When a person files a divorce petition, it will either be a full package or not a full package. I will explain what we mean by full-package. When you file a divorce petition, there are about five different things you are asking the court to do for you. These are as follows:
(1) DISSOLUTION OF THE MARRIAGE: That is; you are asking the court to pronounce that you and your spouse are no longer married. If the court dissolves the marriage, you and your spouse are freed from the obligations of marriage. You are no longer obligated to live together and share a common household. You are no longer obligated to take care of each other or to keep each other company or to support each other. You are no longer his wife, and he is no longer your husband. You are no longer obligated to be faithful to the person you were married to. In fact, you are now free to date or marry another person because your marriage has been dissolved.
(2) CUSTODY OF MINOR CHILDREN: The court will also make a determination regarding the custody of any minor child of the marriage. So, most of the time in your divorce petition, you are also asking the court to award the custody of the children to you.
(3) VISITATION: Once the court awards custody of the children to one of the parents, the court will normally set the standards and terms under which the other parent would be spending time with the children. This is called visitation or access to the child. The word visitation tends to confuse people a lot. It does not mean that the other parent has the right to visit the parent who has custody. It simply means access and opportunity to spend time with or to stay connected to your child that does not live with you.
(4) CHILD SUPPORT: Once the court awards custody to one parent, the court will also determine how much the other parent should be contributing as child support. So, when you are asking the court to award you custody of the children, you are also asking the court to order the other parent to be paying some money to you in the form of child support.
(5) SHARE OF MARITAL PROPERTIES: Once you file for divorce, if you have any property acquired during the marriage such as land, cars, boats, buildings, etc., you will be asking the court to give you your share of such marital properties.
(6) SPOUSAL SUPPORT / ALIMONY: If one spouse is much richer than the other spouse, the spouse who has no money will be asking the court to order the other spouse to continue to support her financially even after divorce. This is called alimony. This is different from marital property distribution. The purpose of alimony is to ensure that divorce does not immediately result in poverty for either of the parties.
You can see from the above that divorce is not just about your marriage. Ending the marriage is not really the main reason people file for divorce. The main reason for divorce is about the children and the sharing of marital properties. If you have no children and there is no property to share, and you are not planning to remarry immediately, most people will not bother to file any divorce. They will just move on with their lives. Divorce proceeding is the best way to protect the children of the marriage.
In some divorce cases, all these six remedies are being asked for. As you can easily understand, in some divorce cases, the dissolution of the marriage is the only thing they want. For instance, if you do not have children or property, and if your spouse is not much richer than you, the only thing you will be asking for is the dissolution of the marriage. You won’t ask for custody, visitation, or child support because there is no child. And if you don’t have property, there will be nothing to share. When all you want is just a dissolution of the marriage, your divorce is not a full-package one.
For every lawyer involved in divorce cases, he has to be aware of the scope of issues involved in each case he has. The fewer the issues, the less expensive the fees he charges. For instance, if you married a man for, say, three years, and you have no children and no property, and there is a good ground for divorce, your divorce will be easy. The number of issues involved in a divorce case determines how long it takes to conclude the case and how expensive it will be.
What smart lawyers with good clients do is to narrow down on the issues that are disputed. For instance, husband and wife could agree ahead that the children would be with their mother and that the father will have them every two weekends. They may also agree on how much he would give for child support and how to share property. That means that only dissolution is left for the court to order. By so doing, they have reduced the areas of disagreement to zero. Their divorce will be swift and easy to conclude.
NOTE: Divorce is not just about what happens in court. There is a need to give the parties pre-petition counseling and post-judgment counseling. In the pre-petition counseling, you have to prepare the party you represent to understand the impact of the divorce on her life, how things would change – for better and for worse, and how she should deal with these changes. Also, the post-judgment counseling is intended to discuss with the party you represent her options after the marriage has been dissolved. The counseling is very important because many people who want divorce do not understand what it entails, and many people who got divorced do not know how to quickly adjust to their new life as single people.
© DPS Family Law Clinic