Your divorce is not in the catalogue. If you want to divorce your spouse, you must contact a lawyer. Only a lawyer can apply for your divorce in court. Since the rights and obligations in a divorce are regulated in detail by law, you should know how to conduct your divorce effectively and achieve your goal without unnecessary complications.
Your first step must be to prepare yourself adequately for the interview with your lawyer.
If you are well prepared, you can reduce any shying away from such a conversation to a minimum. To do this, you need to know what is important.
Good preparation makes targeting easier
When going on vacation, prepare the route guidance in detail. If you want a divorce, you can also avoid detours if you collect the information and documents that the lawyer needs before you speak to the lawyer in order to reliably formulate your application for divorce. It is also extremely advantageous if you find out beforehand about the rights and obligations of the spouses in the divorce proceedings.
You have the advantage that you can conduct the conversation with the lawyer more effectively, ask specific questions and better understand what the lawyer is explaining.
You are conversing at a far better level than when you start the conversation without any preparation and the lawyer can only give you the most basic information. At the same time, you can judge better if your spouse makes demands and you have a rough idea of how realistic such demands are.
How do you best prepare?
It is best to prepare your meeting using a checklist of questions a lawyer will typically ask you. Don’t try to memorize everything. Make notes about what you want to know and what seems important to you. You avoid forgetting one or the other thing in a private conversation and then having to contact the lawyer again.
Example
If you are expecting spousal maintenance after the divorce, you should have a rough idea of the conditions under which you are entitled to which claims. If you go to a divorce lawyer Las Vegas with any knowledge, the lawyer must first inform you about the basics of maintenance law before you can even assess whether you are realistically entitled to claims. However, if you are already informed in advance, you can communicate much more effectively with the lawyer and clarify whether claims can be considered. If claims are to be considered, for example because of childcare or your illness or unemployment, you are in a better position to provide the necessary information about your living conditions.
If possible, consider your divorce as an objective process
If you are emotionally moved by the separation from your spouse, you should still make every effort to view your divorce proceedings as an objective process. Of course, it is about who can demand what from whom and who has what rights and obligations. Emotions are the worst possible advisors.
Emotions do not establish legal claims. Conversely, emotions are not a basis for fending off justified claims.
Rights and obligations are measured solely according to the law. Go talk to the lawyer if you are emotionally in control. An emotionally conducted interview with a lawyer does not create the framework that the law provides. No matter how difficult it may be, you should think objectively. Objectively justified demands are easier to justify than demands that have a purely emotional background. Conversely, claims can be defended against more effectively if you argue objectively. Keep in mind that anything you bring emotionally into the divorce process will delay the process. They unnecessarily exchange page-long briefs that are of little use in the end and keep your emotional world swinging up and down. Argue objectively, create the conditions
With what expectations and goals should I go about my divorce?
It’s a cliché that divorce is usually contentious. Even if Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie use exactly this cliché, you should find the strength to handle your divorce as amicably as possible, despite any reservations. Disputed divorces are expensive, incur unnecessary court fees and the necessarily two lawyers involved, are lengthy and often emotionally ruinous.
You avoid this scenario if you gear your feelings, thoughts and actions towards an amicable divorce from the outset. You regulate any consequences of the divorce out of court in a divorce agreement, which you can have notarized or recorded in court. With an amicable divorce, you can get divorced inexpensively, quickly and with the least amount of emotional stress. They create the basis for new life perspectives. If you go into the interview with a lawyer with this attitude, you have the best starting conditions for conducting the interview to your satisfaction.
What does your lawyer want to know from you?
Your lawyer will ask the following questions:
- Do you live separately?
- When exactly did you break up?
- How did you break up?
- Does your spouse deny the separation?
- Do you see a chance for a reconciliation?
- Do you see a chance for an amicable divorce?
- Is there already correspondence with your spouse after the separation?
- Is there a marriage contract?
- Are there already agreements on the consequences of separation and divorce?
- Do you have children together?
- Who looks after the children (right of residence)?
- Can you agree on contact rights?
- Is custody disputed?
- Is the spouse willing to pay child support?
- Do you want alimony for the period of your separation?
- Are you dependent on post-marital maintenance after the divorce because of your circumstances (which?)?
- Do you demand equalization of gains?
- Have you divided up your household goods?
- What obligations did you establish in your marriage?
- Who will take care of dogs and cats in the future?
- Do you know whether all insurance-relevant times are recorded in your pension insurance account with regard to the pension equalization?
- Would you like to settle any consequences of divorce out of court in a divorce settlement agreement?
- Do you see an opportunity to use mediation to avoid a contentious divorce?
- Can you pay the divorce costs out of your own pocket? If not, a claim for an advance on legal costs from your spouse should be examined. If your spouse is unable to pay, you can apply for state legal aid.
- Do you know the income and assets of your spouse? Do you have the relevant documents?
- Have you compiled your own documents to prove your income and assets?
