"The Divorce Song" by Steven Lynch

Contested And Uncontested Divorce

There are two kind of divorces, a contest and uncontested. A contested divorce is one is which the parties cannot agree, either about getting a divorced itself or about the terms of the divorce, such as the division of assets, the custody of the children, child support, allocation of debts, and alimony. In an uncontested, divorce, the spouses agree on everything and do not need the court to divide the assets or make the determinations about alimony, child support, or custody. In general, a uncontested divorce will proceed through the system more quickly, be much less complicated, and less of a financial burden.

Most couples tend to begin the process of a contested divorce and then, before the actual trial, reach to some sort of agreement on the financial terms and otherwise, of the divorce. This is called a settlement. One of the biggest advantages of a settlement is that neither spouse will appeal it because they both agreed upon it and thus are presumably happy with it. Both parties can therefore be assured of finality and an end to litigation. If you reach a settlement with your spouse, it is essential to have the agreement memorialized in such a way that it makes the settlement legally binding and enforceable.

This is called a settlement. One of the biggest advantages of a settlement is that neither spouse will appeal it, because both by definition agree to it and thus are presumably happy with it. Both parties can therefore be assured of finality and an end to litigation. If you reach a settlement with your spouse, it is essential to have the agreement memorialized in such a way that it makes the settlement legally binding and enforceable.

It is becoming more and more popular for spouses to "do their own divorce", eliminating the legal costs involved with hiring lawyers. Spouses that are successful doing their own divorce are almost always in agreement, thus they are doing an uncontested divorce. This is something you may want to consider before hiring costly lawyers if you and your spouse are in agreement with the terms you wish to divorce upon.

It is not recommended that either spouse attempt to represent him or herself in a contested divorce. There is an famous quote, "he who represents himself in court, has a fool for a client". This is very true, because the complexities of a contested divorce are far to much for the average untrained individual to absorb. The financial and emotional repercussions of acting as your own lawyer in a contested divorce case can be devastating.

Today, you will find that most judges and lawyers prefer to settle out of the court in an uncontested fashion. If you and your spouse can not come to some type of agreement on your own, typically your lawyer will help you reach eventually, but result maybe that the one party or both parties will not be happy with the outcome of a contested divorce.

Choosing A Divorce Attorney: Quick Tips

Depending upon whether you and your spouse are confident enough to draft up your own divorce agreement, you will be able to limit your use and an save on the expense of an attorney. If you and your spouse are able to compromise and find a agreement within a drafted up divorce agreement than you can limited the use of an attorney to initial advice, quick information, final evaluation, and feedback. Instead of using a attorney from start to finis, which most likely is always more costly to do. Either way, whether you choose to use a attorney from start to finish or on a very limited bases, it is wise to have one but to what extent you use the attorney is up to you.

When you do hire a attorney, you should take more time into besides just running your finger through the yellow pages until you spot the word "divorce" or simply hiring a lawyer who helped you in the past negotiate your office lease or draw up your will. You need to hire a attorney that is experienced in family law. "In some states, attorneys can be board-certified in family law. These lawyers specialize in divorce cases and other kinds of family law issues. To be certified, they must have significant trial experience and pass a rigorous test. To maintain their certification, they must receive substantial continuing education in family law each year, generally twice the amount of required continuing education of non-board certified family law attorneys (Divorce, 2005)." These type of attorneys do tend to be quite pricey and demand higher retainers to begin a family law case than those who are not board-certified, but they are usually more experienced.

The attorney you use should be able to talk with you in plain English or in other words, not legalese. This person should be someone that your able to trust and feel comfortable with because you may have to reveal highly personal information about yourself and your marriage. If you do have young children, that you should pick a divorce lawyer who keeps your children's needs first and that he or she will not purse an outrageous amount of child support or help you pursue vindictive child custody and visitation arrangements. And last but not least, your attorney should be affordable.


References:

Ventura J., & Reed, M. (2005). Divorce for Dummies, 2nd ed. New York, NY: Wiley Publishers.

Get Divorce Online...It Can Be That Simple!

When I had first had to idea to do divorce as my blog topic and goggle divorced, I was shocked to believe that you can get divorce online. "Divorce Online" sites have been making appearances on CNN news and other shows. Yes people, they just made ending your marriage that much easier and for an average low cost of around or a little under $300.00. You just have to give them your credit card numbers, answer a couple of simple questions, and they take care of the rest. They send you completed forms in the mail and all your require to do is sign on the dotted lines. What even shocked me more was the number of people that were actual engaging in this sites to quickly end their marriage because apparently it is becoming a normal affair.

Why are they making it so easy to divorce, but you can not get married just as easily. You cannot get legally married online or over the phone so are we allowing people to get divorce legally online or over the phone? You shouldn't be able to end your marriage by the swipe of your credit card if you can not get married with the swipe of the same card.

Some of the top sites that divorce you practially over night and making tons of money over ending marriages with a quickest are:

1. Completecase.com
2. LegalZoom.com
3. DivoreMe.com

These are just three of the many sites out there that allow you to get divorce online. I do not believe that you should be able to get divorce online. Do you? Should it really be made that easy?

Final Analysis: Potential Sources

Although I am still a little unsure about how I want to actually approach the final analysis, I have begin looking for sources that I can use to help compose my final analysis. There are a lot of bloggers within my genre and a lot of them have very strong different opinions on divorce itself. Some of actually been trough a divorce themselves while others have been affected about a divorce, but within my blogging community no one was left unaffected, just affected in different ways.

I thought I used for sure Pat's Divorce Blog because personally believe that she is one of the leading bloggers in my genre and has been about divorce for quite some time now. Her content is well formulated, her passion show about the subject shows, and she shares her own personal experiences.

Another source I thought I used was Divorce Net, which is a popular site on the Internet that puts divorce has it main focus. I could use this as a reference, but unlike Pat's Divorce Blog, it is just a general approach to divorce and lacks someone's own personal experiences. The site serves more as a purpose to give general information and where to seek help.

These are just two of the sources I plan to use and I am still looking for several more that I can possible use to guide me in writing my final analysis. I have came different sources, but most of them have been lacking consistency or creditability. I know that there are more worthy bloggers and sites out through, it just taking me some time to find them.

Divorce Through A Child's Eyes

Children look at the world much differently than we do as adults. Much of what they actually understand and how a child will psychologically react to a divorce depends upon the age of the child, but age is not the only factor. In general, a toddler will not be able to understand as much as a five year old and a school-aged boy will not handle his emotions the same way his teenager sister will. (Oesterreich, 1998.) An infant has no understanding at all and therefore will not show any emotions to the situation at all. Besides age, there are three other factors that can help us understand how a child will react to divorce. These three factors are: (1) the quality of the relationship that had with each of their parents before the divorce and how well they are able to communicate with the child, (2) the intensity and duration of parental conflicts, and (3) how well the parents were able to turn their attention to the needs of the child (Corcoran, 1997).

What are some actually effects of divorce on a child?



A child that sees his or her parents going through a divorce might display a wide range of emotions. Most children will grow angry and depending upon the child's age, will depend on how they express pain. They may turn their anger inward and withdraw themselves from people within their surroundings. Others may slash out and turn their anger outwards, such as fail in school or get in trouble with the law. A child might also hold themselves responsible to why his or her parents are getting a divorce and in turn, the child tries to improve their behavior hoping that it such might save the marriage. Some will even experience short or long periods of depression and fear abandonment.

"Researchers claimed that children with depression and conduct disorders showed indications of those problems pre-divorce because of parental conflict pre-divorce. Researchers now view conflict, rather than the divorce or residential schedule, as the single most critical determining factor in children's post-divorce adjustment. The children who succeed after divorce, have parents who can communicate effectively and work together as parents (Corcoran, 1997)." How a child may be impacted by divorce has nothing do with whether the child is a boy or girl. Children will suffer equally, they just differ on how they will suffer.

How can you improve the effects of divorce on a child?

Keeping open communication is the key to improving the effects of a divorce on a child. Being very involved as a parent allows for realistic and better balanced future relationships. If both parents are able to communicate in a respectable manner in front of the child and still have family activities with both parents involved, this will also help a child overcome a divorce. It is important that both parents maintain an active role in a child's life because a child learns how to be in a relationship from their parents. If they have a strong relationships amongst their parents, they will mostly likely succeed in future relationships.



How did my parents divorce affect me?

My parents divorce really didn't affect me that much. I think it affected my little brother more because do this day, he still has a hard time figuring out why they decided to get an divorce. I, on the other hand, felt a since of relief because I thought my parents constant arguing was getting out of control and it bothered me more to see them argue about everything and upset all the time than to see them separated and happy. Throughout my parents divorce, I tend to stay away from the house and hang out more with my friends because my friends acted more as support than my own parents did.

References:

Divorce Matters: A Child's View. Lesia Oesterreich, M.S. June 1998. Human Development and Family Studies, Iowa State University. November 13, 2007. http://www.nncc.org/Parent/childview.html

Kathleen O'Connell Corcoran. "Psychological and Emotional Aspects of Divorce." Mediate.com. November 13, 2007. http://www.mediate.com/articles/psych.cfm

Divorce Rates (United States)

Divorce Rates

Based solely on the responses of my readers, I thought it would be a good idea to base my next blog on our own country’s divorce statistics, how the vary within our own country, and also how they measure up against the rest of the world. Is divorce really even as common as we tend to believe it is in our own country? What states are more prone than others to have fail marriages and which one are not? What is the average length of a marriage before a divorce within our country? Is it common for people located half way across the world to know of as many married couples as you and I know that are going through a divorce at this point of time or the amount of people who have been through at least one divorce already? If they don’t know as many, is it even close? It is even comparable to what we believe we are accustom to in the United States? These are just a few of the questions that come to my mind when I start to think about our own countries divorce statistics and how they might compare to the rest of the world.

How Many American Marriages End in Divorce?

Most of us would simply reply to this question, “one in two” or every other married couple will end in a divorce, if you believe just like I like I do the endlessly statistics repeated by, but not limited too, the new media, several publications, and potential candidate’s campaign speeches. But also we can come with this assumption simply what we witness with our own eyes. If we do the math , most of us would find this figure by simply calculating the annual marriage rate per 1,000 people compared to the annual divorce rate per 1,000 people. However, researches believe that our method of calculating divorce rates are flawed. They claim that this is very misleading because the same couple that are getting married in a given year are not necessarily the same ones who are divorcing within that same year that they are married. Researchers believed that the statistics of “one in two”, in useless in understanding divorce rate in the United States and that it has never reached one in every two marriages. New research actually suggests that with the rates declining, it probably never will.

Recent research showing the latest data available reported that actually only 4.95 per 1,000 people marriages in the United States were ending in Divorce. However, although this number is fairly new, again we need to keep in mind how we come up with this figure and that within a given year, the couple who are getting married are not the same ones who are engaging in a divorce within that year.

Which states are more prone to fail marriages and which ones are not?

Neveda is definitely the number state were most marriages fail. How are you even surprised though because at the same time it is the same state were most people get drunk and become wed overnight, ask Britney? The next couple highest states are Arkansas, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Wyoming. These are the top five states with the highest failed marriages within a state.

The top five with the lowest are Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Jersey, Rhode Island, and New York.

How do we even compare with the rest of the world?

Well compare when compared to the rest of the world, is it a not surprise to you that we are ranked number one in the world for having the highest divorce rate per every 1,000 person within a country. In guess who the follow us with having the next highest divorce rate? Puerto Rico, a territory of the United States, well no surprise there huh? Their divorce rate is at 4.47 per 1,0000 people compare to our 4.95 percent per every 1,000 people. The next three countries to make the top five are the Russia ( 3.36 per every 1,000), United Kindgom ( 3.08 per every 1,000), and Denmark ( 2.81 per every 1,000).

The top five with the lowest divorce rates are Sri Lanka ( 0.15 per every 1,000), Brazil ( 0.26 per every 1,000), Italy (.27, Mexico (.33 per every 1,000) and Mongolia (.37 per every 1,000).


References:
http://www.nationmaster.com
http://www.infoplease.com
http://www.divorcereform.org/rates