Some marriages end violently, with baseball bats and frying pans flying through the air. Others take years to resolve, with one spouse at the mercy of another who wants to drag out the proceedings.
Often, divorces are messy for reasons other than simple ill will or a desire on the part of one spouse to run out the clock, in the hope that you will die before a divorce is finalized and thus leave her as the sole legal heir to your vast fortune.
Sometimes, children are a complicating factor. This is not just a matter of custody arrangements, but may also involve disputes about education, religious upbringing or even serious or invented allegations of emotional and/or physical abuse.
In other cases, the continued operation of a longstanding and prosperous business may be implicated in divorce settlement considerations. This is particularly true with mom-and-pop operations, but even huge corporations can be destroyed if divorce negotiations are mishandled.
There may be issues related to caregiving. If one spouse is taking primary responsibility for the care of the other spouse’s aging parents, or disabled children, this may make it harder to divorce. What happens with adopted children or stepchildren? These can be very thorny issues to resolve.
Modern life is complicated, and settling a divorce or custody case may require sensitivity to many issues that arise from the intertwining of lives in a very sophisticated upscale Fairfield and New Haven County community like Danbury, Westport, Bridgeport, Milford, and Shelton. In an age when a whiff of scandal can destroy a career, it is sometimes to our advantage not to approach a divorce with the attitude of Germany and Russia carving up Poland, with little concern for collateral damage.
Your life has many dimensions, and you should strive to maintain your integrity even in the face of divorce, which admittedly is one of the toughest challenges a human being can face. Tirades and tantrums may be emotionally satisfying and perhaps unavoidable to some degree, but most people eventually recognize, albeit often too late, that it is important to consider the feelings and needs of children, friends and employees as having substantial weight. Don’t be too quick to burn bridges you might later wish you could cross!
A capable legal advisor should help you put such so-called ancillary issues in proper context as you plan your divorce settlement strategy. In the end, we want to help you reach a settlement that is fair, reasonable, and equitable both for you and for the people who depend on you and love you.
Hirsch Legal, LLC, based in Shelton, Connecticut, is one of the state’s experienced divorce and family law practices. We are waiting for your call, ready to serve your needs for legal advice on these issues.