Two major questions are to be discussed with your divorce lawyer: children and money.
One cannot be kept in a marriage against his or her will, so the divorce will be granted sooner or later. There are questions of jurisdiction, time limits, formal reasons and so on, but there will be a divorce, no doubt.
What comes together with the divorce is more important. Of course, if the couple has no children, no valuable property and no issues of family violence, if the marriage was rather short, and both are ready to continue with their active professional life, then there would be nothing major to discuss before a judge. Most probably such a divorce will be granted on a non-contested basis, by agreement.
But what if there are complications?
Children
Parenting time (custody and access), decision-making, child support payments (alimonies) and connected financial obligations of the spouses form a significant part of the divorce proceedings. If there is no agreement, the Court will have to decide where the children will reside, how much time (and when) they will spend with each parent — including vacations and holidays, who and how will make decisions about their education (including a choice of a school to attend), health care, activities like sports, arts, summer camps, etc., their special needs and expenses, and so forth. All those decisions will affect the amounts one spouse would pay to another to put their respective expenses in balance — based on the principle of the best interest of the children.
Psychosocial evaluations could be imposed or voluntarily undergone to find out what is that best interest in a particular situation of the splitting family.
To add to all that, at the ages of 9, 12 and 14 years old minor children have a right (of a certain strength) to bring in their own opinions.
Money
Aside from child support payments, there are other money-related issues to be settled at a divorce. Sometimes the Court finds a significant imbalance between the spouses’ incomes, which leads to a decision granting spousal support payments (not the same thing as child support). The Court imposes an amount, a period of time and certain other conditions.
Also, the valuables gathered by the family throughout the marriage (including immovable and movable properties, added value to that property, certain business and corporate assets or shares, investments, etc.) should be partitioned by the Court order. This may differ depending on the text of a prenuptial or postnuptial agreements (marriage contracts), if any.
The Civil Code of Quebec makes special provisions for the family residences, furniture, cars and pension plans. This cannot be altered by a marriage contract.
By the general rule, everything is partitioned equally, but there are situations where the Court could find one spouse’s economic fault and therefore grant more to another spouse. A lawyer’s consultation is strongly advised in the view of such a possibility.
Mediation
Seeing all the potential for a long-lasting conflict, one thing divorcing spouses should ask their lawyers about is family mediation. Rarely it ends up in reconciliation of the parties and their divorce cancelled, but often it allows to get to an agreement about many sensitive issues, making the divorce easier (and less expensive) to everyone, including the children. Allen Madelin Lawyers work on daily basis family law legal issues, including child custody. First consultation is offered for $ 125. For details, please contact us by phone: 1 514 904 4017 or by email: [email protected].
