Control Your Lawyer

Control Your Divorce Now

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Depending on when you read this, this site might give you all the information you need. It takes time to get all the information I have loaded up onto this site, so check back daily for information and useful links and resources.

Before you begin your research, sit down with a blank piece of paper and write down everything that you know will need to be negotiated and discussed as part of the final divorce settlement. Even better, print out this page. Here is a checklist to get you started:

* Child custody

o sole or joint

o physical possession of children

o visitation rights and schedule

o child support payments

* Alimony

* Division of physical assets

o cars

o house

o furniture

o personal belongings

* Financial assets

o personal and joint bank accounts

o personal and joint brokerage accounts

o pension policies

o individual retirement accounts

* Insurance

o health insurance

o life insurance policies

o auto insurance policies

And so on. Armed with this list, you can then start by searching online for reliable and independent sources of information.

This site, of course, is one of the best and our Platinum membership will ensure you get everything you need. Sure you can find the information we provide elsewhere, but its not worth the risk of missing it or getting misinformation. Don't be penny wise and pound foolish. The information you will learn with a Platinum membership is worth multiples of what you will invest. (OK, that's my last pitch in this posting).

So until I get you all the information you need, use Google. A Google search using the term "US child custody laws" turns up a relatively small number of sites carrying appropriate information, but many of them are extremely valuable. Here is one of the best: http://topics.law.cornell.edu/wex/child_custody

Even if you cannot find the detailed answers and information that you need from online resources such as these, they will nevertheless point you in the right direction. You must follow those pointers to unearth the information that you must be armed with before you first step across the threshold of your attorneys office.

As a further illustration of the importance of preparation, most states of the US have an established formula in place for the calculation of child custody.

In other words, no matter what your attorney suggests he can do for you in this respect, there is very little that he can do in reality, because there is a preset calculation formula in place.

While exactly how this works will be covered in detail later, the way that child custody payments are calculated is a prime example of the kind of thing that you must educate yourself about before talking to your attorney.

It is only by being knowledgeable that you can retain the degree of control that you must have.

Far too many people in your situation do not appreciate that many of the things that they are probably keenest to contest are already predetermined, and no amount of sensible argument or justification is likely to change what is going to happen. You must know these ground rules before you approach an attorney, because if you do not do so, you are entirely at the mercy of his interpretation of what you can expect.

Make sure that your requirements are written down in sufficient detail to make it absolutely clear to any reasonably intelligent human being (or an attorney) exactly what you want and expect to rescue from the situation in which you find yourself.

Present this written plan to the attorney at the first available opportunity, and ask him for his honest opinion of whether it is achievable.

At the end of the day, do not expect to like your divorce attorney. I have never met, read or heard of any divorced father who actually liked the attorney who acted for them! Not one.

On the other hand, you must be able to trust their judgment and what they say implicitly. However, at a time when your resistance and spirits are probably close to an all-time low, it is sometimes too easy to trust the wrong people, and, after all, your attorney is only a human being.

When creating your written plan, you might therefore want to add in something that can act as a protective clause, something to establish how honest the attorney is actually being with you.

The idea of creating a plan is to have something in writing that sets out a realistic and achievable schedule of demands. Knowing that these demands are realistic, you would, therefore, expect any experienced divorce attorney to agree that everything you have written can be done. So, you might want to include a couple of demands that you know are totally unrealistic to see whether they point this out to you and thereby risk losing your business as a result. This is a test of just how honest and forthright the attorney that you are talking to really is.

I have no doubt that suggesting that anyone could question the word of an attorney at law might be contentious. However, at a time when your resistance is naturally at a low ebb, you must do everything you can to protect yourself from incorrect information that could, ultimately, cost you a great deal more money and emotional upset.

Apart from using any resources that you can lay your hands on to formulate your initial schedule of demands, you should also have a list of questions to ask any attorney with whom you are considering working.

Once again, you may be able to do a lot of your initial research online before you even decide to approach a particular law firm for assistance.

Sites like Divorcenet.com carry lists of family lawyers throughout the USA, and you can find other resources of a similar nature by searching Google using terms like "US divorce lawyers", UK divorce lawyers and so forth.