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When you meet with your divorce attorney in Fort Lauderdale, you are at a time period in your life that is unpleasant and stressful at home with your spouse. Your Broward County divorce lawyer will explain to you Florida marital and family law related to custody, time-sharing, a parenting plan and alimony. However, it is important that you remember that the stress of your divorce can effect your emotional and mental health. You should always remember how important it is to feel good before, during and after your Florida divorce.

Getting a divorce has long-term negative consequences for your health. While evidence suggests that a recent divorce is associated with an increase in poor health and depression in the short term, it also can effect your health years and decades later.

Individuals who are divorced are 20% more likely to have heart disease, diabetes, cancer or another chronic condition and 23% more likely to have mobility problems such as difficulty climbing stairs or walking short distances. In addition, those individuals who were divorced but then remarried still had 12% more chronic health conditions and 19% more mobility problems than married people who never experienced a divorce

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Your divorce in Broward can become overwhelming. It can threaten to sabotage all aspects of life, including your career. Your Fort Lauderdale divorce lawyer may require you to appear in court so that you can receive temporary child support, alimony or attorney’s fees and costs. In order to maintain your professional career, you should consider the following 8 tips:

Keep Your Divorce Private: Avoid telling your coworkers unless they need to know for business reasons.

Separate Work Life From Home Life: When you get in your car to leave for the office, allow the drive to work to become an escape from your divorce. This will allow you some relief so that your problems do not overlap.

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During your divorce in Broward County, the Florida marital and family law judge will divide you and your spouses assets and liabilities. Many of the marital liabilities and debts incurred during a marriage are jointly held. This means that you and your spouse are both equally liable for payment and non-payment of joint debt incurred during the marriage. After your Fort Lauderdale divorce lawyer negotiates who will be responsible for all of the marital debt, the divorce judge will eventually approve the marital settlement agreement that deals with the equitable distribution of the marital assets and liabilities.

The court does not generally order the lender or creditor to recognize payment responsibilities during a divorce. Even thought the court can make one spouse responsible for the payment of a debt, the creditor can come after the other spouse and negatively impact his or her credit if he or she has responsibility for the liability with the creditor.

The only way to dispose of your joint marital liabilities is to dispose of the joint debts. This may mean selling the marital residence or a car to protect your credit from being negatively impacted. Another alternative is to refinance the debt into you or your spouses name so that the joint debt will become an individual debt.

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In Broward County and Florida, the judge can grant temporary custody to an extended family member such as an aunt, uncle or grandparent. Your divorce or paternity lawyer in Fort Lauderdale will explain to you that minor children can live with and be cared for by extended family members who are better able to care for them. By granting temporary custody to an extended family member, the marital and family law judge in Fort Lauderdale can ensure that family members are able to give complete care to the minor child, consent to all necessary and reasonable medical and dental care, secure copies of the minor child’s records held by third parties, enroll the minor child in school and do all other necessary things for the care of the minor child.

In Dubois v Leon, the Fifth District Court of Appeal reversed the trial court’s order that granted temporary custody of a minor child to the maternal grandparents. In reviewing the evidence, the trial court applied the best interest of the minor child standard rather than the clear and convincing standard. The Court reasoned that when one of the minor child’s parents objects to the granting of temporary custody to an extended family member, the court can only grant the petition upon a finding, by clear and convincing evidence, that the child’s parent or parents are unfit to provide the care and control of the child. The trial court must find that the parent has abused, abandoned or neglected the minor child.

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When you meet with your Fort Lauderdale marital and family law attorney, you will be asked about you and your spouses assets and liabilities as part of your divorce case. Your Fort Lauderdale divorce lawyer will explain to you the difference between marital and non-marital assets and liabilities as set forth in Florida Statute 61.075. One way that the Broward County divorce judge can award you an interest in the enhancement value of a non-marital asset for equitable distribution purposes is as a result of marital efforts or marital funds that result in an increase in value of a non-marital asset.

In Shinitzky v. Shnitzky, the former wife appealed the trial court’s order which held that funds recovered in a lawsuit for damages arising from the loss of a non-marital asset were a non-marital asset. Before the marriage, the Former Husband sold his business for $8 million. The parties did not dispute that the $8 million from the sale of the Former Husband’s business was non-marital. After the marriage, the Former Husband placed the $8 million into a brokerage account. The broker absconded with the money. The parties worked together to recover the funds for two years during the marriage. The Former Husband then moved out of the house and pursued the lawsuit on his own before recovering $5.6 million and an uncollectible judgment against the broker.

The Former Wife argued that the funds received from the lawsuit were marital since they were acquired during the marriage. While the Former Husband agreed that if marital labor or funds had been used to pursue the lawsuit and that if the expenditure of marital effort or funds had increased the value of the recovery that the increase could be considered marital, he argued that none of the recovery was marital since marital funds or efforts did not increase the value of the $8 million non-marital asset.

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When you meet with your divorce lawyer in Fort Lauderdale, you will soon understand that there is never a best time to file for divorce. However, if a man is considering filing for divorce in the Broward County marital and family law court, the recession might be the time to do it. Divorce attorneys in Miami and Fort Lauderdale have exlained to clients that income, business values and assets have decreased in their present values.

For men, it may be less painful to walk away now. For women, it is important to think about whether they should file for divorce now before assets and income continue to decrease in value. However, couples throughout Florida believe that they should not file for divorce during the recession because of the need for dual incomes.

In Miami-Dade and Broward County, the business of divorce is slightly down from the number of filings one year ago. Throughout the state of Florida, new divorce filings fell from 21,333 in the first quarter of 2008 to 18,028 in the first quarter of 2009. In Miami-Dade County, new divorce filings fell from 3,239 in the first quarter of 2008 to 3,196 during the same quarter in 2009. In Broward County, new divorce filings fell from 2,148 in the first quarter of 2008 to 1,543 in the first quarter in 2009.

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In some divorce cases filed in Broward County, the division of assets and accountability of income is clear. In other cases, the division of assets is not so straightforward. One spouse in a Fort Lauderdale divorce case may believe that the other spouse is hiding assets. Spouses may also disagree about their shared lifestyle which is relevant when your divorce attorney needs to determine alimony. When you file for divorce in Fort Lauderdale, your lawyer may request that you hire a forensic account to prepare your case and ensure that your divorce is based upon full disclosure of assets, liabilities and income.

Forensic accountants analyze the economic aspects of a divorce case. By reviewing financial documents such as bank statements, tax returns and corporate financial records, they develop an accurate assessment of the financial situation by evaluating when money is deposited, where assets are kept and how assets are distributed. All in all, the assets are examined for the purposes of child support, alimony and property division.

In calculating alimony and child support, a forensic account ensures that there is a truthful reporting of each spouse’s income. For property distribution, the forensic accountant ensures that this is fair when there is not a full understanding of the marital assets and liabilities. If both parties have not actively managed the family finances, one may not be aware of all of the assets. If one spouse is trying to hide assets, an untrained person may have difficulty finding the concealed assets.

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As a divorce lawyer in Broward County, clients often come into my office and will tell me all of the bad things that their spouse has done which has caused the marriage to be irretrievably broken. In most divorce cases in Fort Lauderdale, the fault of one spouse in committing adultery or abandoning the other spouse does not factor into the ultimate decisions made by the Florida marital and family law judge in the Seventeenth Judicial Circuit Court related to dissolving the marriage. However, when it comes to your marriage, love is not always what keeps you and your spouse living happily ever after in Weston, Pembroke Pines, Cooper City and Plantation.

The following are 7 factors that play a significant role in determining whether your marriage will succeed or if you may wind up in divorce court:

Blending Families: 20% of marriages with children from a prior relationship end up in divorce court

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One of the factors that couples need to consider when filing for a divorce in Fort Lauderdale is the economic implications placed upon parties during the pendency of and after a divorce. In Broward County, it is important to discuss the impact of the recession with your marital and family law attorney before entering into a marital settlement agreement.

In many divorce cases, a husband and wife decide that they do not want to be married to each other. While they are ready to move forward in their lives, they can not afford to move out of the marital residence. Couples do not want to sell their home during a decline in the real estate market. In other instances, the parties can not afford two households until one of them finds a new job. In the interim, couples are residing in the same marital residence but on different floors. Children are generally acceptable to these conditions and understand that mom lives upstairs and dad lives downstairs.

While proceeding with your divorce case can be complex or inexpensive, the recession has complicated the process further. Many individuals are delaying the decision to file for divorce or are living in uncomfortable marriages due to the economic crisis. Other couples continue to reside together after the divorce as a result of financial necessity. It is unclear how the recession is affecting divorce rates overall because of the delay in compiling economic data. However, what is clear is that parties have been forced to become creative in order to adjust to these turbulent economic times.

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If a man is going to file for divorce in Broward County, the recession might be the time to do it. Fort Lauderdale divorce attorneys have found that incomes, business assets and other holdings have decreased in value. In a strong economy, men do not believe there assets are valued at such a high level when it comes time to equitably divide the marital assets and liabilities.

Strategizing is common when a spouse files for a divorce. The recession may play a part of your strategy. For women, they may argue that they need additional alimony and child support of they have been laid off from their job. But for men, if a guy is impoverished, it is going to give him an advantage in arguing that his wife should take on more of the debt.

If you are planning to file for divorce, you should speak to your Broward County marital and family law attorney. It is important to discuss the best time financially for you and your spouse to file for divorce.

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