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So the stages of divorce. During my initial meeting, I will tell the clients that when they’re thinking about a divorce, they need to look at it as sort of three different stages in their life. The first stage is what I call the anarchy stage. And the anarchy stage usually is when parties are thinking about a divorce or they may have filed and there are no quote, unquote rules and regulations in place during that initial time period, from the time that a divorce case is filed, until there is a temporary resolution to the temporary issues. And those issues typically are who’s going to stay in the house, how are the bills going to get paid, and what’s going to be the schedule for each party concerning the children.
And during this anarchy stage, because there hasn’t been a determination, both parents have equal rights to the kids, both parties have equal rights to assets, to access monies that are in their respective accounts. So, you know, a lot of times that’s where the frustration kicks in. So we have to wait until we get to either to resolve the issues on a temporary basis or get to a temporary hearing, which is like a mini trial. Which leads us to the second stage of the divorce case, which is once there’s been a determination as to the temporary issues, then there’s some stability that’s put into basically this family.
So there’s rules and orders that in a court order that will basically provide how the bills are going to get paid, who stays in the house, the parenting time that each parent is going to have with the children. And once that is in place, sort of things typically settle down. We use that time period to basically get the additional information that maybe was not so relevant on a temporary basis, but that’ to be significantly relevant as we try to move towards the third stage of the divorce case, which is basically getting to a final resolution. And that’s the third stage.
Once you get to the position where basically all the outstanding issues have been resolved not only on a temporary basis, but more importantly on a final basis, and those are the court orders that will be entered that will dictate what the parties are able to do and what they’re not able to do going forward, whether it means financial issues, parenting time issues, final decision making authority regarding the children and so forth.
