Learn About the Purpose of a Pre-Divorce Planning Session in New Jersey

Our Experienced Lawyers Can Help You Organize and Strategize During Pre-Divorce Planning Sessions

You are getting a divorce; that much has been decided, but where do you go from here? The divorce process isn’t as simple as you would think. Alimony, child support, and custody arrangements are to be hashed out. Decisions about how your marital debts and assets will be divided, such as who gets the house, the cars, or Uncle Rondel’s vintage baseball card collection. A divorce is a complex series of mini-agreements and decisions, much more taxing and challenging to unravel than first considered. Having a team of supporters and professionals working with you during the divorce process is invaluable. A lot of fact-gathering and negotiating needs to occur before you sign on the dotted line and to ensure you aren’t left holding the short end of the stick; you will need all the resources available.

Setting Goals and Expectations for Success Through a NJ Pre-Divorce Planning Session

We plan for career changes, buying a house, or getting married, so why wouldn’t we want to plan a divorce? This session aims to identify the best way to prepare for and conduct your divorce. It can be used to develop a strategy and discuss what you want to happen. You can ask your attorney questions, set up possible scenarios, and share your concerns, expectations, and hopes for the outcome. Multiple outcomes can be identified while you and your attorney determine what is of most importance to you. If you don’t know what you have, what you want, or how to get it, the odds of your divorce ending satisfactorily decrease significantly.

Difference Between Consultations and Pre-Divorce Planning Sessions

When you have an initial consultation with an attorney, it is more a time for mutual introductions than an actual planning session. You talk about your marital situation and general concerns. The attorney provides their qualifications, how they charge, their experience, and other pertinent information necessary to allow you to decide whether you will hire them. They may give you a cursory review of your case, but nothing in the way of detailed legal advice.

The pre-divorce planning session is different from an initial consultation in many ways. First, the session takes place after you have retained your lawyer. They cannot give you legal advice until you are their client. Second, you will go into detail, discussing what you want or expect to happen and how you would like to go about it. Next, you and your attorney create a plan that covers your concerns and the resources you will have to resolve them.

Scheduling Your Pre-Divorce Planning Session

The best time to have a pre-divorce planning session is after your initial consultation with the attorney of your choosing. Once you have paid their retainer, you can schedule your next meeting.

Clarifying the Purpose of Pre-Divorce Planning Sessions

This session is an important opportunity for you to explain your concerns and desired outcomes for your divorce. It serves as a time to collect vital information such as bank and retirement accounts, property, businesses, other assets, and debts while deciding the optimal way to divide them. It allows you to plan a potential custody agreement and gives you the confidence you need during this difficult time.

Navigating Critical Discussions in a Pre-Divorce Planning Session

When identifying assets and debts, they will be categorized as marital property or individual property to facilitate the distribution process. Your attorney may discuss alternative resolution procedures, such as arbitration. You can review how your taxes, health insurance, retirement plans, and other financial resources may be affected. You will identify which assets are most important to you and what you are willing to let go. You can plan what to do about joint accounts, property or business ownership, and doubts regarding to whom certain assets belong. Discussing your financial situation, living arrangements, child custody, child support, alimony, and parenting time is also essential.

Reasons to Opt for a Pre-Divorce Planning Session in NJ

Child Custody and Parenting Time

Hopefully, you and your spouse will be able to put your children first and create a custody and parenting time plan that will benefit them and cause as little disruption to their daily lives as possible. Deciding if custody will be shared equally and setting up a parenting time schedule that works for everyone are no small feats. By having a pre-divorce planning session, you and your attorney can create custody and parenting time options to make the final decisions more manageable for you and your ex.

Child Support and Alimony

Child support and alimony are highly contested issues in a divorce. By meeting ahead of time with your attorney, you can craft evidence of your income and expenses, and those of your ex, to offer a possible amount for both alimony and child support. Again, having multiple options is a great way to start a conversation with your ex about these issues. It takes emotions from the equation; you can express your ideas with a cool head.

Property Division

Once you and your attorney have identified the marital assets, you can begin to decide who gets what and how much. This is a painful process because there may be items you both treasure, such as family heirlooms, the family home, and others. If you have a plan going in, it is a starting point for discussion and compromise regarding how the assets will be distributed.

Pre-Divorce Planning Sessions to Ease the Transition for All Parties Involved

Unless you and your ex agree on absolutely everything, you are an excellent candidate for pre-divorce planning. Whether you own many high-valued assets and live in Short Hills or a humble condo in Salem, what you have is valuable to you for more than monetary reasons, and parting with it can be tricky. Planning lets you look critically at what you want to see happen and why. Logical thinking allows cooler heads to prevail and ultimately can make the divorce process less complicated.

Our Family Law Attorneys can Help you Strategize an Approach to Achieve Your Goals During a Pre-Divorce Planning Session in Southern New Jersey

By retaining Bronzino Law Firm and setting up a pre-divorce planning session, you allow us to work with you and create a plan to help you best prepare for your divorce. We will provide information, resources, and strategies to put you in the best position during the divorce proceedings. Careful planning and preparation can significantly reduce the conflict and, ultimately, the length of the divorce process.

Our seasoned attorneys have the experience you need to plan your divorce. We can offer information regarding how to distribute marital property, what to consider in terms of child support and alimony, and possible parenting time plans that will work for you. We are aware that every case is unique, which is why we encourage you to contact us for an initial consultation.

We can work with you to make a plan for your divorce that will provide you with the answers you need and the peace of mind you deserve in Manchester, Rumson, Bay Head, Toms River, Spring Lake, and towns around Monmouth and Ocean Counties. Contact our offices in Sea Girt or Brick by calling us today at (732) 812-3102, or you can also contact us online.