Posted on June 29, 2014 in Divorce

Divorce can be a stressful process for everyone involved, including the children of the divorcing spouses. That may explain why a study, recently published in the BMJ (formerly the British Medical Journal), discovered a correlation between childhood obesity and parental marital status.

The researchers studied over 3,100 third-graders and found that children whose parents were divorced were 54 percent more likely to be overweight. This means that parents going through a divorce may want to keep a special eye on their children’s weight, and ensure that they take steps to keep their children healthy.

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 Posted on June 27, 2014 in Asset Division

One of the main focuses of the divorce process is the division of the marital assets between the spouses. This requires the court, through the spouses and their attorneys, to take a thorough accounting of all of the marriage’s property. This can tempt some spouses to hide away assets for themselves rather than revealing them for division. Because the concealment of marital assets can be a problem, people going through a divorce should be aware of the different strategies others can use to hide assets, as well as how to spot them.

The strategies for concealing assets fall into two major groups: expense manipulation, making it look like more money is coming out than actually is, and income manipulation, making it look like less money is coming in than actually is. The prior post in this series covered some common expense manipulation strategies. This post will focus on the other type of concealment: income manipulation.

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 Posted on June 19, 2014 in Divorce

Many divorces occur amicably with the two parties reaching agreeable compromises on property division. However, some divorces are more acrimonious. One common way that confrontation can manifest is through spouses attempting to conceal marital assets to keep from having to divide them in the divorce. This happens despite the fact that many jurisdictions contain rules requiring the disclosure of assets.

People have developed a variety of strategies that they can use to hide their funds, ranging from simplistic and easy to detect to highly subtle or sophisticated. Broadly speaking, they fall into two categories: expense manipulation and income manipulation. Expense manipulation involves techniques that make it appear as though the person is spending more money than what is actually be spent. They can then secret the difference away without having to divide it in the divorce. Income manipulation, which will be covered in part two, involves the opposite: people deferring income until after the divorce to keep it out of the marital estate.

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 Posted on June 17, 2014 in Divorce

A large part of divorce involves the practical issues related to separating two lives that have been managed jointly. This presents unique problems in the digital age when an increased number of those lives take place online.

A recent study by the Pew Research Internet Project found that over one in four couples have a joint email account and 67 percent of people in a committed relationship have shared at least one of their passwords with a significant other. People going through divorce should make sure to stay conscious of these electronic ties that they share with their soon-to-be ex-spouse. Otherwise, they could unwittingly allow their former partner to look into their private affairs.

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 Posted on June 12, 2014 in Divorce

While there is a cultural idea that marriage tends to lead to weight gain and divorce to weight loss, based on whether someone is trying to attract a member of the opposite sex, the reality actually turns out to be somewhat more complicated. A study from the Sociology Department at the Ohio State University looked at BMI reports culled from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth.

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 Posted on June 10, 2014 in Divorce

Over the past several decades women have made great strides in entering the workforce. In fact, a study by the Pew Research institute revealed that, in 2011, 40 percent of households with children under the age of 18 have mothers as either the sole or primary source of income. This number has almost quadrupled since 1960, when it was only 11 percent.

These mothers fall into two distinct groups. A little over one third of them are married women who earn more income than their husbands. The rest are single mothers. The first group, married women earning more than their husbands, is driving an interesting demographic change in the outcomes of divorce cases.

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 Posted on June 05, 2014 in Child Custody

Summer can be a particularly stressful time for parents. Kids are home from school and need supervision and entertainment. In addition to the time these things take, there can be an added financial stress during an already stressful time.

In fact, the majority of adults feel extra worry about money during the summer, and this worry is particularly pronounced among parents of children under 17, with 62 percent of whom expect to spend over $1,400 on activities for their kids, according to a study done by the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants. These stresses are only compounded for divorced parents who have an extra layer of complexity because of joint child custody agreements.

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 Posted on June 03, 2014 in Divorce

Much of the divorce process involves a negotiation between the two spouses. This can be a difficult experience for many people since Americans as a culture tend to shy away from negotiating, according to a report by Business News Daily.

Fortunately, the spouses will have their lawyers there to handle much of the negotiating for them, but understanding basic negotiation strategy, particularly how to handle the opening phase of negotiations, can still help people feel more comfortable with the process.

Negotiation Strategies

Negotiations are a complex affair that people approach with different strategies based on their personality type. Some people opt for a very competitive negotiating style, where they attempt to come out as the “winner” at the end of the day. Others choose to adopt a more collaborative divorce style. They seek to find outcomes that are win-win situations, and often operate with an eye towards preserving the relationship between the negotiators in the long term.

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 Posted on May 30, 2014 in Divorce

The idea of a lawsuit culminating in a trial is heavily ingrained is a common motif, especially in pop culture. If a television show or a movie involves a lawsuit, then the climax probably happens in a courtroom with a lawyer giving an impassioned speech to a judge or jury. However, in real life the trial is the exception.

According to a Northwestern law professor, only two percent of civil cases go to trial. Most cases end in a settlement between the two parties. This is because trials are not the ideal way to solve disputes. They are long, expensive processes, which is as true in the divorce context as it is in any other. Consequently, many parties attempt to engage in a four-way settlement conference to come to an agreement themselves rather than allowing courts to decide.

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 Posted on May 28, 2014 in Divorce

The emotionally charged nature of divorces can lead to a lot of bad blood welling up between the soon to be ex-spouses. If this happens then it can lead to one of the spouses becoming intractable and difficult with whom to negotiate. This can be especially difficult in a world where divorce mediation is becoming common, as more and more people begin to recognize the benefits of cooperating with their partner to divide up the assets. Fortunately, there are strategies available to help a person cope with an uncooperative spouse, and still move forward with negotiations.

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