Divorce for men can be a scary thing to think about. However, for personal growth, you don’t have to believe the scare tactic advertisements divorce law firms often use! Due to the fast-rising divorce rate, a divorce attorney or family law attorney with extensive experience may make you afraid that the worst will happen and you can lose thousands of dollars in these challenging times unless you hire them. If you believe what you read in advertisements on internet forums regarding their famous clients, many horrible things can happen to you during your divorce process.
The fearmongering is targeted especially at couples with children, most especially minor children, who have to consider the agreement on assets. They have to consider an agreement on splitting assets despite their financial status and an agreement on child support decisions and child custody during the emotional turmoil of divorce except they have adult children.
Common Misconceptions in Divorce for Men
Here are some of the horror stories you may have heard from a divorce attorney or family law firm in some aspects of divorce in the event of estrangement from spouse:
- The court will take half of your pay and send it straight to your ex-wife in the form of child support payments and child care while disregarding child support guidelines in the name of equitable distribution of assets.
- Even if you get a DNA test proving that you are not the children’s biological parents and your ex-wife has a good divorce attorney, when the court makes a child support decision, you cannot get out of paying child support.
- You will never even see payments or tax refunds because they will go straight to child support.
- Your ex-wife, still living in the house which is your personal property, will claim your children as dependents on her tax returns. You will get no tax credits for financially supporting your children.
- If you try to modify your child support obligations, the judge will tell you, with no apparent irony, that you are voluntarily underemployed and should pay your ex more money instead of less.
- You will spend all you have earned on alimony payment.
For the most part, these fears are unfounded in such a stressful time. You have the right to request and receive a fair decision about your divorce, and you have a right to a stable relationship with your children. The only thing standing between you and a new life as an unmarried man is some legal paperwork. A California legal document assistant can professionally prepare the paperwork for divorce for men so that they can save the money that they otherwise would have spent on a divorce lawyer.
Divorce for Men Does Not Mean That Your Ex-Wife Will Take Half of Everything You Own
Most states follow a doctrine called equitable distribution in a divorce settlement, in which the court decides on a case-by-case basis about the fairest way to divide the couple’s property and debts in the divorce mediation. California does not do this in divorces for men; instead, it is a community property state. That means that the court divides the value of the marital property evenly in half for men and women. It only divides marital property, which is the income and assets you gained during the marriage. Therefore, any separate property acquired before the marriage will not be divided.
Therefore, in a divorce for men, the property you owned before your marriage will not go to your ex-wife. You also do not need to divide every asset in half; the division into halves is based on the total value of the marital property. That means that, if your ex-wife keeps the marital home, you might get to keep most or all of the money in your bank account.
Best Advice for Divorce for Men – Divorce Petition Is Easier Than You Think
If you have an uncontested divorce (a divorce in which the couple can agree on terms) without complex issues, you could be happily single again in less than a year. In this situation, divorce for men is pretty much the same as the concept of divorce for women. In a contested divorce (a divorce in which the couple needs court intervention), one spouse files a divorce petition, and the other files a response before the couple heads to court.
After filing, each party is able to outline their requests about the division of marital property and financial assets, child custody arrangement, and other matters of disagreement. A judge then has to decide who gets what in the way of marital property, parenting time, visitation arrangements, and the like. In an uncontested divorce, you and your wife agree on divorce issues and don’t need a divorce judgment to do it for you.
After filing the paperwork to begin the divorce process, you submit a marital settlement agreement. If all documents are in proper order, the court can finalize your divorce. If you were married for less than five years, own very few assets, and do not have children together, you might even be able to get a summary dissolution, which is a simplified version of an uncontested divorce.
Gender Is Not a Factor in Determining Child Custody
In divorce for men, the deciding factor about how many days the children spend with each parent is the children’s best interest. The parents’ work schedules and the distance between their residences also play a role; if you and your ex-wife live in the same county and have flexible work schedules, then you might each get to keep the children for four days on, four days off on a rotating basis.
Meanwhile, if you live in San Diego, but your ex-wife lives a five-minute drive from the Oregon border, it might be more feasible for you to spend most of the summer with the children and for them to stay with their mother during the school year. Gender, however, is not a deciding factor.
There are plenty of single dads in California who have primary legal custody of their children. In divorce for men, the court will not assume that, just because you are a man, you cannot provide adequate care for young children or for your teen daughter.
Why Hire a Legal Document Assistant for Divorce for Men?
Remember that legal advice is different than divorce advice. If you need legal advice, you will have to talk to an experienced attorney. On the other hand, you could opt to use a document preparation service instead. California law authorizes non-attorney legal document assistants to prepare court documents, including divorce forms, on behalf of clients.
Legal document assistants do not provide legal representation in court. However, we have the authority and legal experience to provide professional legal document preparation sources independent of divorce attorneys. Paralegals do not have this authority; they can only work under the supervision of divorce lawyers. Therefore, having a legal document assistant prepare your documents is the most affordable choice.
Divorce for Men without Breaking the Bank
Are you looking forward to life after divorce? Consider some valuable divorce tips for men:
The best way to have a painless divorce is to keep it simple. Start with your assumption that you and your spouse want to move onto a new life as single people with as little financial damage as possible, minimizing the pain of divorce and protecting the family unit when children are involved.
Trust a professional with the legal formalities to expedite the process.
Contact A People’s Choice at 800-747-2780 to be sure that your legal divorce documents will be free of errors and meet legal requirements, speeding up proceedings. Basically, A People’s Choice can make the divorce process as easy and stress-free as possible.
It Is Easy for Men to Get Divorced in California Without Hiring a Lawyer!
You can finalize your divorce on fair terms without hiring a lawyer, even if your wife has hired one for herself. Contact A People’s Choice about affordable divorce for men and how A People’s Choice can help with your document preparation.
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