Prioritizing Concerns Helps Manage Early Divorce Stress

 Posted on June 21, 2018 in Divorce

The decision to divorce may provide you some relief because a resolution to your unhealthy marriage is in sight. However, your relief may turn to stress once you realize how much work will be involved in the process. A divorce agreement involves making tough decisions about money, property, and parenting. If you feel overwhelmed, you must remind yourself that you cannot complete the process all at once, even if you wanted to. When starting a divorce, you can divide tasks between what needs to be done immediately and what you should keep in mind for later.

Immediate Concerns

Your most urgent tasks at the beginning of your divorce involve your day-to-day needs. Your divorce has disrupted your life, and you need to create some stability before you can focus on larger issues. Immediate concerns include:

• Where you will be living if you are the one moving out of the marital home;
• Whether you have access to enough money to pay for your regular expenses;
• How to tell your children about the divorce; and
• How you will continue to fulfill your parental responsibilities.

Your solutions will likely be short-term fixes, with the long-term answers coming from your divorce agreement. Talking to your children about the divorce may not seem like an urgent issue, but they deserve to hear the news from you before you disrupt their lives.

Priority Concerns

Once you have achieved some immediate stability, you can turn your attention to less urgent tasks, such as:

• Informing friends and family about your divorce;
• Alerting your employer that you may need to take time off work in the future to deal with your divorce; and
• Addressing minor ways that no longer living with your spouse affects you.

Though it is not a requirement, early in the divorce process is a good time to collect information for your upcoming divorce negotiations. You will need an inventory of your marital properties, including copies of documents related to ownership. You need to know the regular income and expenses of both yourself and your spouse. If you delay this work, you give your spouse a chance to hide assets and records of his or her income.

Hiring an Attorney

Finding an attorney is one of your most important concerns when considering divorce. You can choose your attorney before you file your official divorce paperwork so you will have someone advising you from the beginning of the process. A DuPage County divorce attorney at Calabrese Associates, P.C., understands how prioritizing certain tasks at the beginning of your divorce can lead you to success at the end of the process. To schedule a consultation, call 630-393-3111.

Source:

https://www.divorcemag.com/blog/the-divorce-process-what-to-expect-step-by-step/