If you’re not careful, your divorce could be expensive. Yet, this might not be at the forefront of your mind. Divorce is a sad and life-changing event. As such, your finances might not be your main concern — but they should be.
Difficult as it might be, a divorce is when you need to be at your most logical, even though the situation means that you are at your most emotionally vulnerable. So, here’s a guide to making sure that your divorce doesn’t cost you financially.
1. Make Decisions with Your Head, Not Your Heart
As Aristotle once said, “the law is reason, free from passion.” As you go through the legal process of divorce, you must heed these words.
You might be sentimentally attached to certain possessions in your family home — or perhaps even to the home itself — but both of you can’t get everything. Listen to reason: you’ll either have to sell your assets and divide them up fairly, or split them according to who they belong to.
This will mean asset valuations and will mean putting a price on things which you might have thought of as priceless. The sad truth of divorce is that you need to let that happen. What’s more, you need to make sure that the price these assets are valued at is fair. To do that, you need a level head that isn’t being swayed by anger, jealousy, sadness or by any other feeling.
2. Choose the Best Divorce Solicitors in London
If you choose the best divorce solicitor in London, you’ll likely wind up with the best divorce solicitor in the country. The reason for this is that 75% of all the lawyers operating in the UK operate in the Greater London area. That’s a huge majority of lawyers all in one place. With three quarters of all the lawyers in the country to compete with, divorce solicitors in London have to be good. After all, a divorce solicitor in London can’t afford to offer a bad service if you can just walk down the road and find another.
This rule isn’t just true for divorce solicitors in London, either. A disproportionate number of American lawyers also work in New York State and California. The reason for this is that those two states are home to New York City, San Francisco and Los Angeles. It’s a near universal rule; big cities mean lots of lawyers and lots of competition.
Remember that a divorce solicitor isn’t just there because two couples are arguing and they need someone to lay down the law. Rather, divorce solicitors can act as a disinterested third party who can help explain the complicated legal process and ensure that both partners are happy with the final settlement. However, for that level of professionalism, you’ll need the best divorce solicitor in London or another big city.
3. Debt Can Last Longer Than a Marriage
If you’re not careful, the lasting memory of your marriage will be your debt. Divorce means that you and your ex-partner are separate, but it doesn’t erase any debts that you have and the debt of one ex-partner can still affect the other long after the marriage has ended.
Prenuptial agreements (or prenups) can help here. However, if you don’t have one or if your prenup doesn’t cover a particular possibility, you’ll need to get all debts out in the open. It won’t be a pleasant conversation, but hidden debt is sadly a common occurrence during divorce. When a relationship is falling apart, it’s not hard to imagine one partner keeping something secret from the other. In fact, that kind of dishonesty is usually one of the key reasons the marriage fell apart to begin with.
