All too often clients let emotions get in the way of their separate support and maintenance or divorce proceeding. Emotions, like principles, as they say, can be expensive.

Make a List That Prioritizes What is Important

I always asks clients to sit down and think about what is most important to them and provide me with a list. If children are involved than they are normally at the top of the list. After that, things become more clouded. Some clients list personal objects, some list alimony or spousal support, and some have the insight to list retirement and investment accounts.

Always Determine the Cost of Fighting for a Particular Item

Those people who choose to fight over personal property are the ones who utilize the most cents and the least amount of sense in their negotiations and their litigation. It makes no sense for a client to pay attorneys to fight over who is going to get the kitchen table. The money you save fighting over personal property could easily replace the property with something newer and nicer. Remember the value of personal property is not what you paid for it, the value is how much would someone else pay for it at a garage sale.

Check Your Emotions At the Door

It is a very real and sobering experience to see your life listed on paper and divided up by attorneys and judges. Sadly, the reality is that your divorce or separate support and maintenance action is more like the dissolution of your family business. Your old family business (as a married couple) is being split and two new businesses emerge. Emotions should be checked at the door so that your decisions are based on what is best for your new business, not why the old business failed. People who are able to think as a business do a much better job of using their sense and not their cents.

If you are looking for a Charleston County divorce lawyer who understands how to approach a dissolution of marriage in the most advantageous way possible, contact Bluestein Johnson & Burke, LLC today.