Before filing for divorce

The event of divorce may be over­whelm­ing to go through for any indi­vid­ual, and no per­son should have to do so alone. Ellerin Hutchin­son is a fam­ily attorney’s office located in Florida that is ready to rep­re­sent spouses who are going through this hard time, and they are com­mit­ted to walk­ing every step of the way with their clients. Here are a few tips to con­sider if you are con­sid­er­ing divorc­ing your spouse, steps to take in order to make sure that you are accu­rately pre­pared beforehand.

Hir­ing a good lawyer to rep­re­sent your needs is the most impor­tant deci­sion that can be made. There are so many details involved in divorce such as child cus­tody, child sup­port, alimony, divi­sion of assets and prop­erty and more! The life chang­ing deci­sion for a divorce is going to be hard as it is, by hir­ing an attor­ney to look out for yours and your family’s legal needs will help lessen that burden.

Make sure you place your children’s needs first in the divorce, they are going to have a hard time with their par­ents sep­a­rat­ing as it is, so make sure you do what is nec­es­sary to be there for them. Even though you may have chil­dren of all ages, sit­ting down with them and explain­ing the sit­u­a­tion is very impor­tant, par­tic­u­larly when explain­ing that the divorce is not their fault. You and your spouse, though choos­ing to leave each other, need to reas­sure the kids that you are not leav­ing them; divorce is dif­fi­cult and they will need your love and atten­tion more than ever in this time.

Pre­pare finan­cially for when you divorce, this will help take the shock out of change in your finances in the future by prepar­ing now. Whether you or your spouse decides that the divorce is your next step, your prepa­ra­tion is going to really help you in the long run. Have a thor­ough under­stand­ing of you and your spouse’s debt and credit as well as what is under each of your names. While you may request to see your spouse’s credit, this legally requires that you seek their per­mis­sion; even though you are mar­ried it is against the law if you don’t have their consent.

Know your own income down to the penny, this is impor­tant when divorc­ing in the even that one spouse will seek alimony pay­ments or child sup­port. Orga­nize your income pay­ment stubs as well as your taxes so that you are pre­pared when need­ing to pro­vide this infor­ma­tion to your attorney.

Know your spouse’s income as well; this is going to be use­ful for deter­min­ing the alimony and child sup­port. You will want to get as much infor­ma­tion you can regard­ing their income and taxes, as well as any ben­e­fits they might receive from work count too. You will likely need their per­mis­sion to get this infor­ma­tion, though it is not always the case.

Find out who is respon­si­ble for the ben­e­fits and retire­ment plans in your mar­riage. Under whose name are the ben­e­fits and insur­ance plans? Who has the 401K sav­ings plans? These details are impor­tant in a divorce because they may be sus­cep­ti­ble to division.

Start bud­get plan­ning for the future! If you believe that your divorce is inevitable, it is never too soon to start plan­ning for tomor­row espe­cially when it involves your finances. Even if you are awarded alimony or child sup­port pay­ments, the way you spend money is going to be dif­fer­ent. In the event that there are no kids involved and you do have a job, you may not receive any finan­cial sup­port from your ex, and it calls for you get­ting used to mak­ing pay­ments on a sin­gle income rather than a dual income. This includes you plan­ning to rid your­self of debt if there is any under your name. Bud­get for how you will pay bills and pay off debt; this may call for a more fru­gal lifestyle for a while, but it is worth it if you know divorce is the route for you.

Make the nec­es­sary changes to your will if you are fil­ing for a divorce. It is likely that if you have chil­dren you will want to make sure they are well taken care of, and per­haps other fam­ily mem­bers, but in the event of a divorce most peo­ple will want to remove their exes from receiv­ing any­thing if they were to die.

Divorces can be a lengthy process, though with prepa­ra­tion and the assis­tance of a skilled attor­ney it can be a much sim­pler sit­u­a­tion to go through. Con­tact Yvette Reyes today for more infor­ma­tion regard­ing your divorce situation.