As family law attorneys, we have certainly seen some down and dirty custody battles emerge. But we always caution our clients to avoid rolling around in the mud with their exes over the divorce. These attempts to smear your ex can often wind up getting you just as dirty.
But there are other reasons, too, for rising above your marital issues and taking the high road in your divorce. The No. 1 reason is that particularly acrimonious divorces are much harder on the children.
There is no doubt about it — divorce can be a very wrenching, emotional experience for the parties involved. The same is true even if you were the spouse who initiated the divorce action in the first place.
Especially around the holidays, divorcing spouses may get a serious case of the blues. If your ex is already dating or has gotten involved in a new relationship, that can make it even harder to accept the status quo of your newly single life. You may not be able to imagine that you will ever again re-couple or even get used to your life as a divorced person.
So, you've just been served with an order to pay child support. This may have been an expected action resulting from a divorce between you and your spouse. But it also may have come like a bolt out of the blue, with this being the first notification that you have ever gotten that you fathered a child.
If the circumstances are the latter rather than the former, you are probably still trying to wrap your head around the fact that you have a child out there of which you were unaware.
Sometimes, people seek divorces because they can no longer stand to remain together with their spouse. Other times, a spouse has a divorce forced upon them when they are still very much in love with their wife or husband.
If you are a spouse in the latter group, it may indeed seem as if your world has come crashing down around your feet. That's understandable, but you still have to act rationally in your own best interests.
You're ready to divorce your child's other parent — or perhaps you never married them in the first place. You may be so happy to see the door closing behind them that you are ready to agree not to seek child support from them.
Please reconsider this decision, moms and dads. Yes, it can be incredibly frustrating dealing with exes when you can no longer stand the sight of them. However, if the two of you share a child, this decision has an impact on your child.
It may come as a shock to learn that your California divorce can be handled without acrimony. Especially in the immediate period after one spouse files the petition for divorce, emotions tend to run high.
One spouse may not even want the divorce to proceed and might try to throw up roadblocks that slow progress and negotiation to a crawl. That can foment some bad feelings between the soon-to-be exes. However, there are ways to encourage cooperation and help motivate the parties to reach an accord.
With the push for shared custody of the children being a priority for family law courts here in Orange County, some parents may feel that it is pointless to seek sole custody of the kids in a divorce.
But there are situations where that is actually the only responsible position to take. How can you know whether sole custody is a viable option for you?
Divorce attorneys see it all — the good, bad and ugly side of marriages ending. They have inside knowledge of the mistakes and bad decisions that cost their clients a lot.
But they really wish that their clients could get up to speed about these matters, as it would make things easier for all concerned. With that in mind, below are some tips from family law attorneys all over the nation.
If you are unmarried and have a child, you may not immediately realize how important it is to determine the legal paternity of the child to pursue child support. There are many reasons why parents may neglect to do this, however.
They may still be in a relationship with their child's other parent and fear that making it legal might rock the relationship boat and cause problems. The child's other parent may actually be married to another person and want to keep their spouse from learning of the child's existence. In some cases, the custodial parent may fear the other parent will harm them or their child physically or worry that the parent is not fit to be involved in their child's life.
Paying alimony every month can be an irritating link to the past you thought you had left behind. This is particularly true if you have moved on to a new relationship and it rankles that you continue to be legally required to subsidize your ex's lifestyle.
However, even the recipients can grow weary of waiting for alimony payments that arrive late or end up being short. If only there were a workable alternative to these monthly spousal support issues.
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