State College Family Law Blog

No two people -- and especially no two children -- are the same. Your child could be calm, physically energetic or emotionally excitable; it all depends on his or her unique temperament. These and other unique characteristics are a joy (and sometimes a challenge) to witness as a parent, and if you're in the process of divorcing your soon-to-be ex-spouse, these characteristics could also affect your child custody and time-sharing arrangements.

Ages of children and parenting plans

Not all spouses are entirely honest with one other, especially when it comes to money. In fact, your seemingly honest and upfront husband or wife could be hiding hundreds of thousands of dollars in a secret bank or investment account. For this reason, if you have any suspicions that your soon-to-be ex is hiding assets in your divorce, you may want to try the following three strategies for uncovering hidden money in a divorce:

Voluntary disclosures: Every spouse must voluntarily disclose his or her assets and liabilities as a part of the divorce process. Disclosing assets like this happens during the discovery – or information exchange – process of divorce litigation. The voluntary information spouses provide at this stage is important for determining the distribution of the marital estate. Look over these voluntary disclosures carefully to see if you can identify any noteworthy omissions or mistakes. You may want to have specific property independently appraised as well.

Family law courts used to believe that children were best raised by their mothers. In this respect, barring extreme circumstances like addiction, abuse or criminal behavior, the courts tended to view the primary caretaker of the children to be the mother by default, and they would give preference to the mother during child custody disputes.

These days, the situation is much different. Family law courts are just as willing to give preference to the father of the children when he can prove himself to be the primary caretaker during the marriage.

Divorce can be expensive, but do you know what's more expensive? Divorcing badly. There are so many financial mistakes that spouses make when bringing their marriages to a close that several books could be written on the topic. Fortunately, that's why we have financial advisers, accountants and lawyers to guide us through our divorce proceedings. These professionals will help steer you on the right track to prevent a costly financial mistake.

There's plenty you can do to prevent financial catastrophe during your divorce process too. Here are three of them:

• Make sure both you and your spouse are financially settled until the end of your marriage: Some spouses -- especially those in control of the money supply -- will try to cut off the other spouse until an official court order requires them to pay. This is a bad idea and it will only end in the money spouse losing credibility in court.
• Beware of bad advice from friends and family: Maybe your friend or cousin has been divorced 10 times, but he or she will never have had a relationship exactly like yours. Every divorce is different and needs to be handled in its own special way. Don't take advice from your friends unless they are your attorneys and have an actual attorney-client relationship with you.
• Keep your privacy secure: Your divorce details are private and talking about them with others could hurt you during your case. Close down your social media accounts, only trust your most trusted people and keep your privacy secure.