Most people in New York who are going through a divorce have a couple of primary goals in mind: protect personal finances and protect parent-child relationships. If you don’t have children, the case will obviously focus more on the protection of your financial situation. To accomplish your goals in a divorce case, it can help to understand some of the basic concepts involved in divorce cases in New York.
Divorce basics
For starters, if you and your soon-to-be ex-spouse disagree on any of the legal issues that must be addressed in the divorce case, you are probably headed toward a “contested” divorce. These are the types of divorce cases that can often become complicated in a hurry, with both sides pushing their own view of what the best solutions are for issues such as property and debt division, alimony, child custody and child support.
As our readers might expect, a divorce cannot be finalized until all of the legal issues in the case have been addressed. Sometimes, couples find that some forms of “alternative dispute resolution” are helpful in addressing conflicting stances on issues. Mediation, for example, is a method in which a neutral third party “mediator” goes back and forth between the parties to hear arguments and facts, negotiate compromises and, hopefully, draft a final agreement on all issues that can be ratified by the court.
While divorce issues and the basics of the process might seem fairly straightforward at the beginning of a divorce case, the reality is that every divorce case is unique and the right path forward may be different in any given situation. If you are headed toward family law litigation, be sure to get the right information about your specific case.