Every so often I hear from a woman who, panicked, tells me she has to have a separation agreement reviewed TODAY. She has to sign it right now, or there’ll be dire consequences. It’s an emergency! It has to be done now! I hate these conversations for a lot of reasons, but, first and foremost,...
Should I sign this separation agreement?
Divorce and custody cases aren’t like personal injury cases. At the end of the day, all you have to divide is what was already there to begin with – so, most of the time, people wind up with less than they had before. I mean, if you think about it, it makes sense. If you...
It happens sometimes – though I definitely don’t prefer it – that custody is handled separately from the rest of the divorce proceedings. It can happen for any number of reasons. Like everything else, divorce and custody cases are highly variable, and all sorts of things can happen that can result in people choosing to...
Things always get more difficult around the holidays. People who are thinking about divorce don’t really tend to take action at this point; for the most part, they keep it together for their families through the holiday season. But for the people who have an existing divorce or custody case, it tends to become more...
In many ways, contested or uncontested, your divorce is a negotiation. In most cases, regardless of whether you initially file on fault, your divorce will ultimately be settled. That’s not a dig; in fact, it’s an ideal situation. Rather than leaving it up to a judge, you and your husband can reach an agreement about...
There’s a lot of uncertainty when it comes to most divorces. At the beginning of the process, tensions are usually high, and there’s a lot of mistrust on both sides. Coming to the realization that your marriage is at an end is difficult and emotional, and it’s often surprising how fast people go from “till...
Negotiations in divorce can take all sorts of forms, depending on what’s appropriate under the specific circumstances. In a lot of cases, negotiations start out in the form of letters. We draft a separation agreement (or the other side does, depending on who was hired first), and then we negotiate back and forth in writing....
When most attorneys talk about divorce, they give the impression that there are all sorts of different “types” of divorce—negotiation, collaboration, mediation, litigation—but the reality is that there are really only three real choices. You either (1) negotiate your divorce by signing a separation agreement and decide for yourself how your things will be divided,...