Questions for Divorce Lawyer

In My Humble Opinion
1

So, I’m getting divorced. Whoo hoo. I have my first appointment with a lawyer on Tuesday, and I’m trying to think ahead of time what are the most important questions to ask him. I’ve never been through anything like this before and never been close to someone who has. My parents have been married for forty-five years…this is completely new territory for me. Anyway, I thought you guys could help me think of what to ask. (I know you are not my lawyer, etc…just asking for basic common sense advice.)

I’m not going to get into all the drama, but here are some pertinent facts:

  1. We’re in Oklahoma
  2. Our tenth anniversary is at the end of November
  3. We have two preschool-aged kids
  4. I’ve been a stay-at-home Mom for five years
  5. He has both a regular job and is trying to start his own company, which just recently has started to make enough money for him to give himself a (small) salary
  6. He makes good money at his “real” job
  7. He was having an affair, and yes I can prove it (I have no idea if this counts for anything)

Anyway, what say you all? Any advice welcome.

2

I am not qualified to offer you any advice, but I do want to offer my sympathy. Divorce is never much fun and your #7 just makes it that much more painful.

Best of luck to you.

3

Your divorce lawyer should be able to guide you and will probably bring up points that hadn’t occurred to you. Oklahoma is apparently not a community property state, so you’ll want to ask about how property is apportioned. Try to remember that your work over the past five years has value even though it hasn’t brought in money per se. I found this law firm’s site that gives some superficial answers about marital property in Oklahoma. Some things that will need to be settled:

How will you determine the issues of custody and child support?
Will you need spousal support to keep you going until you can become self-supporting? How will you pay for child care while you work?
Do you have a house? Who, if anyone, is going to keep it? How will you apportion equity and debt?
How much is his business worth? How will the value of your work be assessed when looking at the value of the business (he would presumably not have been able to do the amount of work he’s been doing had he not had you to look after his children and home)? What’s the fairest way to be sure that your contribution is taken into account without putting so much stress on the business’s assets that it will be likely to fail?

You’ll also want to discuss whether it would be better in your case to file for a no-fault or to prove adultery as the cause. It may not be worth it to establish fault, and your energies may be better spent hashing out who gets what and how the children’s interests will be best served.

Good luck, and remember that if you don’t feel comfortable with the attorney you’re seeing Tuesday, there’s nothing wrong with shopping around a little. You’re going to be seeing a lot of this person for the next year or so, and you want to be sure that s/he is someone you can work with.

4

I will give my usual and customary advice regarding professionals;

Professionals work for you.
If they don’t work for you, find another.

One of the key problems I had with my divorce attorney at the onset was his apparent attitude that he was in charge and I was just some guy he reluctantly had to manage through the process. The fucker actually shushed me repeatedly in the first five minutes of our first meeting until I drew the line in the sand on that one. In retrospect, I probably should have just gotten up without a word, walked out and found another attorney. As we moved through the process, I did have to call him out on another occasion and remind him that he was working for me and I was paying for it, so any choices that needed to be made were mine to make, not his. Obviously, if a friend were to approach me and ask for a recommendation, I’d recommend that they stay away from this clown. I can only be grateful that my wife’s attorney was much much worse, being her step-father’s property attorney and not an experienced divorce attorney.

So yeah, you’re hiring an expert who knows how this stuff works and you should listen to him or her. But just keep it in mind that this person is your employee in this matter and you are their customer. This is your ballgame, not theirs.

5

Thanks you guys…excellent advice so far. And thanks for the sympathy, not. I’ll save it up for later…right now I’m in the “I’m better off without the SOB and now I’m going to go make my bedroom as girly as I want!” phase.

6

You’ll want to talk to your lawyer about what kind of divorce you want. Fault or no-fault? Can the parties agree on getting a divorce, child custody, support, visitation, and the division of marital property, or not? Are you entitled to alimony under Oklahoma law?

If you want to proceed with a fault based divorce on the grounds of adultery, what kind of evidence is needed to prove it in Oklahoma? Do you have witnesses willing to testify on your behalf? Are you vulnerable to a counter-claim by him on that or some other ground?

In my experience, a divorce is considerably less traumatic, and certainly less expensive, if the parties are able to negotiate an agreement acceptable to both sides. Often, the least contested issue is the actual divorce. Both sides are usually pretty sure they no longer wish to be married to each other. The things that get litigated most often are custody, support, and property division.

7

I really want to second Chimera’s post in its entirety, and in particular, the quoted point.

I had a young and fairly inexperienced divorce lawyer through the legal insurance I have at work, and I figured it would be fine because my divorce was a simple process – we had no kids, and were soon going to not have any property to divvy up. I didn’t get angry enough with him when he made some really obvious, stupid mistakes on some of the early paperwork. Later, he resorted to communicating with my then-wife behind my back and threatening her – I can only assume that he was hoping to turn an uncontested divorce into something contentious in order to get more money. I eventually fired him when my ex and I showed up for a status hearing, only to be told that my lawyer – without having notified me ahead of time – had called the court while my ex and I were at the court house, and told them to delay the hearing because my wife was behind on paperwork.

At any rate, make sure your attorney has a good grasp of what you hope to accomplish. The attorney should be guiding you through the process, but it’s YOUR process. If you wind up with someone who seems to have his or her own agenda, move on.

8

This is less about what to ask the lawyer, and more what to think about yourself.

Decide what you want out of this. I mean really, physically. Write it down. Try to move past the vindictive feelings and really think about your future - do you want to be as totally apart from him as possible, or do you want to do the “we split up and are now decent acquaintances and see each other all the time” thing?

Do you want him never to have custody of the kids, or do you want to do the whole “every weekend you live with dad until you’re 18” thing?

Do you want him to continue to support you for the rest of your life, or do you want him to fund your progress into school and training with the goal of you afterwards supporting yourself through work? (Are you capable of finding work that will pay well? Be honest - don’t be an optimist about this, your future is on the line.)

Do you want to humiliate him? (Think about his personality and whether an acrimonious divorce may end up being more expensive than it’s worth in the sense that it may make him noncooperative in future.)

Do you want him to “pay” for his mistake, or do you want him to simply support his children? Is he likely to support them fully and graciously, or will everything have to be nailed down and spelled out in order to keep him from being stingy?

And finally (most painfully) do you have any indiscretions in your own life that may come to light during this process? Any “very close girlfriends” that can be painted as actual “girlfriends?” Any financial shenanigans? Any male friends that could be seen as lovers or the other end of an “emotional affair?” I don’t want to imply that you have been doing anything, or even that it should MATTER if you did. However, it can get dragged up in court during a difficult divorce, and you should be prepared for a competent lawyer to want to know if there are any landmines that you need to be prepared for. The presence of anything like that may also impact your decisions above - if a contested settlement is likely to reveal to a judge that you have indiscretions of your own (or even the suggestion that you may have) then it may be a better plan to simply settle, rather than hope that you get a nice judge.

Good luck!

9

Great post, Lasciel. Although I am extremely angry with my soon-to-be ex, I’m looking at everything through the lens of “what is best for the kids?” And what’s best is that my ex and I and our families get along. So I’m determined to remain civil, and I’m pretty sure he is on the same page as far as that goes. (Of course, I never expected him to be the type to have an affair, either, so what do I know?)

I don’t want to ruin him (again, not in my kids’ interests), but I do expect him to help me out for awhile until I can get back on my financial feet. I want to go back to school to become a nurse, and the lawyer I talked to today said it was reasonable to expect him to help out with that. (And yes, that is very achievable for me–I’ve got plenty of brains, just stupidly got a useless degree my first go-around.)

As for things he can bring up about me…honestly the worst thing I can think of is that I’m not the world’s best housekeeper (and I’m not really that bad, either–I could pass a surprise inspection by DHS or whoever with flying colors. I’m messy, not filthy.) I’m a little boring…I’d rather sit at home and read than go to a rock concert. I’m not a shopper…he has more clothes and shoes than I do. My best girlfriends live in other states or other countries, and I have no male friends closer than aquaintances.

As for custody, I know my kids love him and need him, and he loves them, so I’m fine with going 50/50 on that. His mother will be taking care of them most of the time on his “turns” anyway, and she’s wonderful with them.

I admit I *would *like to humiliate him (you have no idea how tempting it was to post certain pictures on Facebook), but I will resist doing that unless he forces me to. If he tries to shortchange me, the infidelity evidence will be brought out.

Anyway, I still have another meeting with a different lawyer coming up, so keep the advice coming! (Lawyer advice or just divorce advice, I need it all!)

10

Continue to keep a positive attitude about the ways your life will be improved in its newest stage. :slight_smile:

Best of luck!

11

You’ll get good advice from others about what to ask from your attorney.

I’m here to say, “You go, girl!” Definitely make that bedroom as girly as you want, along with the rest of the house, the yard, and your wardrobe, if you want. You are well rid of the SOB and don’t let anyone, ever, tell you differently. Things will probably get a little scary. Problems with come up that you don’t immediately have answers for. So be it. Take a deep breath, pause, and do the best you can. Chin up. Eyes forward. We all behind you, every step of the way.
(can you tell I’ve walked this path?)

12

IANAL. I’ve never been married, let alone divorced. But I am pretty sure there is some issue regarding your eligibility to (someday) collect against his Social Security, based on whether or not you have been married for at least 10 years.

9 years 364 days = nada. So check with your lawyer on this.

13

Oreo, these aren’t questions for the lawyer, but they may lead to some:
how employable are you now? What would be needed for you to find a job that’s compatible with the amount of custory/child presence (the two things aren’t the same) you wish? Paying for childcare has been mentioned before, but how much is needed and its cost will depend on the job - there’s jobs which come with on-site childcare, and jobs which by their very nature involve hours for which childcare is very difficult to find and therefore will be more expensive than dropping off the kids at a regular-hours facility. Nursing is one of those sectors where jobs with day hours exist, but many jobs involve horrid hours. Look at what kind of hours will nursing training require: I don’t know how it is for schools near you, but I’ve known many where nurse-trainees were involved in residence hours.

14

I don’t know how it goes in your state but mediation is usually a lot cheaper and less painful. The lawyers are only needed at the end to review and file the paperwork.

15

Since you’ve already gotten great advice about choosing and dealing with a lawyer, I’ll say this:

Throughout negotiations, until you get official notice that your divorce has been finalized and your settlement can no longer be altered, always remember that your soon-to-be ex-husband is now your legal adversary. Your first concern in all negotiations should be to protect yourself and the kids, even if that doesn’t feel so good sometimes. Don’t trust him to be fair, to put the kids first, to treat you with respect, or to act rationally. He may do those things. Or he may not. No matter how well you think you know him, or how in love with him part of you might still be, getting divorced makes people act in ways that might not be predictable, might not make sense, and can be very, very destructive. Get everything in writing, and make sure the terms are crystal clear.

Mediation could save you a ton of money and effort. If you’re a hard-headed, smart negotiator who sharpens up under pressure, and if both you and your husband are committed to getting the divorce over with, mediation is worth at least checking out.

If either of those things isn’t true, though, you could get really screwed in mediation. A mediator’s job is to get both parties to agree to a settlement, whether or not that settlement is actually fair or in either party’s best interests. Don’t count on a mediator to advocate for you, even if he’s being incredibly unreasonable. If you’re not a particularly shrewd or assertive negotiator (and be honest with yourself about that), or get rattled under pressure (be honest about that, too), then mediation is not for you.

Mediation’s also not for you if your husband drags his feet on getting the divorce finished. He can legally ignore a mediator’s phone calls. He can’t ignore being served with papers.

If there has been any history of intimidation or abuse, then mediation is really not for you. In times of stress (like, say, getting divorced), people almost always stick with the patterns they’ve learned, even if they know those patterns aren’t helpful. People who’ve been steamrolled in their marriages almost always get much less in mediation than they could have in litigation.

Even if you decide to go with mediation, you should definitely have a lawyer tell you what you’re entitled to and could reasonably ask for. It might be more than you think, and there’s no reason for you to accept less.

My ex and I used a single lawyer (my lawyer, really) to file papers. But we had no kids, separate bank accounts, and almost no joint property. (We shared a used car. He bought out my interest in the car for $3k. I could have asked for more, and probably gotten it, but the lawyers’ fees would have made that pointless.) He dragged his feet about getting the divorce over with, forcing me to go the lawyer route.

Things will end up OK. Stay strong, stand your ground, and have a good source of emotional support. It’s going to be a long year or so, but you’ll be so much better off afterwards. Hell, you’re already better off right now!

Good luck, and keep us posted.

16

Very good advice from Scribble. Mediation is the way to go but really only if both parties are committed to reaching an agreement. It is in the best interest of both to do so. But it is not always that way. In my state fault does not matter. Its basically plugging the information into a formula and coming up with the numbers. A mediator can do that just as well as a lawyer. When lawyers get involved the only ones who win are the lawyers. But sometimes that is how you have to go. And its also why I will never get married again.

Even though you say it is his fault IMHO being vindictive is the worst thing you can do. You are angry and its an instinct to lash out but it is bad for everyone involved. Including you. Stand up for yourself but maintain the high road. In the long run it will be better for your psyche (or soul if you believe in that). Its the dissolution of a corporation. Treat it like that.

17

One thing to consider, custody-wise, is this: I gather the default these days is shared custody, 50/50 (assuming nothing too horrendous on the part of either parent that is).

However, the logistics of that can be tough, so consider something asking that you get primary physical custody. I know I’m not phrasing that correctly, just trying to repeat what a friend told me she did when she divorced. Hopefully a professional can turn my half-memory into the correct thing to discuss.

18

Unless they live in a state where a divorce can be had in 2 months, the 10 year date should be OK.

You will also be entitled to some share of his 401(k) or other pension earnings from his current job; the lawyer can advise you about that. I don’t know if there are specific legal guidelines about those vs. the social security.

Definitely don’t short-sell your non-monetary contributions for the past 5+ years - those are substantial.

19

Remember that the attorney cost $200 an hour when arguing about who gets the $200 worth of snowshoes that neither of you has ever used for four hours.

(My that was incredibly specific, wasn’t it? Not me, my brother in law, but we paid the attorney)

20

One quick cautionary note - always be prepared for the other party, in this case your husband, to play very very dirty, and take great care to consider what you say in a public forum such as this one. He may be willing to pay for a great attorney, and that attorney may twist some of the things you have written in this very thread to make your life hell.

Do not make a habit of announcing your intentions.

Remember you are dealing with law, not fairness or justice. I have been told before that a successful negotiation is when both parties are equally pissed off. Be prepared for this outcome.