After decades of practicing New Jersey divorce law, one thing I can tell you with certainty is that every divorce is different. That's why one of the questions I often ask during an initial consultation is surprisingly simple: What do you want your life to look like when this divorce is over?
A lot of people don't have an immediate answer. That's understandable.
When you're first considering divorce, you may be worried about your children, your house, your finances, your spouse's behavior, and a dozen other things at the same time. But before we can develop a strategy for your divorce, we need to know what we're trying to accomplish.
When I talk about goals, I don't mean simply saying, "I want to win." What does winning actually mean to you?
Maybe your biggest priority is protecting your relationship with your children. Maybe it's staying in the marital home. Maybe you're concerned about keeping your business intact, protecting your retirement savings, maintaining financial stability, or resolving the divorce without spending years fighting in court.
For some people, the primary goal is simply getting through the process as efficiently as possible and moving on with their lives.
Those are very different goals, and they can require very different strategies.
Divorce involves a lot of decisions.
Should you settle or continue negotiating? Is a particular asset worth fighting over? How important is keeping the house? Should you compromise on one financial issue to get something that's more important to you somewhere else? Those decisions become much easier to evaluate when you know what your priorities are.
Suppose you're arguing over an asset worth $20,000. You may technically have a strong argument for receiving it. But if litigating the issue could cost you $15,000 in legal fees, take months to resolve, and make settlement of the rest of the case more difficult, is that fight helping you achieve your goals?
Maybe it is. Maybe it isn't. The answer depends upon what matters most to you.
One of the easiest ways for a divorce to become unnecessarily expensive is for every disagreement to become equally important. They're usually not.
There may be issues where you shouldn't compromise easily. Your children's safety, a significant business interest, substantial retirement assets, or your long-term financial security may deserve considerable attention.
Then there may be other disagreements that feel extremely important in the moment but have very little effect on your life once the divorce is over. A good divorce strategy requires knowing the difference.
This can be difficult. Divorce is personal. If your spouse hurt you, lied to you, cheated on you, or behaved badly during the marriage, it's natural for those emotions to influence the way you approach the case.
But there's an important difference between wanting your spouse to understand that they hurt you and pursuing a legal result that improves your life after the divorce.
The court can't fix everything that went wrong in your marriage. That's why I try to bring clients back to a more practical question: What result are we trying to achieve? Once we know that, we can evaluate whether a particular fight actually moves us closer to that result.
The goals you have at the beginning of your divorce aren't necessarily the goals you'll have six months later. That's normal.
You may learn more about your finances. Your children's needs may change. You may realize that keeping the marital home isn't financially realistic. An issue that once seemed critically important may become less important as you understand the tradeoffs involved.
A divorce strategy shouldn't be so rigid that it can't adjust when the facts change. The important thing is to keep asking whether the decisions you're making still serve the life you're trying to build after the divorce.
Your lawyer shouldn't decide what's important to you. That's your decision.
But a good divorce lawyer should help you identify your priorities, understand what's legally and financially realistic, recognize the tradeoffs involved, and develop a strategy for getting as close to your goals as the circumstances allow.
If your goal isn't realistic, your lawyer should tell you that too. There's very little value in spending months or years pursuing an outcome that the law or the facts of your case are unlikely to support.
Going through a divorce without clearly defined goals is a little like starting a long trip without knowing your destination. You can spend a tremendous amount of time and money moving without necessarily getting anywhere you actually want to go.
Before you make major decisions in your divorce, think about what matters most to you. Think about your children, your finances, your home, your career, and what you want your life to look like a year or five years from now. Then build your divorce strategy around those priorities.
If you're just beginning to think about divorce and aren't sure what decisions you'll need to make, my free Divorce Smarter Course will help you understand the New Jersey divorce process and the issues you'll face along the way.
Until next time,
Steve