It doesn’t take a family law attorney to tell you that the impact of your divorce will be felt more than simply on the case itself. Rather, all areas of your life have the propensity to be impacted by an ongoing divorce case. There are some events in our lives that we can compartmentalize and limit their exposure to other areas. Many people lead lives where their left hand does not know what their right hand is doing. In the world of divorce, we see people going through a lengthy and difficult divorce who have made decisions to do things with their lives that were meant to be separate from their family lives. Needless to say, what you do in one area of your life will almost always have spillover into other areas.
Getting a divorce means committing yourself to your family that what you are doing stands to benefit the persons involved. You may not be overly concerned with how your divorce stands to benefit your soon-to-be ex-spouse, but you almost assuredly will want to make sure that your divorce stands to benefit you and your children. Even if those benefits will not be felt for some time and even if the immediate impacts of your decision to get a divorce will be negative for you and your family, this should be the case. Otherwise, why would anyone get a divorce under any circumstances? If you are getting a divorce, you have to hold at least the opinion that doing so will move your life forward and your children.
The fact is that your divorce will impact your life in many ways. Some of those ways will be positive, and others will not be. In today’s blog post, I would like to discuss just how impactful a divorce can be in the most important areas of our lives. I think we can go through those areas of our lives about how divorce can impact each other. I will provide you with some information on how you can get through a divorce in one piece; call Mickey short of you, and your children can come out on the other side as happy and productive as possible.
Impact of your divorce on your immediate family
Getting a divorce means that the central component of your family life, notably your marriage, will be coming to an end. Please do not underestimate the significance of your marriage and its impact on your family. Whether they know it or not, your children view your marriage as the main stabilizing force in their lives. Their ideas about what family life is and is not are based on their experiences growing up in your household. By ending your marriage, you are essentially cutting them off from their stabilizing force at home. While I would not say delay a divorce for this reason alone, it is still a point that you ought to be aware of as you consider your options in the world of divorce.
Next, you should begin to think about how your marriage has acted as a source of cohesion in your own life. Even if your marriage has been failing for some time, it is likely still the case that you and your spouse relied upon each other for companionship to an extent. Eating meals together, completing goals together, and even engaging in arguments for all forms of interaction you and your spouse had over some time. By getting a divorce, you eliminate a social outlet for yourself and reduce the number of people in your tribe or pack. These may be fairly primitive or primal terms to utilize, but we human beings crave togetherness in unity. I think the past year has shown us that.
Your divorce will also have an impact on your ability to parent your children. Having a partner in parenting is never a bad thing. Even though you may have considered what life would be like not having to deal with the ups and downs of your marriage, it is still great, from a logistical perspective, if nothing else, to be able to have a spouse available to pick the kids up from school or activities and assist in disciplining them when necessary. Now that you are getting a divorce, these activities will have to be borne by each of you separately.
While it may not be true that in the long term, you will have to raise your children separately, it is true that in the short term, he will need to adjust his life to raising the kids from different households. If you thought it was difficult to communicate with your spouse when you live together now, he would face the challenge of doing so when living separately. For this reason, you and your spouse need to focus on parenting as you transition into your divorce case.
Your divorce will undoubtedly be impacts felt across your entire family and not just your immediate household. However, for today’s blog post, I would like to leave 3this subject for another day. Ultimately, the impacts of your divorce on your parents or your brothers and sisters are much less significant than that of the impact on your children and yourself. I would wholeheartedly not recommend choosing to get a divorce based on the opinions of anyone outside of your immediate household. It is great that you have these folks in their opinions to consider, but relying on them to the detriment of your circumstances or your child would be a mistake. Getting a divorce needs to be predicated on the experiences of those who live in your household, in my opinion.
Impact of your divorce on your immediate personal finances
Your immediate personal finances, your finances as they pertain to your next three to five years of life, will be impacted by the divorce. The state of your financial life as you approach the divorce will determine in large part how fundamentally altered your finances are by this divorce case. As a general rule, I tend to think that the most direct way to save money and invest money pistou utilized your income to do so. That could be income from your primary job, secondary jobs, investments, or other sources. The income that you earn is typically the primary catalyst for building wealth among most working people.
If you believe that to be true, you would be wary of taking on any responsibilities that detract from your ability to utilize your income however you see fit. Therefore, we would need to look at debt as being the primary hindrance to your building wealth. Debt is something that works well only when it works well. By that, I mean debt works well when all your circumstances line up perfectly as you envisioned before taking out the loan or line of credit once you begin to experience any degree of turbulence in your life that is when your decision to take out a loan or open up a line of credit can turn your life sideways.
If you are going into your divorce with any debt, then it is probable or likely that your total debt value will be higher after your divorce than at the beginning. For one, you will invariably become distracted with the divorce, as you should be. However, placing your focus on anything other than debt tends to place your debt concerns on the back burner. We tend to keep dead around like a pet and not something that needs to be removed from our lives like a tumor. As a result, if you are working on paying off the debt before your marriage, then you should be prepared to experience some bumps in the road during your divorce. Another factor to consider when filing for divorce is the likelihood of you’re hiring an attorney to represent you. I like to make the argument that hiring an attorney is a short-term investment into your long-term future. Attorneys can save you money in the long run, help you secure income in the form of child support or spousal maintenance that you might not have otherwise received in generally speed up the processing of your case so that you do not have to spend time and money on a long and tedious divorce.
However, that does not completely makeup that you will have to pay a divorce attorney to represent you. While there are many different attorneys in our area to choose from as far as hiring a lawyer, you should begin to consider that almost every lawyer you hire will charge you something to represent you. Depending on your budget and the circumstances of your case, you may choose to be represented by one attorney over another. This is why choosing to meet with many attorneys before actually hiring one is so important. This is the only way to get a feel for the attorney it will be hiring and learn how competitive their fees are.
Next, you should begin to consider that if you are prone to financing things like cars, your home, credit cards, and things of that nature, then you would be more likely to finance your divorce. That means either taking out loans or putting your attorney’s fees on a credit card. Going back to what we were discussing a moment ago, it is clear to see that paying off debt or at least holding firm and not increasing your debt load may not be an option for you during your divorce. That’s not to say that you’re taking out a loan or putting your divorce on a credit card is a bad thing; it is just something that you need to be aware of that will impact your short-term ability to pay down debt and build wealth.
Impact of your divorce on your long term personal finances
Divorce also stands to have a significant impact on your ability to build wealth and make strong financial decisions in the long term. For one, your household budget will certainly change after your divorce. At least in the short term, you will go from a household budget where two incomes are the norm to a 2A household budget where one income is the norm. By the same token, some of your expenses will decrease, but you will still be responsible for paying rent or mortgage, utilities, food, and things of that nature. Additional expenses like child support and or spousal maintenance may also become factors in your life depending on the circumstances of your case.
For that reason, you may have to shift your long-term financial goals at least over the next five years or so. Rather than contributing up to your company match on your 401K, you may choose to reduce that down to start paying back creditors or even to start paying off your divorce once the case comes to a close. The magic of compound interest goes both ways: by not paying yourself in your 401K, you were losing all of that beautiful compound interest. If you choose to ignore debts, then the same interest problems can end up hurting you even more so.
The most effective way to combat issues regarding long-term or short-term personal finances after the divorce is to create a budget for yourself. Our financial problems can often be solved simply by understanding what money is coming into your house and what is going out. If you took ten people off the street who are experiencing personal financial issues, I would bet that nine or even ten of them are not working off of a budget. If you can begin to reign in your income and outgo, then many of these problems will solve themselves.
A budget does not have to be complicated. You can grab a yellow legal pad and start at the top by listing out your net monthly income. If you have a variable income that changes from month to month, I would take your lowest net monthly income projection on average and use that. I recommend doing it this way because you can always add to it if your income ends up being more over time than you anticipated. Once you have determined your average net monthly income, you can then begin to consider your necessary bills.
Figuring out what your bills are is a great way to get ahold of your finances. You can begin by running a credit check of yourself to determine where your money is going each month period; you may have even forgotten about certain bills or loans deducted from your checking account regularly. Coming to grips with what you earn versus what you pay out each month could be an eye-opening experience that allows you to get a handle on your long-term financial goals.
Will the divorce impact you at work?
Finally, I would like to discuss what role your divorce may have on your work performance. It would be foolish to believe that one of the most important events of your life will have no impact on the activity you perform more frequently than anything else. Most of us work more than 40 hours a week. It is not as if we can turn our brains on and off when we walk into the office or switch on our computers in the morning. The reality of our circumstances is that people who succeed at work tend to be balanced in their approach. They do not get too high or too low over failures or successes at work period; they take things in stride a name to work when they’re at work and concern themselves with home activities when they’re at home.
If you can focus on your work, it can not only help you in your work performance but also offer you a bit of therapy. Getting away from the struggles of your divorce and into the challenges and opportunities presented at work can do a great bit of good for you from a mental health perspective during her divorce. By choosing to look at your work responsibilities in this light rather than as a distraction from your divorce, you can better accomplish goals and see that your long-term and short-term financial prospects are not impacted dramatically.
Questions about the material presented in today’s blog post? Contact the Law Office of Bryan Fagan
If you have any questions about the material presented in today’s blog post, please do not hesitate to contact the Law Office of Bryan Fagan. Our licensed family law attorneys offer free of charge consultations six days a week in person, over the phone, and via video. These consultations are a great way for you to learn more about the world of Texas family law and how your family may be impacted by the filing of a divorce or child custody case. Thank you for joining us on our blog today, and we hope that you will join us again tomorrow as we continue to share relevant insights into the world of Texas family law.
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Law Office of Bryan Fagan, PLLC | Spring Divorce Lawyer
The Law Office of Bryan Fagan, PLLC, routinely handles matters that affect children and families. If you have questions regarding divorce, it’s important to speak with ar Spring, TX Divorce Lawyer right away to protect your rights.
A divorce lawyer in Spring, T, X is skilled at listening to your goals during this trying process and developing a strategy to meet those goals. Contact the Law Office of Bryan Fagan, PLLC by calling (281) 810-9760 or submit your contact information in our online form. The Law Office of Bryan Fagan, PLLC, handles Divorce cases in Spring, Texas, Cypress, Spring, Klein, Humble, Kingwood, Tomball, The Woodlands, Houston, the FM 1960 area, or surrounding areas, including Harris County, Montgomery County, Liberty County, Chambers County, Galveston County, Brazoria County, Fort Bend County, and Waller County.
Bryan Fagan, a native of Atascocita, Texas, is a dedicated family law attorney inspired by John Grisham’s “The Pelican Brief.” He is the first lawyer in his family, which includes two adopted brothers. Bryan’s commitment to family is personal and professional; he cared for his grandmother with Alzheimer’s while completing his degree and attended the South Texas College of Law at night.
Married with three children, Bryan’s personal experiences enrich his understanding of family dynamics, which is central to his legal practice. He specializes in family law, offering innovative and efficient legal services. A certified member of the College of the State Bar of Texas, Bryan is part of an elite group of legal professionals committed to ongoing education and high-level expertise.
His legal practice covers divorce, custody disputes, property disputes, adoption, paternity, and mediation. Bryan is also experienced in drafting marital property agreements. He leads a team dedicated to complex family law cases and protecting families from false CPS allegations.
Based in Houston, Bryan is active in the Houston Family Law Sector of the Houston Bar Association and various family law groups in Texas. His deep understanding of family values and his professional dedication make him a compassionate advocate for families navigating Texas family law.
