Preparing for Divorce Cincinnati OH

 

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Considering Whether You Have Cause for Concern

If your marriage is going through tough times, you may find yourself wondering whether it’s an example of the “for better or for worse” alluded to in your marriage vows or whether your relationship is truly on the rocks. Although no test exists that can tell you whether your problems are typical reactions to the stress and strain that most marriages experience at one time or another or whether they point to more serious issues, troubled marriages do tend to exhibit many of the same characteristics. How many of the following statements apply to your marriage?

In your mind, your spouse just can’t do anything right anymore.

You fight constantly.

You’ve lost the ability or the willingness to resolve your marital problems.

Resentment and contempt have replaced patience and love.

You’ve turned from lovers into roommates.

One or both of you is having an affair.

You go out of your way to avoid being together and, when you are together, you have nothing to talk about.

Your children are reacting to the stress in your marriage by fighting more, having difficulty in school, getting into trouble with the police, abusing drugs or alcohol, or becoming sexually promiscuous.

You have begun having thoughts about divorce.

Don’t panic if you find that your marriage exhibits some of these characteristics because you’re not necessarily headed for divorce court. However, you do have cause for concern; you and your spouse need to assess your options — first separately and then together — and decide what to do next.

Marital problems can trigger depression, feelings of vulnerability, powerlessness, anger, and sleep disturbances, any of which can impede clear thinking and sound decision-making. A mental health professional can help you or your spouse deal with these problems so that you can move forward. If your spouse is struggling emotionally, suggest that he or she get mental health counseling, assuming that you think your spouse will be receptive to advice coming from you given the state of your marriage.

Getting Prepared Financially for a Divorce#/b>

Pre-divorce financial planning is essential to minimizing the cost of your divorce and increasing the likelihood that when your divorce is over, you will have a settlement agreement that meets your short- and long-term post-divorce financial needs. The amount and type of planning you need to do depends on how involved you have been in managing your family’s financial life, whether you have a good credit history in your own name, and whether you have maintained a career outside your home during your marriage.

If your spouse totally surprises you with plans for a divorce, pre-divorce planning may be impossible, especially if you’re clueless about your family’s finances. If that’s the case, your divorce teaches you a painful lesson: That not being an informed and active partner in your family’s financial life is risky because you’re at an immediate disadvantage if your marriage ends (or if you become widowed).

Ideally, before your divorce begins, you will have

Built a good credit history in your own name. In other words, all or most of your credit should not be joint credit — that is, credit that you share with your spouse. Without a solid credit history of your own, you will have a difficult time qualifying for credit that has affordable terms after your divorce. You may even have a difficult time qualifying for certain kinds of jobs or promotions because some employers check your credit history as part of their decision-making process. You may also have a difficult time renting a nice place to live because some landlords review their potential tenants’ credit histories as part of their screening process. Finally, without good credit, you may not be able to obtain adequate insurance.

Cleaned up your credit history if the one you built in your own name was full of negatives. To improve your credit history, make all future credit payments on time, don’t go over your credit limits, and don’t take on new debt. Within a matter of months, your credit history should begin to improve.

Begun to update your job skills and/or to develop new ones if you’ve been a stay-at-home parent or a full-time homemaker during your marriage. In this current economy, having the right job skills is critical to being competitive in the job market. You may have to return to school to get the skills that you need.

Considered taking a part-time or full-time job while you’re married. By taking a job while you’re married, you can begin adding recent work experience to your resume and begin building some professional relationships that may help you after you’re out of your marriage.

Taken a basic class in personal finance at your local college or university or through some other resource if you know next to nothing about money matters or feel that you need a refresher course. Having the right money-related information and skills is essential to negotiating the financial aspects of your divorce and to managing your money wisely when you are on your own.

Created a written inventory of all your family’s assets and assigned an approximate value to each one. Going into a divorce, having a complete record of everything you and your spouse own is important so that you know what assets you have to divide up between you. Without a record, you may overlook an asset and not get all that you’re entitled to in your divorce. When compiling your list, don’t worry about listing items of little value; instead, focus on financially significant assets like real estate, stocks, mutual funds and bonds, vehicles, antiques, fine art, and so on. Also, when valuing each asset on your inventory, write down its market value — what the asset is worth now, meaning what someone would pay for it if you were selling it right now. Market value isn’t what you or your spouse paid for the asset when you first purchased it or what you wish the asset were worth.

Inventoried all your family’s debts. Your inventory should note the name of each creditor and how much you owe each one as well as which of your assets may secure your debts. For example, your home secures your mortgage loan. In other words, if you default on the loan, the mortgage holder is legally entitled to take back your home. Creating an inventory of all your marital debts is just as important as inventorying all your marital assets because you have to divvy up those debts during your divorce negotiations, too.

Located all the ownership papers for your assets. These documents include deeds to property; titles to vehicles; documentation for stocks, bonds, mutual funds, and other investments that you and your spouse may own; life insurance policies; estate-planning documents that you and your spouse prepared; information about your respective retirement plans; and so on. You need these documents for two reasons. First, you need them to help determine the value of the assets that you and your spouse are dividing between yourselves. Second, after you’ve divided everything, you need the documents so that you can properly transfer the titles to you or your spouse, depending on who gets what. Without the title to the assets you’re taking away from your marriage, you will not be their legal owner.

Obtained copies of important documents, such as your family’s tax returns for the past five years and your real estate tax bills for the most current year. Also have a record of all your bank accounts — the accounts that you and your spouse share as well as your individual accounts — including the types of accounts, the financial institutions where the accounts are located, and the account numbers.

Have begun thinking about your post-divorce financial needs — the money and other assets you will need to live a financially secure life after your marriage ends. Consider what trade-offs you’re willing to make with your spouse to ensure that your needs are met.

Making It Official

Before your divorce can begin, you must take care of some preliminary divorce matters. For example, you must make certain that you meet the divorce requirements of the state where you want to get divorced. Also, you or your divorce attorney must file legal paperwork with the court to officially set your divorce in motion and you must decide whether you will file a no-fault or fault divorce, assuming fault divorces are permitted in the state where you are divorcing.

If you don’t want to live with your spouse anymore, but you don’t want to get divorced, either, you and your spouse can separate. You can separate temporarily while you decide what to do about your relationship or you can make your separation permanent and finalize it with a legal separation agreement, which addresses the same kind of issues you would address in a divorce.

Meeting the requirements

To get a divorce, you must meet certain minimum requirements set by your state. Although those requirements vary somewhat from state to state, the most common ones are

Residing in your state for a certain period of time. A handful of states have no residency requirement — your obvious destination for a “quickie divorce” — but most states require that one or both of you be a resident for a minimum amount of time before you can file a petition for divorce or before your divorce can be granted. Six months is the most common residency requirement, but some states’ requirements are weeks, months, or even a year. Also, some counties have their own residency requirements.

Getting divorced in the state where you live. You must get divorced in the state you call your permanent home — and not in the state where you got married.

Being separated. Before you can get a no-fault divorce, some states require that you live apart from your spouse for a certain period of time — six months to a year in most of these states, but as long as two to three years in some states. The theory behind this requirement is that, with enough time, you and your spouse may have a change of heart and reconcile.

You can find out the particular divorce requirements in your state in several ways. You can do an Internet search using key words like “requirements for divorce in [your state].” You can call your local family court, check with your local bar association, or contact a divorce attorney in your area. If any of these resources can’t or won’t provide you with the information that you’re looking for, they should be able to tell you where you can get it.

Filing a divorce petition

No matter what state you live in and regardless of whether you and your spouse agree that ending your marriage is for the best, your divorce begins when one of you files a divorce petition with the court. If you and your spouse have already hired divorce attorneys, one of the attorneys files the divorce petition. Otherwise, one of you can go to your local courthouse and file a divorce petition yourself.

After someone files a divorce petition, the nonfiling spouse is legally notified about the petition, which usually involves a sheriff or constable hand delivering the notice or the nonfiling spouse receiving it in the mail. The nonfiling spouse isn’t served at all if he or she waives notification, which is most likely to occur if both spouses agreed to an amicable divorce and are already familiar with everything in the divorce petition. If the nonfiling spouse disagrees with anything in the petition, such as the grounds for the divorce, the request by the filing spouse for sole custody of the couple’s children, and so on, he or she will file an answer with the court, stating his or her side of those issues.

Deciding who’s at fault

Depending on the state you live in, if you initiated your divorce, you must decide whether to file a fault or a no-fault divorce. As of this writing, about 70 percent of all states allow couples to get either an old-fashioned fault divorce or a no-fault divorce, which is a kinder, gentler type of divorce.

When you file a fault divorce, you must provide a very specific reason, or grounds, for wanting to end your marriage. In other words, you must accuse your spouse of some sort of unacceptable behavior, such as adultery, physical abuse, mental cruelty, drunkenness, drug addiction, or insanity. Depending on your state, you may also be able to get a fault divorce if your spouse has been in prison for a minimum period of time or has deserted your marriage.

When you allege fault, you must also prove that the grounds actually exist. Proving fault can involve having a friend or relative who witnessed your spouse’s bad behavior testify to it, although they may be reluctant to get involved in your divorce, especially if they like your spouse. Or you may need to hire a detective to document your spouse’s bad behavior on video. Although a fault divorce can provide the grist for a lurid soap opera, some spouses feel that the drama is worth it because if they can prove that what they allege about their partner is true, they can get a better divorce settlement.

Currently, all states recognize some form of no-fault divorce. If you opt for this kind of divorce, you don’t have to prove that your spouse did anything to cause you to seek a divorce. Instead, all you really need to do is acknowledge that things “just didn’t work out” between the two of you. Common grounds for obtaining a no-fault divorce include “incompatibility,” “irretrievable breakdown,” or “irreconcilable differences.” Because you don’t need to prove fault, this kind of divorce is usually less expensive, quicker to complete, and easier on spouses and their children than most fault divorces. As a result, no-fault divorces are much more frequent than fault divorces.

Fault used to play a major role in alimony decisions, but many states no longer consider that factor. About half the states consider fault when dividing up a couple’s property. In those states, fault has an impact on the final details of a couple’s divorce, including the amount the spouse who’s not at fault eventually receives in the divorce settlement. To find out whether your state permits fault divorces, call your local or state bar association or a divorce attorney in your area.

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For Dummies is a registered trademark of Wiley Publishing, Inc. in the United States and other countries. Used here by license.