Divorce From A Legal Perspective

When you discuss with your family or friends about your intention of going for a divorce, they normally advise you to hire an attorney; this is not the first step one should take in solving problems arising in a couple’s married life. First of all you should make sincere efforts to reconcile the marital differences between your spouse and you. In case of failure of such an attempt then only you should consider talking to an attorney on this issue.

The role of a divorce attorney is totally different from that of a marriage counselor. The marriage counselor tries to save your marriage by proper counseling of both husband and wife; the divorce attorney is meant for getting you a divorce and not repairing your marriage. He is meant to get a fair deal when the process of divorce is on. In case you are not planning to end your marriage but only to protect yourself the divorce attorney is not of much use. He is unlikely to offer any solution to save your marriage. He or she will assist you in getting a divorce as per state laws thereby ensuring that all your issues are settled fairly and squarely.

There are many reasons for which you would like to contact a divorce attorney; these are:

	To start divorce proceedings
	To put on hold a divorce petition
	To block a spousal divorce petition
	To finalize a separation

The attorney, in consultation with you, will list out the reasons for ending the marriage; he also negotiates on your behalf. Some of the issues involved are custody of the child, rights for visitation and division of property.

Separation or Divorce

A wise man has said that legal termination of a marriage takes place 5 years after the emotional ending. In practice it is absolutely true. In fact you find that people leave it too late to reconcile differences by which time damage has already been done. When things come to a peak you will be relieved to proceed with your divorce. In retrospect you will find that that there is a huge gap between emotional ending and legal ending of a marriage and real effort could have been made in this period to save the marriage.

When divorce becomes inevitable, it is advisable to look at legal separation instead of divorce. In this, the divorce attorney will file a petition in court to consider you and your spouse as separate persons or individuals. A legal separation is very much like a divorce but not a divorce. The assets are divided legally and parental rights are determined even in the legal separation. The expenses involved are more or less similar to a divorce.

The main difference between a legal separation and divorce is that you or your spouse cannot remarry; this may be of some use if both the partners are not fully sure of taking the final step of divorcing. You and your spouse are separated physically but it is not the final act of divorce. However legal separation can be converted to divorce any time by your attorney.

Anguish of Divorce

Many people are fully not aware of the role of the marriage counselor vis-à-vis a divorce attorney. When you find that the differences with your spouse appear irreconcilable, you are keen to annul the marriage by going to a divorce attorney. Many a times this is only a knee-jerk reaction and heart to heart you may not be interested in ending the marriage permanently. Approaching a divorce attorney will only result in marriage dissolution and not solve marital differences. It is important to understand the difference in roles of these two persons before taking any drastic action.

It is advisable to go for marriage counseling to solve the problems arising due to marital differences before attempting to separate or divorce. Even the attorney is likely to ask you to consider marriage counseling before taking any further action. From a legal angle, this helps the attorney while deciding settlement of various issues of the marriage. Normally the attorney will initiate the divorce process only after both your spouse and you have made sincere effort in reconciling the differences.

You resort to get divorce only after both of you have gone through a phase of mental agony; it is necessary for the couple to make every effort to avoid divorce as far as possible. Marital problems appear as large although most of them are manageable. Allowing the negative emotions to build over a period of years prevent the couple in arriving at a positive solution. A divorce attorney is meant to get you a divorce and not to not solve marriage problems. You should first approach a marriage counselor for solving the problems before attempting a divorce.