Most people don’t think about it at the time but getting married is likely to be the most legally significant thing they will do in their lifetime.  Marriage changes your tax status and benefits, your property ownership rights, creates financial obligations to your spouse, and exposes you to liability for your spouse’s future debt.  Few couples are focused on these legal consequences until they decide to end their marriage.  Technically, divorce is the legal way to end your marriage.  But really divorce is just another word for division.

You divorce your spouse but you divide your assets and debts (equitable division of marital property), divide future income for your spouse’s benefit (alimony), divide future income for your children’s benefit (child support), divide decision-making authority over your children (legal custody), and divide your time with your children (parenting plan).    

The first step if you are considering separation or divorce is to identify and understand the issues that you will need to resolve in order to divorce.  This is the easy part.  Do you have children?  If the answer is no, you will need to resolve two issues: property division and alimony.  If the answer is yes, you will need to resolve five issues: legal custody, parenting time, child support, property division, and alimony. 

Before moving on to learning about your issues you may want to review the basic concepts and legal terms of divorce on the Divorce Vocabulary page.