When divorce is imminent, it’s critical to learn more about the process, your legal rights and the steps you can take to minimize the impact on your life.
While there’s nothing simple about divorce, an understanding of the most common mistakes can help stabilize your situation during one of the most challenging times of your life. Here are some of the many mistakes you want to avoid:
- Discussing the details of your divorce too soon: For example, you shouldn’t discuss child custody and property division matters with your spouse shortly after asking for a divorce. Tensions are high, so you’re likely to get into an argument. There’s enough time in the future to negotiate on all these details.
- Letting your emotions get the best of you: It’s natural to feel a variety of emotions in divorce, ranging from anger to sadness to relief. However, if you let your emotions guide your thinking, it could result in poor decisions.
- Neglecting to create an asset and debt division checklist: You’re likely to have concerns about your finances, both during and after divorce. With a checklist guiding you, it’s easier to protect your legal rights to ensure that you receive your fair share of assets, while not getting stuck with too much debt.
- Forgetting about your children: You have so much to think about that you overlook the impact of divorce on your children. Rather than do this, talk to your children early on about your divorce and the impact it will have on their life. Also, it’s never too soon to think about things such as the creation of a parenting plan and visitation agreement, child custody and child support. Anything you can do to protect your children is something you should strongly consider.
Even though it’s easy to make one or more of these mistakes, the right approach to divorce will help you avoid trouble. As you move forward, consider every last detail of the divorce process, as this will ensure that you make sound decisions.
As long as you know how to protect your legal rights, you’ll always have an idea of the steps you want to take.