How To Make A Clean Break After A Divorce, Even If You Have Minor Children

Trying to engineer a truly easy divorce is just a thought experiment, since it is never easy to break up a family, a partnership, or a circle of friends.  Some divorces are financially less complex than others.  If the parties do not have children or own real estate, and if neither of them has enough property to be worth fighting over, the divorce is usually simpler than if they have minor children and own multiple houses, and one spouse was funding a lavish lifestyle for the whole family throughout the marriage.  Just because you own a house and your children are below the age of 18, it does not mean that you are doomed to an epic divorce battle.  If you and your spouse have already planned your virtually painless exit strategy, a South Florida divorce lawyer can help you make it a reality.

On Treating Your Ex-Spouse Like an Equal

Florida’s legal doctrine of equitable distribution of marital property means that you do not have to divide the marital assets equally.  (Most states follow the equitable distribution rule, but community property states, such as California, require couples to divide their marital property evenly if half when they divorce.)  Likewise, dividing parenting time 50/50 usually only works for very young children.  For some people, an approximately equal division I what works best, though.

When Samir and Sharon divorced, Samir kept the marital home.  Sharon executed a quitclaim deed, relinquishing her claim to a share of the home’s value, and the court ordered Samir to refinance the home mortgage so that it would be in his name alone and Sharon would no longer bear any responsibility for it.

Almost everything else was virtually a 50/50 split.  At the time of the divorce, the parties owed Samir’s parents $43,000 on a loan that they had been paying down during the marriage.  As for parenting time and child support, they divided their parenting time in such a way that neither parent would owe the other child support money for the parties’ three children.  This meant that the children would be with Samir 60 percent of the time and with Sharon 40 percent of the time.  This situation worked well for them.  The only place they ran into conflict was with medical expenses.  The children were covered under Samir’s health insurance, but the parties agreed to split the cost of uninsured medical expenses 50/50.  At Sharon’s request, the court later amended this provision of the parenting plan to apportion each parent’s responsibility for uninsured medical expenses to match his or her share of the parenting time.

Contact Us Today for Help

A Boca Raton divorce lawyer can help you divide your marital property and parenting time in a way that works for you, even if it means dividing it equally.  Contact Schwartz | White for help today.

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