Divorce Support Forums: General lawyer advice question

I dont' know about the "separation time" requirements in your jurisdiction. When I got divorced it was 21 days from filing to end, so long as we were separated & had no kids. We filed and then he moved out that weekend, but WE called it separated becasue we slept in different rooms after filing & the judge was OK with that... but we had no kids & the property settlement was agreed upon & we both went in front of the jduge to finalize it... it was an agreed thing & not a problem

In the state where my current husband divorced his first wife, it was 60 days from filing to end of the divorce, and no separation requirement whatsoever. I've heard of people filing & getting the divorce final without any separation whatsoever, then selling the house or finalizing the property thing or whatever was forcing them to live together, and not PHYSICALLY separating till AFTER the divorce was over. A strange situation, but more frequent, it seems.

I'm clueless about whether you need a separation.

If you do, you probably want to find a way to kick her out asap. If you're the correct guy, (I coudl be remembering someone else) I remember messaging with you during her last hospitalization & I recommended finding a way to talk to the hospital social workers to make her find a new place to stay once she got out of the hospital, which would have been the easiest way to get this moving... it's tough to force someone out (and you do not want to be the one to have to get out since it's your house)... and you need to brign this up to a lawyer & ask what htey think are your chances of getting temporary orders to force her out. You may have to time filing of divorce with her next hospitalization so that the move "out" is really more like a "release to a different home".

Oh, and on the property settlement, it really depends upon how much equity you have gotten in the house during the marriage & whether her share of the equity would be equalized by her share of the debt your'e taking on. You may very well be able to keep the house in exchange for the debt, but be careful not so shortchange yourself. most people would rather take on a second mortgage to pay off the ex's equity, and then arrange for that to pay off the debt first, just to get it all zeroed out before the divorce is final.

But you'll have to run hte numbers or have your laweyr do that to see if it's really a good deal for you or if you're shortchanging yourself on this.

If there's a lot of equity in the house, or a chance that you will end up with a huge debt that she cant' pay or an alimony payment that you can't pay... it's worth paying a lawyer to work on that.

Think of it this way... if she wants $2000 a month alimony for life, and won't settle... and the judge is likely to order $2000 a month for 10 years... and you get a lawyer who is able to convince everyone that your real obligation to her should be more like $1000 per month for 5 years... then you are saving $180,000 over all, so a $20K lawyer bill would be well worth it, wouldn't it.

Oh, and JBar, my friend did NOT pay a $50K retainer... it was $50K total lawyer bill after 2 years of litigation and she was glad to pay it because when she started, she tried to do it on her own & ended up signing stuff over to her ex that was worth about $100,000 that she should have had half of... it was LOST. And her ex was looking to get half of what was left, saying it was worth a whole lot more than it really was worth... (he was a deadbeat who didn't work & lived off of her incoem for several years, while NOT being the primary parent... just sat home browsing [censored] sites on the internet all day)... Her lawyer saved her about $150K on one of the OTHER houses, and so it was well worth it... PLUS her lawyer forced his lawyer to make him mgo back to work, so she didn't end up paying him a dime in alimony & didn't end up having to pay HIS lawyer's fees (he was making a claim of being "poorer party" and therefore should get the fees). It was an amazing case, was a difficult thing to have to watch, helplessly as she made huge mistakes in the early part of it, and it was WONDERFUL when she finally realized that even though seh was a competent businesswoman, she needed help in the area of law.

Sometimes, the legal fees are well worth it. But you've got to know what's at risk before you know whether the money is worth it.

Bullet... Good luck.

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