Top 10 Things To Avoid During Divorce

1. Use Online Profiles Inappropriately

Put a profile on match.com; badmouth your future ex on Twitter; or put photos from your drunken Saturday night brawl on Facebook. If you put it on the internet, it will stay there. Your ex will find it. Your ex will bring it up it during the divorce.

2. Try To Get Your Spouse Fired

This is a really bad idea. If you want to receive child support or spousal maintenance, you have tanked your case. On the other end if you could possibly be paying spousal maintenance or child support, your spouse’s new job will be to extract every penny from you.

3. Tell Your Spouse That They Will Never See the Children

You do not get to make those threats and your spouse will take the boxing gloves off.

4. Use Your Children Against Their Mother or Father

Never use your children as a messenger, confidant and debt collector. Your children will remember this for the rest of their lives and they will resent you for it, even when they are adults.

5. Sell Your Spouse’s Vehicle or Belongings

Your wife’s Lexus or your husband’s Ford F-150 may be titled in your name only, but it is not your vehicle to sell. You will lose face with the Court and may lose elsewhere in the divorce financially.

6. Go on a Drunken Bender

It is legal to drink alcohol in this great country, but a drunken bender will add more fuel to the fire; confirm your spouse’s allegations; and to top it off, you now need to pay another attorney to represent you in your DUI case. Oh yes, and you could lose your job.

7. Break into Your Own House

Yes it is your house, absent a court order. Call a locksmith. Do not give your spouse any excuse to file an Order for Protection.

8. Disregard Paperwork that Your Lawyer Sends You

If you do not understand the language in any legal document, ask your attorney. Your attorney can only answer questions that you ask. Attorneys assume that their clients can read and understand the documents unless a client tells them they do not understand.

9. Lie to Your Attorney

Attorney client privilege exists for a reason. What your attorney does not know will hurt you.

10. Get Pregnant

Do I need to elaborate on how difficult this will make everything? Seriously, if you get pregnant while your divorce is in process, or even with 180 days of your divorce, your husband is the presumed father for paternity purposes. Some courts make the parties wait until the birth of the child before granting a divorce.

*While our advice is sound, please note that our comments are meant to be tongue in cheek.