Phone: After agonizing for months or even years and enduring endless sleepless nights, you’ve come to the unbelievingly scary conclusion that you want a divorce.
But you freeze like a deer in headlights and fear that you will lose everything – your family, your children, your house, your retirement, your friends…and that you will have no control over your own life.
You think of all those divorce “horror stories” you heard from friends and relatives and mentally try to calculate how much you’re sure you’ll lose if you go ahead with a divorce.
Perhaps you know you need to speak with a lawyer but you’re overwhelmed by the thought of how much you’ll need to spend for a vague amount of “legal fees.”
From what you’ve heard, you’re expected to hand over a pile of money to some lawyer. Then you might wonder how long the divorce process will drag on and if you’ll have to pay for every phone call.
Instead, stop, breathe and consider these 3 powerful ways to take control of the divorce process and your life.
- Think Collaboration Not Isolation.
Ideally you and your spouse will agree on how best to use marital income and assets to pay for two lawyers. Working together with your spouse at this early stage of the game will help to lay the foundation for a smoother and more amicable divorce process.
- Tap the Financial Experts.
Your financial advisor can review your available assets and income and suggest options that make the most financial sense, such as a home equity loan or line of credit where you can deduct the interest on your taxes. Your accountant can advise how you might be able to deduct legal fees on your taxes as well.
- Don’t Litigate, Mediate.
Seek out an experienced divorce mediator to help you and your spouse resolve such issues as custody and parenting time, child support, alimony, allocation of payment for college and other expenses for the children, and division of marital assets and debts.
Ultimately, by putting negative emotions aside and working together for the benefit of your children, you can transform the divorce experience and when you have children, this is a priceless gift to them.
