Treat Your Divorce Like A Business Deal

You need to treat your divorce like a business deal—because that is the way your husband will.  A marriage is nothing more than a contract. Divorce is nothing more than the dissolution of that contract.

Do your research! Read “The Divorce Survival Guide for Women” to learn every aspect of the divorce process. Read the articles and blog posts @www.preparefordivorce.com for even more information.

Consulting with a divorce attorney before you actually need one is the best way to research about what to  expect during the divorce and the divorce process in your state.  This will help you avoid mistakes that could cost you dearly later.

Although it is very important that you hire the best, most experienced divorce attorney that you can afford, you must always remain in control.  Just giving a divorce attorney a retainer and letting him take over is a huge mistake. You need to be involved in every aspect of the divorce process.

Settling your divorce out of court is the ideal situation. You don’t want a judge making the decisions that will affect you the rest of your life. Everyone loses in court—from the cost, emotionally and financially—to the chance of getting a bad judge (and most of them are bad). The only winners are the attorneys!

Getting Married

Getting Married

Infidelity and Cheaters

Interestingly, the men polled said they consider their significant others superior to their affair partners in other ways as well. Only 30 percent of men cheated with women younger than their current partners, and only a quarter of the men found their mistresses more interesting or more in shape than their partners.

It is always assumed that people cheat with someone better looking than their current partner. This may not actually be true, according to survey by Victoria Milan, a dating site for married people looking to have an affair. The website polled over 4,000 of their members and found that most people using the site consider their significant others to be more attractive than their affair partners.

So why cheat at all? Men admitted that they found their mistresses to be more passionate, better listeners and more caring than their significant others.

Over half of the females polled also found their significant others to be more attractive than their affair partners, but 50 percent said their lovers were in better shape. Similar to the men polled, women reported that the person they were having an affair with listen better and are more passionate than their man at home. And a whopping 89.6 percent of the women indicated that the man they’re cheating with makes them feel more appreciated than their significant other.

Some reasons men cheat are that they no longer find their spouse attractive, boredom, a need to escape, and they couldn’t resist the other woman. Same goes for women who cheat. Infidelity is usually more a symptom of bigger issues.

Surviving After Divorce

You’ve survived the divorce and now you’re concerned about how to make your settlement last. You know the amount of your divorce settlement—but what you don’t know is whether it will be enough to cover your day-to-day living expenses, support your family and have enough money for the rest of your life! You have to make sure that you don’t outlive your assets. How can you ensure that you can keep the assets you most treasure, rather than having to sell them to survive?

Living alone after your divorce may be difficult—especially if you had a long marriage—financially and emotionally.  Most women can expect to spend at least a third of their adult lives on their own. Because of this, they must get savvy about saving and budgeting. Saving sounds simple, but first you have to have enough income to save some of it.

The first step you must take is creating a budget.  These are some ideas of how to create a budget:

1. Make a list of the budget categories that apply to you;

2. Go through your checkbook for the past year and list each check under its category;

3. Go through your credit card bills and do the same thing;

4. Decide where you need to cut back and which ones you expect will increase;

5. Adjust and readjust the figures until your monthly budget equals your monthly income.

If your income doesn’t cover your expenses, then having your list will help you decide where you need to cut back. If you consistently exceed your budget, then you will have to adjust your spending habits or find a way to increase your income.

Sometimes Life Throws You A Curveball

Something happens that you never expected—sometimes life throws you a curve ball. You think that you are happily married and your sex life is great, and then you find out your spouse is having an affair—or he (or she) asks you for a divorce because he’s in love with someone else.  You feel like you’ve been kicked in the stomach! What do you do?

The first thing you have to do is quickly learn about the divorce process and how to protect yourself.  Finding the right book is the best way.  The most informative book you can buy is “The Divorce Survival Guide for Women” @https://www.preparefordivorce.com. Remember knowledge is power.

Next you need to find an experienced divorce attorney.  You need someone who is experienced to help you to avoid mistakes that could cost you dearly later in your divorce proceedings. You need to find one that is knowledgeable and right for you. Interview at least three attorneys. “The Divorce Survival Guide for Women” will give you all the information you need to move forward and be prepared.

Who Gets the Dog!

When couples are breaking up sometimes their dog becomes the focus of a battle. This usually happens  when the couple breaking up don’t have any children or any children under the age of 18.

Dogs do become a member of your family and are taken care of and loved like children. Losing the dog that you have loved can be devastating. Going through a divorce or breakup is emotionally devastating enough without losing your “friend”  or “pal” who gave you unconditional love.

Losing your dog can in some ways be more emotionally devastating than losing custody of a child. It can make the devastation of a divorce or breakup even worse.

Usually an agreement can be reach with a lawyer or mediator because a court battle can be financially prohibitive. If a couple does end up in court, it’s usually for revenge.

Although courts consider pets property and rule in favor of whomever owned the dog (which can be established by proof of payment or primary caretaker status), in 2013 a judge ruled in favor of the dog’s best interest—something usually used in child-custody decisions.

Some divorces or breakups are amicable and no lawyers or mediators are necessary. The couples work out the joint custody arrangements for their dog themselves…

Divorce and Children

Divorce is hard on adults but it is especially hard on children. Children often feel abandoned, or that something they did caused the divorce. Other reactions children have to divorce are sleep disturbances, fears of impending disaster, suspiciousness, under-achievement in school, poor peer relationships, emotional constriction, anger, and regression in behavior (such as bed-wetting).

Other grim statistics about the effect of fatherless children indicated that children of divorce are more likely to:

• 20 times more likely to have behavioral disorders
• 5 times more likely to commit suicide
• 32 times more likely to run away
• 9 times more likely to drop out of high school
• 10 times more likely to abuse chemical substances
• 14 times more likely to commit rape
• 9 times more likely to end up in a state-operated institution
• 20 times more likely to end up in prison

A counterpoint to these statistics is to consider that our Harvard Law graduate, President Obama, grew up in a fatherless home, as did many other prominent people. Raising children in a home where the parents are at war with each other does not produce healthy children either.

State legislatures, at the prompting of Family Court judges, family law attorneys and other professionals that work in this area have attempted to help resolve some of these issues by requiring that divorce spouses take parenting classes before they are allowed to proceed with the divorce. Divorcing spouses have to take at least 6 hours of parenting classes. These courses focus on the detrimental effects that divorce has on the children and attempts to educate the parents to keep the problems between themselves and away from children. Other jurisdictions require that the parties submit to mandatory mediation on issues involving support and custody.

Preliminary reviews of these statutory requirements indicate a reduction in the number or cases that go before a judge for resolution in court. Psychologists suggest that the best way to minimize the impact of divorce on children is to:

• Give them reassurance that the divorce is not their fault.
• Explain to them how things will change with the divorce and how it will affect them.
• Avoid making negative comments about the absent spouse in front of the child.
• Allow the child to maintain a close and loving relationship with both parents.

Following these guidelines will help your child be the exception to the rule, rather than the proof of the dire statistics.

Your New Year’s Resolutions

Many of us start off the new year by making New Year’s resolutions.  It’s a great tradition that has gone on forever. Unfortunately, most of the “resolutions” we make we will never keep. The beginning of a new year is the perfect time to think about how we’d like to improve our lives. Don’t set your goals too high, because you are setting yourself up for failure.

One of the first things you should do to start off the new year is to unfriend your ex!  Whether it is your ex-boyfriend or ex-girlfriend, ex-husband or ex-wife, an ex-lover, or someone who has been negative energy in your life—the old-school way of going cold turkey and cutting off all contact with that person is the best way. The effects of remaining Facebook friends with that person (or even simply keeping an eye on their activities online) can disrupt a person’s ability to heal emotionally and move on with their lives. Delete them now!

Among the top ten resolutions each year are financial goals—such as getting out of debt or saving for retirement. Your financial goals should take top priority. Carrying too much debt is bad for anybody.  You should  make a concerted effort to pay off all your credit card debt. Then you should consciously try not to pull out your credit card so quickly to pay for something. Think about this:  if you had to write a check or pay cash for it, would you buy it? You would probably think twice about buying it and probably not do it.

Saving for your retirement is also very important.  The more you put in, the more you will have when you need it.  Regular investing is the key. Social Security may not be there when you need it, and it doesn’t pay that much anyway.

The Clap Is Back

Gonorrhea, the STI your grandparents knew as the clap is back—and unhappily, it’s stronger than it ever was. A report from the World Health Organization shows that antibiotic resistance is making gonorrhea—the second most reported STI, infecting 820,000 people per year—much harder to treat.

If you’re not scared of getting gonorrhea, here’s a sobering thought—left untreated, gonorrhea can lead to chronic pelvic pain or infertility. Scientists fear that soon, some strains won’t respond to antibiotics at all. The problem is the rampant antibiotic use.

A CDC study found that one third of all antibiotic prescriptions are unnecessary. Doctors prescribe antibiotics for even mild ailments like the common cold.  And the bacteria that causes gonorrhea is resistant to almost every antibiotic.

Things to think about: You should never take an antibiotic unless it is absolutely necessary. You should make sure anyone you decide to have sex with has a medical clearance from all STI’s. Just don’t hop into bed with anyone without them having a medical clearance! AIDs still exists, as does Herpes and Genital Warts. Using a condom helps but is not that reliable.

The CDC is busy tracking resistant infections and developing new ways to target which antibiotic will work best for the specific strain you have.

You have to be wise and cautious!

Cheaters Beware

In today’s world with all the new technology, you don’t need to to hire a private detective—you can be your own detective. There are new devices out for spying, so doing your own spying has just gotten that much easier.

DIY sleuthing has gotten so common that CheatersSpyShop.com, a mail order firm out of Dallas, caters to suspicious amateurs. Their in-demand items include CheckMate, a kit for detecting semen on clothing and the iRecovery Stick, which retrieves deleted information off of cellphones. They also have a credit card-size GPS tracker.

Sometimes it’s sufficient to rely on a cheater’s technological ineptitude. An Apple glitch puts everything in the cloud—which means that everything is shared. But if you are not lucky enough to live with a careless spouse, you can check out We Recover Data in NYC, who are digital forensics experts.

Just a word of caution. The law involving spousal surveillance can be inconsistent, so you should tread carefully!