Divorce
ORGANISER
Peace is my weapon of choice
COPY AND PASTE INFORMATION VIA THE DIVORCE TRAVEL GUIDE (and other key sources) TO THE RELEVANT SECTIONS - AND THEN PRINT OUT FOR EASY REFERENCE AND USE AS AN ORGANISER
Chapter 1: Fill in your Key Facts
Chapter 2: Fill in your Organiser
Chapter 3: Fill in your Address Book
When you access your complimentary calls/skype sessions and other services from the Alternative Divorce Guide Financial and Wellbeing Experts, make sure you write down in this Organiser the key information that you gain, what your next steps should be, and when you will contact them again if you need to.
If you have an existing legal advisor, this Organiser will be a useful way for you to keep abreast of the divorce/separation process and this should help you to be more efficient with your time and therefore, help to keep your legal bills down.
Equally, if you do not yet have legal advice, this Organiser will allow you to fully prepare for working with a lawyer or executing your own DIY divorce.
1
Fill in your Key Facts
The experts you work with - financial and legal in particular - will need key information from you. This is the section where you write all of that down.
Complete the following where relevant:
Current status of divorce/separation:
Date of Separation:
Divorce petition in the name of:
Divorce petition issued on this date and place:
Basis of the divorce:
(if under 2 years of separation – as of writing, we still don't have 'no fault divorce' in the UK – agree on a reason for the divorce with your Ex, even if it's totally made up. Don't make this another reason to be cross with each other. (eg. Adultery, unreasonable behaviour (that's a popular one) – a solicitor will give you the full range of choices.)
No. of children and their ages and relation to you (birth children? Step-children, (under the age of 18, still in full time education, or having special needs) etc):
Total Financial assets (accountants and financial advisors can help with this):
include foreign properties, savings, investment buy-to-lets, all pensions, business valuations – don't make any assumptions, talk to the experts- (attach to this organiser)
Form E completed? Your incomes and outgoings all fully detailed (attach to this organiser):
Other key info requested by your solicitor/financial
advisor that it’s useful to keep handy:
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fill in your Organiser
making sure you have thought of everything, make key decisions on what to do next, and made a positive plan of action
Click the relevant links (or paste into your web browser) from THE DIVORCE TRAVEL GUIDE (and other key sources) & choose who you would like to talk to for a no-obligation friendly chat.
Write down their name and what you want to talk to them about in the action planner ORGANISER below, and their contact details in the ADDRESS BOOK section.
Checklist:
Step 1: Circle/Underline the actions that correspond with those you ticked in your Travel Guide pdf (or other sources)
Step 2: Click the link to look up the expert who can help you in the Travel Guideand.....
Step 3: Write their name, service and contact details IN THIS ORGANISER and in the ADDRESS BOOK
Let's re-cap on who you need to talk to and why:
Financial Experts
Financial Planners
Lawyers are not always experts in finance, and if you have pensions to split or property or businesses to divide, then financial planners are the experts you need to talk to. Financial Planners are not the same as regular Independent Financial Advisers (IFAs). They are specialised in helping you plan the long term future of your whole family after the split, and also dealing with complex pension splitting and division of properties.
Mortgages & Insurances
Mortgages & Insurances become very important when you need to turn two homes into one. The advice from a mortgage adviser and estimates of costs of mortgages and rents, will form part of your computations – or those of your accountant or financial planner.
Get Started having complimentary no-obligation conversations with the financial experts that you need:
Click here for all finance-related experts
Make peace your weapon of choice
Money Coach
Money Coaches are able to help you understand your own psychology towards money, how to remove barriers created by low self esteem or old ideas inherited from your past, and reduce the sense of fear that surrounds the subject of money for so many of us. Working with a money coach is a productive way to prepare for then dealing with the financial aspects of your divorce with greater confidence and direction.
In Business
Getting businesses valued is a job for a forensic accountant or an accountancy firm specialised in that area. It can take some time so don't leave it to the last minute, or try to 'guess' what value a business may have. Many people start up new businesses post-divorce, sometimes from home when they need flexibility around their childcare. There are many franchises and start up business opportunities available to people starting their lives over after divorce.
Get Started having complimentary no-obligation conversations with the financial experts that you need:
Click here for all finance-related experts
Make peace your weapon of choice
Wellbeing Experts
Coaching
Coaching and mentoring can be invaluable when you are dealing with a life crises like divorce and family breakup. Coaching helps empower you, helps you focus on the future and plan how to turn your life around. It can be a great investment when having to deal with financial or legal issues whilst in a state of anger, despair or shock.
Counselling
Counselling is often most useful once life has settled down and you have the support system in place to feel safe enough to explore more deeply your motivations and actions, and providing you avoid falling into the trap of getting stuck in ‘victim mode’ – counselling can over time be an excellent tool for learning new communication techniques and ways of dealing with the people in your life who you find challenging.
Get Started having complimentary no-obligation conversations with the wellbeing experts that you need:
Click here for all wellbeing-related experts
Make peace your weapon of choice
Health & Lifestyle
All forms of wellbeing – whether holistic healing or lifestyle changes – are not an indulgence. They can be a powerful way to support any coaching or counselling you may be partaking in, and more effective than drugs and alcohol for keeping depression at bay (assuming you don’t have a clinical history of mental illness). Feeling good is everyone’s right, and there are many different experts who can help you create greater emotional and physical harmony in your life and that of your family.
Parenting
Apart from fighting over the money (or lack of it), what also drives many couples who initially set out to conduct a non-adversarial divorce into a long and bitter struggle, are disagreements over access to the children. What is key to remember, is that those children are half you, half your ex – so if you say anything negative about their mum or dad, you are also being negative about your kids. Parenting coaches can be invaluable at this time – for supporting the kids and of course you yourself. They can also sometimes provide a bridge between your kids and both their parents, as an angry Ex may pay more attention to advice from such an expert than they will to any of your demands!
Get Started having complimentary no-obligation conversations with the wellbeing experts that you need:
Click here for all wellbeing-related experts
Make peace your weapon of choice
Dispute Resolution and Legal Support
If you don’t already have a dispute resolution professional involved - and want to find out more about more peaceful ways to divorce - the following links will take you to mediators, collaborative solicitors/practitioners and arbitrators.
Divorce Mediation:
So what is family mediation?
Well it’s not the same as ‘meditation’ (sitting quietly and connecting to your inner being) and it’s also nothing to do with ‘getting back together’. These are common misconceptions so I wanted to get that out of the way first of all.
Mediation is not appropriate for people who are in physical or psychological danger by being in the same room as their partner, such as in a serious domestic abuse situation, but just not liking each other any more is not a good reason to forsake a tried and tested method of facilitating a long term, sustainable way forward as separate people. Mediation allows a couple a supported and guided method to end their marriage. It can also be a useful way to sort out parenting issues. With an experienced mediator, even the most difficult roadblocks on the way through divorce and family breakup can be overcome, and you don’t have to go to court. Which is a good thing, as this saves you money and a whole lot of stress.
If your mediator doesn’t happen to be a financial expert, you can bring in a financial planner to deal with any tricky sums relating to house values and pension splitting, (most lawyers would also need to use a financial planner to help sort out that kind of stuff).
The main need for a lawyer would be to check out any legal points that might arise and to make sure your final agreement – although not yet legally binding – is suitably drafted and appropriate for the judge who will ultimately still makes the decision over what is a ‘fair’ settlement. But you don’t have to go to court or fight over anything, and the mediation sessions are confidential and allow couples to focus on positive goals such as co-parenting after parting.
Emotionally, it can be easier to take a more combative approach if you are angry or deeply hurt, which is why I recommend coaching of some kind prior to mediation to get you into the best emotional and psychological headspace to gain the best benefits from the process.
Collaborative Divorce Law:
Collaborative lawyers keep you out of court. In fact, you can’t go to court if you use a collaborative lawyer. Should negotiations break down between both parties, and a couple decide to go to court, then they have to get different lawyers to represent them. The advantage of this is that collaborative lawyers have a huge incentive (as do the couple) to find a sustainable and acceptable agreement on all matters relating to the divorce.
Collaborative law differs from using only mediators mainly in that the couple have immediate access to legal advice ‘on tap’ during the sessions. So if you wanted to pop out of the room and have a private chat with your collaborative lawyer, that would be fine, which is not so easily the case with mediation as the mediator must remain completely impartial.
So it’s like having someone helping you ‘in your corner’, which can be useful, but also it must be remembered that the collaborative process thrives on the same elements as mediation does – full financial disclosure, and clear communication.
Just because someone is trained in collaborative law does not mean they always work ‘collaboratively’ and it is important to choose your collaborative lawyer carefully. This is of course the same with choosing a mediator or any other professional. Make sure they share your commitment and passion to the positive outcomes of your divorce or break up such as a strong parenting partnership agreement or being comfortable that the final financial settlement was fair.
You are in charge or your divorce, not the lawyers. There are some excellent professionals out there, so don’t just settle for someone who has the job title if you don’t really feel confident that they will be someone you want to work with.
Divorce Arbitration
A bit like your own private judge – but much more convenient (you set the timescales and dates) and much less expensive than paying for a long court battle. Can be a useful way to resolve a single issue blocking progress in a mediation.
Wills and Property
Getting a new Will and putting property into trust to protect your children’s inheritance are important considerations when organizing the financial aspects of divorce. Divorce can take longer than you think, and letting your family assets go to someone and their family who are no longer such a key part of your life, should anything happen to you, is something to guard against.
Click Here to speak to Dispute Resolution and Legal Professionals
Make peace your weapon of choice
This is your Organiser
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fill in your Address Book
Pop the name and phone number of each expert you connect with in the alphabetical address book pages below.
You have extra pages in between for notes.
You can type in directly, copy and paste, or simply print of and use pen and ink!
Address Book A-B-C-D
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Address Book E-F-G-H
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Address Book U-V-W-X-Y-Z
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WHAT ELSE CAN I DO?
Write down any other ideas you have of what areas you may still need to cover – you wil find links to relevant experts to help you in your Divorce Travel Guide pdf:
Parenting?
Do you need to create a parenting plan?
Financial?
Have you created a financial plan?
Legal?
Have you updated your Will?
Have you accessed the full Video and Expert resource
CoParenting in a Box?
Click here:
©Family Life Resilience™2016Divorce Organiser