Alaska Divorce Blog : Anchorage Divorce Lawyer & Attorney : Peg Roston Law Firm : Property Division, Net Worth, Division of Assets : Juneau, Fairbanks, Alaska

In a divorce case, it is extremely important to be able to distinguish between credit card charges you and your spouse made during the marriage and credit card charges you or your spouse made after the start of divorce proceedings. A common mistake that one or both parties make is to continue to use marital credit cards after the start of the divorce. This makes it very difficult for either party to prove whether he/she paid marital credit card charges or post-marital credit card charges. To avoid this problem, you should stop using any marital credit cards once there is a divorce action pending. Open your own credit card account so that you can separate your post-divorce finances from your spouse’s finances.

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As family lawyers, we worry about the risk of emotional damage to children of divorce. But a negative outcome for the children is not inevitable. As a recent post titled Successful Children of Divorce points out, our new president Barack Obama, is an example of a great leader who experienced the divorce of his parents. 

Because his mother handled the challenges of divorce by looking forward to a brighter tomorrow, President Obama learned to think ahead rather than focusing on the wrongs from the past. These are the personal qualities, which make a great leader. As President Obama’s mother has shown us, divorcing parents can teach their children these same qualities by approaching life with a “can do” attitude.

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One of the questions, which may come up during your divorce is whether you can afford to buy a home. Unless you receive enough money to pay cash, you will probably have to take out a mortgage loan to finance the purchase.  You and your ex-spouse may want to maintain an “amicable” relationship by having an informal child support arrangement. This may benefit your ex-spouse. But it may impair your ability to qualify for a home mortgage because a mortgage lender will expect you to provide proof you can afford to pay the mortgage.  Here are a few tips from Kelly Lisa Murray in her post about the dangers of post-divorce mortgages:

If a portion of your monthly income will be coming from child support, there are certain steps you should take to make sure you have a paper trail to give your lender to prove the amount of child support you receive. Here are a few tips, which come from Kelly Lisa Murray’s post about the hidden dangers of post-divorce mortgages. 

·  Do not accept child support payments by direct deposit or cash because you will have no paper trail or proof of income to show to a bank. At the very least, you should ask your ex-spouse to send you a check, which states “child support” on the memo line.

· To ensure you can show the lender that your child support payments are paid in full-on time, considering having the state (in Alaska CSSD) to collect child support either by requiring your ex-spouse to send the checks to CSSD or by having CSSD garnish your spouse’s wages. Make sure you keep a copy of each check (both sides) you receive from CSSD.

If you have questions about qualifying for a loan after you are divorced, you should you talk to your attorney and to a mortgage professional at the beginning of your divorce case.

Thanks to

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In an earlier post I gave a general description of Collaborative Law.  This post explains that Collaborative Law (also referred to as Collaborative Family Law or Collaborative Divorce) is a short-hand reference for a process, which allows couples to arrive at a final divorce settlement without going through traditional divorce litigation.

What is the Collaborative Process?

The Collaborative Process offers an out-of-court alternative to divorcing couples who wish to avoid the cost, stress and unpredictability of divorce litigation. In a Collaborative case, each party is represented by an attorney. Working together as a team in joint sessions, the parties, their attorneys and allied professionals seek to identify the needs, interests and priorities of each family member as well as the areas where the parties disagree. The Collaborative “team” then assists the parties in using problem-solving strategies to resolve these disagreements and to arrive at a carefully thought out settlement, which meet the needs of each family member.

How does the Collaborative Process Work?

At the beginning of every Collaborative case, the attorneys, the parties, and other participating professionals enter into a written agreement. This agreement sets out the guidelines for the process.  The cornerstone of the agreement is the disqualification of  the attorneys and other allied professionals from participating in divorce litigation if the parties are unable to arrive at a settlement. The disqualification requirement ensures that the attorneys focus on the success of the process.  It prevents either attorney from resorting to the threat of taking a case to trial. It allows parties to identify their goals and interests and frees them from the emotional and financial cost of divorce litigation.
 

What is the end product of the Collaborative Process?

The goal of the Collaborative Process is to arrive at a final divorce settlement, which meets the needs of all family members.  The settlement may include an agreement about how the parties will divide their property and debts.  If the parties have minor children the agreement will address physical custody, legal custody and child support.  Once the agreement is reduced to writing, it will be submitted to a superior court judge.  The judge will approve the agreement and then enter the final decree of divorce.

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When the divorce complaint is filed, the Superior Court issues a Standing Domestic Relations Procedural Order. If you are involved in a divorce action, it is important to read this order carefully and if you have any questions you should talk to your attorney. Here are a few examples of things that are not expressly covered by the order, but could be argued that implicit in the letter and the spirit of the order, which seeks to maintain the status quo while a divorce action is pending:

1. Canceling the utilities on the family home. If you move out of the home by choice or because of court order, you should not cancel the utilities on the family home. If you do not want to continue to pay the utilities, then you should discuss this with your attorney.

2. Allowing the mortgage on the home to become delinquent. Under no circumstances should you allow the mortgage on the home to become delinquent. This would jeopardize your credit and could be viewed as endangering a marital asset.

3. Allowing car payments or credit cards to become delinquent. Under no circumstances should you allow any marital debt to become delinquent. Damaging credit while a divorce is pending is a factor a court would consider in equitably dividing marital assets.

In short, you should do nothing to adversely affect marital assets, debts, or your spouse’s living situation. In my experience, this type of conduct inevitably backfires. It escalates the litigation and increases attorney's fees. It could even expose you to being required to pay additional attorney's fees for the benefit of your spouse if the court finds bad faith conduct on your part
 

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In the Alaska court system, court proceedings and court files are open to the public, with certain limited exceptions such as Child In Need of Aid proceedings. This can present a challenge to parties to a divorce action who may not want their finances to be a matter of public record. The court system does protect the parties’ Social Security numbers to a limited extent. Here are a few tips to discuss with your divorce attorney to protect your finances from becoming part of your court file.

• Personal tax returns. Where child support is an issue, you will be required to file your tax returns and wage information with the court. You should request your attorney to black out the Social Security numbers on the tax returns.

• Personal financial and investment account statements. Your attorney or the opposing attorney may want to use personal bank statements, investment statements, and other financial data such as loan applications, mortgage statements, or credit card statements as trial exhibits. You should request your attorney to remove bank account numbers, except for the last four digits, and social security numbers on any trial exhibits. You and your attorney should check your spouse’s trial exhibits to make sure that they have also removed bank account numbers and social security numbers.

• Settlement agreements. If you and your spouse negotiate a property and/or custody settlement agreement, one of the attorneys will reduce the terms of the agreement to writing. The agreement will be filed in court for approval by the judge assigned to your case. To protect your financial  information, the agreement should include a description of the asset or liability and it should indicate how each item has been allocated in the property division. It should not include values or account numbers. Since the judge will need to know how the parties arrived at their property division, the settlement agreement should state the parties have attached a property table in an envelope marked “Confidential.” This property table should show the values the parties used to arrive at their property division so that the judge has sufficient information to approve the settlement agreement. But if the agreement is clear that the table is confidential, then only the judge will have access to the table, which will not become part of your court file.

Since every case is unique, you should discuss any concerns you have about protecting your financial data with your attorney.

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The holidays present challenges for many people, even if they are happily married.  But they present special challenges for divorced parents, no matter how amicable the divorce.  Here are some tips to help divorced parents to celebrate the holidays with their children:

1.  Be Flexible But Have A Default Plan.
Where your children are concerned, the best present you can give your child is to head off conflict about the holidays. Even when parents are getting along, I suggest that the final custody order contain a holiday schedule, on which the parties can rely if circumstances change and they are no longer able to agree on how to share the holidays with their children.

2.   Be Kind and Generous.
Especially during holidays, it is important to insulate your children from any negative feelings you still have about the divorce. Be sensitive to your children. Some children want to talk about the celebrations at the other home. Other children handle divorce by maintaining a wall of privacy between each home. Let your children guide you. If it is obvious they do not want to discuss what they did on Christmas Day at the other parent's home, drop the subject and do not press them for information.

4.   Keep Your Word.
Be particularly careful to follow through on whatever promises you make related to the holidays. It’s extra important to keep promises to your children around holiday times — the holidays are a big deal for children.

5.   Build New Family Traditions.
Just because you are getting divorce does not mean you have to throw away your well-established holiday traditions. On the other hand, this is a good time to involve your children in creating new traditions for your post-divorce holiday celebrations.

There will probably be a few bumps in the road, but if you think positively you can use the winter holidays as an opportunity to be a positive role model for your children and of course have a good time.

Source:  Kentucky Family Law Blog
 

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In one of my earlier posts, I gave tips to parents to help them keep their children out of the middle of their divorce. But it is also important for parents to remember that a divorce affects not only the parents and their children, but both sets of grandparents and other relatives.  There are a couple of things that you can do to attempt to avoid having your family create additional conflict between you and your spouse or to jeopardize your position in a contested custody case.

• It is important for the children to be able to have good relationships with both sides of the family. Therefore, avoid the temptation of calling your spouse’s parents or relatives to discuss the details of the divorce or to talk your feelings about your spouse. If you have a need to “vent” which is only natural, find a good counselor who can help you work through your feelings about the other spouse.

• At the point you decide to tell your parents or other relatives that a divorce is on the horizon, encourage them to avoid discussing the details of the divorce with your spouse’s parents or relatives. In particular, explain to your family that any e-mails or letters they send to your spouse’s parents or relatives could end up in the court file, particularly if you think there is going to be a disagreement over physical or legal custody of the children.

You can educate your family about the positive effect they can have upon your children during this difficult transitional period. Hopefully, you can make them understand that you are looking at the long-term benefits to the children, which result from having healthy relationships with both sides of the family. This of course assumes neither of the parents or relatives have domestic violence, physical, sexual or substance abuse. The presence of any of these factors would alter the landscape of the divorce case and could require a different approach.  If you have any concerns about these issues you should discuss them with your divorce lawyer.

 

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When divorcing parents are working on a custody or visitation schedule for their children, it is not unusual for them to disagree about where to exchange the children if they do not live close to each other.  One option is to find a point half-way between each of their homes.  I recently came across a web-based program, which is called MeetWays.  It is specifically designed to give users the midpoint between two addresses. I tested it quickly.  It looks like it requires a little tinkering.  But it is designed to find a point of interest such as a restaurant midway between two addresses. 

Sources for this post: Georgia Family Log Blog and CaliforniaDivorce Blawg.

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