Imagine you’ve been married for 30 years and now your relationship is coming to a close. Now imagine you’ve been married for six months and you’re contemplating divorce. Regardless of how long your relationship has lasted, every divorce needs to cover three main areas.
You may want to consider these areas carefully and decide your goals surrounding these topics before you begin your divorce process. Here are the three most important aspects of divorce in this respect:
1) Property division
It’s not uncommon for spouses to have different opinions about their property rights in a divorce. In fact, when it comes to certain high-asset divorce matters, the property division litigation can last more than a year. Having clear goals in mind for your property division — and making sure those goals are realistic and in alignment with Georgia divorce law — will help you navigate this area of your divorce faster and more effectively.
One area that can be a potential hang-up during property division relates to dividing business assets. If you or your spouse started or owned a business during your marriage, this is something you will want to start investigating as early as possible.
2) Spousal support and/or child support
When there’s a disparity in income and assets between the spouses, it may be necessary for one spouse to pay the other financial support after the divorce. Similarly, noncustodial parents often need to pay the custodial parent (the parent with whom the children live) child support following the dissolution of the marriage.
3) Child custody matters
Parents will also need to arrive at difficult decisions related to child custody during their divorce proceedings. Will you and your ex share physical custody of your children 50-50? Will the children live with one parent and visit with the other parent? How will you organize your parenting and visitation time? The parents need to find answers to all of these questions — and hopefully, they can do that in peaceful, out-of-court settlement negotiations.
By learning more about the negotiation of child custody, asset division and support obligations in a divorce, Georgia spouses will be better able to resolve these matters in a diplomatic and cost-effective way.
