Whether you anticipate a collaborative divorce process or expect your divorce to be a contested battle, you need to take certain steps to position yourself for success. Specifically, before filing for divorce in Florida, you need to understand your legal rights, gather key financial information, and set goals for housing and parenting arrangements.
The preparations can seem overwhelming, but it is easier if you break the process down into individual tasks. Here we offer ten suggested steps to take before filing for divorce.
What Steps are Necessary for All Couples Before Filing?
Some tasks are essential for all divorcing couples, regardless of their financial situation, the length of the marriage, and family connections. These steps may get more complicated depending on your situation, but every couple must complete them to some degree.
1. Make Sure You Meet Florida’s Residency Requirement
Florida law requires at least one spouse to have been a resident of the state for at least six months before filing for divorce. To establish residency, you must demonstrate an intent to make Florida your permanent home, not just a vacation destination. Having a Florida driver’s license or voter registration card provides good evidence of residency, but your attorney may be able to use an Affidavit of Corroborating Witness or other evidence to satisfy this requirement.
2. Organize Financial Information
You need a clear understanding of your assets and debts, and the best way to get that is to gather as much financial documentation as you can. It is a lot of work, but the time spent will pay off in the end.
Collect digital copies of documents such as:
- Bank statements and investment account statements
- Tax returns
- Employment records and pay stubs
- Property records such as mortgage statements and deeds
- Insurance policies (life, health, property)
- Credit card statements
- Loan statements
- Statements from retirement accounts
- Other records affecting your finances, such as information on family businesses
This information is essential to the property division process, which is a key aspect of all divorces.
3. Protect Access to Accounts and Records
Make sure you know account numbers and passwords. It is a good idea to make your own copies of all financial documents so that you won’t have to worry about your spouse losing them or trying to hide them. You can save PDF copies of electronic records and scan or photograph printed documents. Do not change any passwords unless your attorney advises you to.
4. Consider Where You Will Live
Think about where you plan to live while the divorce is in progress and start considering your options for after the divorce. Unlike some states, Florida does not require you to live apart from your spouse before filing for divorce, so both spouses can live in the same home–although that can be extremely stressful for most divorcing couples.
Living arrangements become much more complicated when there are minor children in the home because you need to consider school, daycare, activities, and other scheduling issues. Courts can be reluctant to disrupt children, so the routines established during the divorce process often set the stage for permanent arrangements. Carefully consider what you want those arrangements to be.
5. Create a Detailed List of All Assets and Debts
Use the financial data you’ve collected to prepare a list of what you own and what you owe. Some property and debts may belong only to one spouse if they predate the marriage, but their status may have changed depending on what occurred while you were married. List everything, including dates of acquisition, and be ready to discuss the status with your attorney.
6. Review Your Household Finances
While the divorce is in progress, you still have to pay bills on schedule. You need to:
- Understand what your current monthly income is from all sources
- List your current expenses and which accounts are covering these bills
- Try to anticipate what your monthly expenses will be during the divorce
- Develop a plan for paying for expenses during the divorce
Eventually, you will also need a financial plan for covering expenses in your life after the divorce, but for the moment, you can focus on a temporary plan. Do not move money out of accounts without discussing the issues with your attorney. You could be accused of attempting to hide assets.
7. Think About Your Goals
Make a list of what you want to happen with regard to issues such as how property is divided, whether one spouse will pay alimony, and how parenting responsibilities are shared. Then prioritize your goals.
When you understand your priorities and communicate those priorities to your attorney, then it becomes easier for your legal team to advocatefor the goals that mean the most to you. For some spouses, what matters most is to stay in the same house. Other spouses want custody of children or control of a family business. Your attorney can negotiate to achieve your goals by trading off factors that may be important to your spouse but that are not as critical to you.
8. Get Personalized Legal Advice
Steps taken just before and after filing for divorce can have a tremendous impact on your post-divorce life, so it is vital to understand the potential legal ramifications of your actions. The most effective way to get advice tailored to your specific situation is to start working with a skilled divorce lawyer early on. While we encourage you to learn more from blogs like this, general information only provides an introduction to the process and won’t protect your interests when it truly matters.
9. Understand the Timeline of the Divorce Process in Florida
While no one can predict exactly how long the divorce process will take, it is important to understand the general timeline of what needs to happen:
- One spouse files a petition for the dissolution of marriage
- The other spouse files a response
- Both parties must make financial disclosures
- Attorneys attempt to negotiate to resolve some or all issues that must be settled
- If issues cannot be settled through negotiation or mediation, then a judge will likely need to resolve these issues
- The court will issue a final judgment that is binding on both parties
10. Know What to Avoid
Mistakes at this point can be very costly, so it is important to know what you should not do before filing for divorce:
- Do not destroy any records
- Do not discuss your situation on social media
- Do not make any attempt to hide assets
- Don’t make decisions about property or children unless you fully understand the legal consequences
- Don’t rely on verbal agreements–put arrangements in writing
When you are working with a dedicated divorce attorney, you can get specific advice on how to handle challenging situations such as protecting assets and establishing arrangements for sharing responsibilities.
Leap Frog Divorce is Ready to Guide You Through the Process to a Better Life Ahead
The divorce process is painful, but when handled to your advantage, you can emerge positioned to move toward a bright future. At Leap Frog Divorce, we have decades of experience guiding clients through the process, and we know how critical your early actions can be.
We invite you to schedule a consultation with a member of our team so that we can answer your questions and help you get the process off to a solid start. Just call us at 407-890-7297 or contact us online today.
