The most common form is the divorce complaint and what’s called the DR6. The divorce complaint is rather straight forward but the DR6 is not. The DR6 is an income and expense picture of the individual asking questions like: What’s your income? What are your expenses? What are your assets? This form requires a lot of background information in looking at pay stubs, looking at property evaluation, statements of account and so on.
What I ask the client to do is at the first interview I have them bring me the latest account information that they have, and then, we basically show them how to read their own statements. It’s amazing how many parties don’t even understand how to read say an IRA statement or a mortgage statement or an appraisal, and so I think we have educated a lot of parties along the way in how to do that.
You’ve got irreconcilable differences, which is basically a ‘no fault’ situation and then you have your ‘fault grounds’ which include infidelity, physical or emotional abuse and abandonment. However, the most common one is irreconcilable differences. Living in apart for more than three years is another one.
There are two ways to contest a divorce. One is just being difficult, not being willing to agree to anything, where you’ve got one spouse who either doesn’t want the divorce or hates the idea that you’ve moved on. Usually this is a controlling spouse who doesn’t like the fact that the other spouse has finally founded in her, or him, to file. This happens a lot; they make it difficult, or contested, by just refusing to do things, or promise to do things and don’t do them. It might be showing up to pick up the kids, not showing up to get them, agreeing to pay a bill and then not pay it, agreeing to pay child support, and then not pay it.
So a common challenge is managing the other party through your own client – which can be very difficult sometimes. Another obstacle is when you have a wealthy marital estate and a lot of experts may be needed to evaluate accounts and properties. Oftentimes you have ‘dueling experts’ and these can create obstacles in a contested divorce.
Well you certainly can – you can do whatever it is you want. What I often tell clients is ‘it’s your marriage, it’s your family’. They can control what they want to do in terms of who takes what, titling things over, and, basically, you can part ways and have an agreement without ever having to file for a divorce. It’s not recommended, but theoretically you can do that.
I often tell my clients: either you control your divorce, or you have a judge control your divorce. The judge is meeting you for the first time that day, or maybe they’ve come across you by a couple of motions here or there previously, but they don’t know you, they don’t know your life, they don’t really know what your day to day happenings are.
So to leave it to a judge is always risky, but to get back to your question, is it possible to dissolve a marital status before a final agreement is reached. You could separate but not divorce – you just file the complaint called ‘living separate and apart’. You work out an agreement as to who’s going to pay what bill, and who’s going to own what, and then just live separate and apart without ever getting a final judgment of divorce.
In Rhode Island there are two ways for people to handle divorce mediation. There are a lot of attorneys who market themselves as being divorce mediators. What they do is they attract couples who are contemplating divorce (before they actually file for the divorce), and they sit down with the couple and have the couple themselves come to an agreement as to the division of their assets and liabilities.
Sometimes this is very effective because it goes back to allowing the parties to control their own divorce destiny. They reach an agreement, reduce it to writing, and the mediator prepares what’s called a ‘memorandum of understanding’. Throughout the process the mediator helps the parties get through the emotional side of things by having them focus early on, on what matters – and that is:
The mediator steps out once he or she is successful in getting the clients to reach a ‘memorandum of understanding’. That document then is either submitted to an attorney, who then helps the parties, or one of the parties, file the actual divorce papers, goes to court with them, and asks that the judge approves their mediation statement.
The other divorce mediation comes in the form of the court and any miscellaneous petition that’s filed.
If you’re not married, but you happen to share a child together, you’re usually asking because now you’re broken up as a couple but you seek assistance from the court regarding custody, visitation, or support for that child because now that the other biological parent is not in your life anymore. The court will have a court-appointed mediator sit with the parties to see if they can work through a custody visitation/child support arrangement, or agreement, and then have the court or a judge approve it.
So there are two forms of mediation that are followed in Rhode Island.
No. You can’t stop a divorce. So even if a spouse is being uncooperative you will get divorced, but an uncooperative spouse just makes you go from point A to point B through A1, A2, A3, A4 you just have a lot more steps on the way, but ultimately you do get to divorce. But you cannot expedite it, no.
A legal separation means the parties are agreed in writing to live separate and apart from each other and, usually, who pays what bill, and how that family unit is managed is reduced to writing. A divorce is also a written agreement on how you know the family unit is going to be managed going forward, but the difference is that you can remarry after divorce – you can’t after legal separation.
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