If you are facing the unfortunate incident of splitting up from your spouse, you need to be prepared for divorce negotiations. These can become dirty at times, and sometimes, are very simple and easy. But in any way, you should not act quickly on a divorce settlement rather think critically over the points. For this purpose, it is recommended to take help from an attorney. Cook County divorce attorney provides you with unsolicited advice and teach you the basics of negotiation to ultimately make the best decision. Hiring divorce attorneys is especially important for individuals who do not know how to convince the other person and haven’t defended themselves ever. Following are the best ten negotiation tips you need to know before finalizing a divorce settlement.
- Learn Your Finances Before Proposing Ideas
Negotiating settlements for divorce is a bad idea. This is not recommended unless you are entirely sure of your financial management capabilities, so you know what value of items are equal and can be negotiated. Since most people have no idea, it is important to hire a financial advisor for this purpose and let them explain the proceedings. Even after understanding this, if you do not feel capable of negotiating the finances, hire an attorney for all proceedings of the divorce settlement.
- Know About Your Legal Rights and Responsibilities
Where your legal rights and responsibilities include finances and property, it also includes the aspect of custody of your children. Judges care the most about children, and so do the laws of the state. The requirements to prove your capability of raising your child will include a parenting schedule, and sometimes a psychological examination as well. In case your spouse is also rooting to take custody of your child, settling down things directly won’t help.
- Know Your Needs and Requirements
Whether you are planning to negotiate the case yourself, or are opting for hiring a divorce attorney, knowing about your needs and requirements from the case and settlement is important. You cannot go there and ask for everything but set your priorities. There are somethings that you may have to give up, just like somethings that your ex-spouse might give up. Rank your priorities for a proper balanced negotiation.
- Think Over the Worst and Best Alternatives
As suggested by this Cocoa divorce lawyer, one of the significant negotiation strategies to learn is to know about the best and worst alternatives to a negotiated agreement. These instances are also known as BATNA (Best) and WATNA (Worst). You can consult your divorce attorney to provide you with the knowledge of what might be the best possible outcomes from the settlement and what might be the worst, continuing after the trial. It is necessary to know these things, so you have a background knowledge about the things, and become prepared mentally to bear the best and worst results.
- Understand the Needs and Requirements of Your Spouse
When you are going through the negotiations for a divorce settlement, understand that the less you fight and try to take revenge, the better it will be for both of you. Having an insight about what your ex-spouse might want, or need can help you a lot to understand their priorities and develop a more understanding settlement. Negotiation requires cooperation, compromise and patience. Creating a win-win situation for both is the best answer most of the times and will help you in succeeding with your case and even result in getting most of your terms agreed upon.
- Set Your Bottom Line Before You Start Negotiating
Keep in mind about the bottom line of your settlement and needs. You need to understand the least points that you are willing to agree to, and to know the bottom lie of your divorce settlement. This is important because if you are not aware of the bottom line, you might end up losing a lot. Consult your divorce attorney to give you a better idea about these things. He or she will help you in getting a fair deal from the divorce settlement.
- Hold Your Emotions
For couples going through a divorce, the hardest part is to control their emotions. This can be very hard when meeting for negotiations and settling on the assets, but it is kind of necessary as well. At this stage, you need to have a good therapist or a good attorney who can help you cope with this emotional period. Sometimes, due to uncontrollable emotions things can get heated up. At this stage, it is best to take a break and continue when your spouse has also cooled down.
- Be Open and Flexible to Options
Understanding your possible options and willing to be more open to negotiation is the first step to a successful divorce settlement. You need to keep your mind flexible for accepting some offers and requesting for your own needs sometimes. The more you are being open and flexible, the other party might also consider being supportive towards this as well. Take help from a divorce attorney for this, he or she can guide you to look at possible options from different perspectives.
- Limit Ground Rules Before Beginning of the Negotiation
Setting some rules for your negotiation is a wise decision. You need to agree with your spouse on terms such as mutual agreements, when and where to negotiate, and subjecting them to your attorney’s approval before finalizing them. Changing stance and requirement after finalization of settlement can create a lot of problems.
- Create a Plan Before the Negotiation Process
Before you even start the negotiation process, you need to create a plan for the divorce settlement proceedings. You can develop this plan with your divorce attorney; who will help you in laying out things like your priorities, legal rights, responsibilities, WATNA and BATNA etc. for the smooth running of the divorce settlement process. Good planning leads to good results.