For Your Information: Help for Nice people during a nasty time!
By Anthony C. Adamopoulos, Divorce Mediator, Collaborative Divorce Attorney, Divorce Arbitrator, Topsfield, Massachusetts, DivorcingOptions.com, 978-744-9591
Facing Divorce? Basic Information For You
Divorce is not a nice experience. This Divorce Information Series will explain the basics. It assumes you have made a real effort at saving the marriage and that divorce is inevitable.
- Goals FOR the Massachusetts Divorce Process
Goal #1- Get Permission to Divorce.
You do not have a right to a divorce, so of course this has to be goal number one. Except for unusual circumstances, if properly requested, the court will grant a divorce.
Getting permission to divorce is relatively simple, compared to achieving Goal #2. Your attorney will handle this. If you will not hire a divorce attorney you will have to learn how to do it yourself using the Commonwealth’s help site. Or, learning how to do it from a divorce attorney specially trained and listed by the Family Court as a Limited Assistance Attorney.
Goal #2 – How to handle the kids, support and the division of property?
You will need to know, going forward, how the children will be cared for, for example, with whom will they live and how will they be financially supported?
You will need to know how all of the income will be moved around so that each spouse, as much as possible, ends up with a standard of living similar to what they had before the divorce.
You will need to know how all the property, real or personal, no matter in whose name, will be divided.
As for Goal #2, simply put, either the Family Court Judge will decide their self, after a trial, about your children, your support and the division of your property. Or, you and your spouse will submit a jointly prepared Separation Agreement addressing all of those issues with a request that instead of a trial and the judge’s opinion, the Separation Agreement be used.
©Anthony C. Adamopoulos, 2023.
In the next edition, I will cover more basics.
