As a person about to file for divorce, you might be nervous about the stories you've probably heard about spouses taking almost everything and leaving their ex-partner scrambling. But if you take the right steps, that's almost impossible to pull off.
Hire the Right Divorce Law Attorney
From the beginning, you can protect yourself by hiring a divorce law attorney who knows what they are doing. They will tell you the immediate steps to take to protect your joint assets until the appropriate settlement can be created. They can also tell you the steps to start taking to put yourself in a good position to battle with your ex-spouse for possessions. Keep on reading to learn what some of these steps would be.
Serve Divorce Papers Immediately
The first step will be to use your lawyer to serve divorce papers to your spouse. Divorce law gives you certain protections once a divorce process has been started. It prevents your spouse from taking money out of your shared accounts. They cannot liquidate or remove assets from consideration in your divorce proceedings. They also cannot take a spiteful action, such as incurring a lot of debt and making you responsible for it. Basically, once you start your divorce in a legally binding way, it protects many of your assets from being destroyed or hidden by the other party.
Get Records of All Financial Assets
As soon as you can, get copies of any financial records you can. A big one is your recent bank statements, as far back as you can get them. If you have a shared business with your ex-spouse, look for tax records and other indicators of the business's health. All of this information should be turned over to your divorce lawyer so that they can start to assess what is a fair split of assets in your divorce.
Make a List of Valuable Items
Aside from financial data, also make a list of valuable items in your estate and get them appraised if necessary.
Start Your Own Accounts
Any money that you receive from the point of the divorce onwards should go directly into your own bank accounts so that it is not considered as part of the estate that you and your ex-spouse share.
Be Prepared to Negotiate
Your divorce lawyer will help protect you against a draining of assets, but if there are specific items you want more than others, be prepared to negotiate for these items without losing a lot of leverage on your estate.
To learn more, contact a law firm like the Grafton Law Office.
Share7 April 2017
