If you thought that separation is just a small break-up, you are wrong because it's a process that requires the spouses to make some of the hardest life-decisions. Leaving someone you have always lived with can be hard, and working out the divorce logistics involved could even make it harder. Divorce involves several stages and how you behave in stage determines whether you would lose or win the case. If you have to divorce, you need to assess the situation first and do a few things before the divorce process begins.

Assess Your Financial Stand

Take your time to assess your financial status before you rush to fill those divorce documents. In any divorce process, the judge's main goal is to distribute all the debts and assets between the spouses equitably. If you don't know your financial status, you won't get the share you deserve during the settlement negotiations. Although you know you would get an equal share of the obvious marital assets—cars, bank accounts and houses—others, such as inherited property, pension plans and artwork, among others, might not be so obvious. Secondly, know what other people demand from you. Although the debt doesn't come in your name, you would still have half of it to pay.

List All Your Joint Bank Accounts

When planning to divorce, most partners raid their financial accounts and get away with everything. While some spouses do it out of blazing anger, others do it because they were ill-advised. If you don't find a way to prevent your partner from clearing your joint accounts, you may not know what to do when you discover all your joint accounts are empty. If you suspect that this could happen, open a new bank account in your name and transfer half the amount in the joint accounts into a safer account. However, you should ensure you don't misuse the money because the judge would seek to know how you used it.

Come up with an After-Divorce Budget

Determining what you would live on after divorce so you can come up with a comprehensive budget might be distressing, especially if you didn't want it to get this far. Life won't be the same after divorce, and so you need to estimate the expenses you expect and include them in the budget. If you don't do so, you may get less than what you deserve, have unmanageable bills and probably sink in debts with time. Determine the amount of money you need for your livelihood and let your divorce lawyer negotiate the settlement in court.

No matter how much you try to do all this, you might still do it wrong if you don't have a divorce lawyer to guide you. Most divorce lawyers know what could hinder a favourable outcome in your divorce case and how you could avoid it.

For more information, reach out to a divorce lawyer.