Washington County Divorce Attorney
Divorce is a disruptive and difficult legal process. If you find yourself facing a divorce, the best path forward is with an experienced Washington County divorce attorney by your side. The fact is that the terms of your divorce will set the stage for your post-divorce future, which means it’s important to participate fully throughout the proceedings.
Divorce and Your Finances
The terms of your divorce will very likely directly affect your financial future. The financial components of your divorce include:
- The Division of Your Marital Property – During the course of your marriage, you and your spouse acquired assets together, and this accumulation is your marital property. That property that either of you brought into the marriage with you typically remains your own separate property (as long as it wasn’t intermingled with your marital assets). The division of marital property can quickly become a very complicated – and very contentious – issue. Complicating factors tend to include high-assets, business ownership, complicated financials, and more.
- Spousal Maintenance – Spousal maintenance is another name for what most of us think of as alimony, and it refers to regular payments that are made by one ex-spouse to the other and that are intended to help balance the recipient’s financial need in relation to the payor’s financial means. While many divorces do not involve alimony, if one spouse has a significant financial need that correlates with his or her ex’s ability to assuage that need, the court may order alimony. The amount and duration of alimony are predicated on a wide range of factors that include the length of the marriage, each spouse’s individual contributions to the marriage, each spouse’s age and relative health, each spouse’s level of education and employability, and much more.
- Child Custody Arrangements – For divorces that involve children, child custody arrangements are obviously of primary concern. Child custody is divided into both legal and physical custody; legal custody amounts to who makes important decisions related to education, religion, and healthcare for the children while physical custody refers to whom the children reside with at any given time. Both physical and legal custody can be either sole or joint, but the court generally favors parenting time schedules that allow both parents to spend a considerable amount of time with their children. This allows both parents to continue forging meaningful relationships with their shared children. As such, even if one of you has sole physical custody of your children, the other parent will very likely have a parenting time schedule (barring serious mitigating circumstances).
- Child Support – Children need financial support, and both parents are expected to participate in this support. Minnesota’s child support calculation guidelines are intended to help balance this support between both parents – relative to their ability to contribute.
You Need an Experienced Washington County Divorce Attorney on Your Side
If you’re going through a divorce, the dedicated Washington County divorce attorneys at Atticus Family Law have the compassion, experience, and commitment to help. We’re on your side, so please don’t hesitate to contact us for more information today.