Thanks again for your feedback.
For those that have gone through with the process - how does one actually "win"? What's a good attorney actually do for you? Isn't ID'ing and dividing property pretty straight forward? Do the good ones help you hide the money? Lol
Again I'm in California and I think our laws are way different than NJ so I'm just trying to help this guy not get completely effed... Just partially
I've always heard the lawyers take most of everything and there not much left to divide. Wouldn't it be best to come to terms without their involvement?
It is more about Alimony payment rather than property(50/50 here in NJ) unless property was purchased prior to marriage and hopefully, you didnt put her name on the deed after tying the knot. The other tricky area to maneuver is, what was earned and saved prior to marriage. With Alimony - her lawyer will do everything possible, if he was the primary provider, to show how much she gave up of herself in order for him to improve his career.
The child support- there is a mandated % set by state. But, she does have the right to request more. You also have to navigate through who is picking up medical care, schooling, etc. She can also try to make the husband responsible for college funds.
You then have to negotiate when and how often you get to have the kids.
I made the huge mistake 25 years ago to just use the same lawyer with her as he had been my guy before we got married and we had continued to use him when we were married. But she had called first and he was legally retained by her.
Even though with us, it was just a parting of the ways and we did work many things out ourselves. But...years later- I realized I had negotiated out of guilt and wanting the lives of our kids to be impacted as little as possible.
We did the standard Child Support, no alimony but...I continued to pay our mortgage and allowed her to stay in the house for a nominal rent(she had to cover utilities and such) And for the first 6 month- I just signed over my paycheck to her and lived off a home equity loan on our home. All this was with the understanding that after 2 years or she remarries- she would purchase the home from me at market price. 2 years later, she is married but home prices had just doubled and instead of making her by it at market- I signed it over for just what I owed in mortgages.
She actually agreed to take less CS for 2 years to make up for some of the loss.
All sounds great until her new husband gets on the dead and they divorse and she is forced to sell and my kids had to uplift their life anyway. And then she got nasty and took me to court saying I didnt pay the full CS for those two years and went after that money plus interest, and the judge awarded it to her. The judge would not even accept the notorized agreement of lessor payment because of sale of the house. Her take- full payment is due no matter what contract or agreement you had "outside" of court.
So- lawyer lawyer lawyer - and only do what courts order. Nothing more and nothing less. And later on, if things change, don't take it upon yourself to make changes- get a lawyer again and bring those changes to court.