenuptial & Postnuptial Agreements

Creating a premarital agreement is negotiating aspects of your divorce before you get married. If you have been through a divorce before, you remember how complex those negotiations were. If this is your first marriage, the process may seem overwhelming and intimidating. When thinking about your premarital agreement, it helps to remember its purpose. You and your future spouse are determining how your properties would be divided in a theoretical divorce without the animosity of the divorce clouding your judgment. When making a premarital agreement, you should anticipate financial decisions that would need to be made during a divorce.

Premarital Properties

If you divorce, your properties would be classified as either marital or nonmarital. Your marital properties would be divided equitably between the two of you, while you would keep all of your nonmarital property. Distinguishing between marital and nonmarital property becomes more difficult when spouses have been married for several years. The clearest distinction is which properties were purchased before the marriage. Your premarital agreement can identify and protect your nonmarital assets, such as:

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 Posted on September 22, 2017 in Divorce

Despite its general acceptance in society, some couples view divorce as an unacceptable choice during their marriage. To them, divorce means quitting on their relationship and admitting that their marriage has failed. They believe it shows more strength to try to work through their differences or tolerate the parts of their marriage that make them unhappy. Other couples are bound to their marriages because of a moral conviction that divorce is a sin. However, staying together at all costs does not make a marriage a success. Couples need divorce to be an option during unhappy marriages.

Stable but Unhealthy

During their wedding vows, couples often promise to be faithful to each other for the rest of their lives. Thus, they may believe that staying together is the best indicator of a successful marriage. With such a standard, a marriage is guaranteed to be successful if the spouses refuse to ever consider divorce. However, it is debatable whether a marriage is a success if the relationship is marred by:

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 Posted on September 20, 2017 in Divorce

Parties negotiating a divorce settlement must walk a fine line between protecting their interests and cooperating with the other side. A person who acquiesces too often may end up with an unfavorable settlement. However, being uncompromising can prevent the sides from reaching an agreement. When spouses are unable to settle their divorce on their own, a court is forced to make important decisions for them. The resulting divorce settlement may leave both parties unsatisfied. If you plan to divorce, it is in your best interest to reach an agreement with your spouse on a settlement. You can improve your chances of a healthy negotiation by planning your approach to the process:

1. Identify Your Priorities: Arguing every aspect of your divorce will slow down negotiations and create a combative atmosphere. Before negotiations start, you should determine which aspects of the settlement are most important to you. Save your arguments for those aspects, and be more willing to compromise on other aspects.

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 Posted on September 18, 2017 in Divorce

A popular myth about marriage in the U.S. is that half of all first marriages end in divorce. Data says that the divorce rate peaked at 40 percent in 1980 and has been declining since. Thus, it is false to assume that a marriage is just as likely to fail as succeed because it is a first marriage. However, there is a demographic that is more likely to divorce from their first marriage. They are people who:

• Marry when they are younger than 25;
• Do not have a college education; and
• Are in a lower income class.

These characteristics identify people who are getting married when they are still immature.

Marriage Is Work

Young people are excited when they fall in love for the first time. They feel a mixture of physical attraction, pure adoration and enjoyment in having fun together. A young couple may believe that these feelings are enough to support a long-lasting marriage. However, people with this immature view of marriage do not understand how it works. People in a marriage must:

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