What has 40 names but is invisible in Virginia? The mountain lion, which holds the Guinness World Record for the mammal with the most names. Pumas were last reliably reported in the Commonwealth in 1882, though rumors still swirl of catamount sightings. We mention the painted cat’s many names because a particular legal document is like the cougar: the divorce settlement agreement.

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Other Names for a Divorce Settlement Agreement

The painter may be also known as (AKA) the ghost cat, but a Divorce Settlement Agreement has its own impressive list of AKAs:

  1. Collaborative Settlement Agreement
  2. Custody, Support, and Property Agreement
  3. Marital Settlement Agreement
  4. Mediated Separation Agreement
  5. Property Settlement Agreement
  6. Separation Agreement
  7. Separation and Property Settlement Agreement

For lawyers to give a single document so many names, that set of papers must be extremely useful in family law. The divorce settlement agreement is important and efficient. Using it in your divorce can save time and money for you and your spouse.

Things to Ask for in a Divorce Settlement

The divorce settlement agreement is like the Swiss Army knife of family law paperwork. You can use it to resolve and memorialize many thorny things:

  • Child custody
  • Parenting time schedules
  • Child support payments
  • Spousal support payments
  • Property division

Call it a roadmap to divorce, a separation Slide Show, an instruction sheet, or a guidebook for getting on with your separate lives. This covers what to ask for in a divorce settlement. The one document legally describes everything you and your departing spouse agree on, usually long before the actual divorce.

Every minute with an attorney comes with a price tag. Whether you shop for a competent, experienced family law attorney or try to slide by with a bargain-basement lawyer, you pay for time. But by unfolding the various parts of a Divorce Settlement Agreement the way you open up a Swiss Army knife, you can short-circuit unproductive, lengthy, expensive discussions with lawyers.

Anything you and your soon-to-be ex do to minimize attorney contact time saves both of you money. Put all the details in writing in a divorce settlement agreement. Then you two can sit with your respective attorneys on opposite sides of a conference table and nod in cordial acceptance of mutually advantageous decisions in all areas of possible conflict.

How to Negotiate a Divorce Settlement with Your Spouse

Many cordial couples attempt to create the final form of the agreement themselves. Most family law attorneys advise against this, but not because the attorneys lose fees. Even one small omission or confusing statement can blow up, big time, after the divorce:

  • In working out parenting time schedules, couples can use erroneous terms like “12 am” and “12 pm” when they mean midnight and noon; that mistake leaves loopholes for contesting times and dates
  • When working out child custody and visitation, couples overlook things like Leap Year, the varying dates of Easter, or the ever-shifting calendar relationship between Christmas and Hanukkah
  • Couples forget to divide intangible property, such as patents and royalties, equitably
  • Military retirement benefits are often ignored, since their value seems far in the future, but they, too, have to be equitably divided

The safest, surest, fastest, least costly way to avoid expensive mistakes is to write down your wishes in draft form. That means both spouses, and those discussions may take a while; days if not weeks.

If you two work out as much as you can before meeting with your respective attorneys, you can present a common front to one of your attorneys, asking that the draft notes be turned into legal terms acceptable to a Virginia court.

An attorney would much rather work from some written framework than spend long (expensive) hours interviewing you and coming up with gaps:

“Have you given any thought to equitably dividing the marital assets of the vacation home, RV, and ATV?”

“Uh, no. Gosh, we forgot about those. We both like all of them.”

“All right, let’s circle back to that. What about her TSP under the BRS for her years in the Coast Guard?”

“Uh, what’s a TSP?”

“Okay. Again, we’ll come back to it. Moving on, who gets the taxidermy collection of the panther, sneak cat, silver lion, and mountain screamer?”

“It’s not a collection. Those are all different names for the one stuffed brown tiger.”

“Uh-huh. I think we’re done for today.”

How to Save Big Money On Your Divorce

To save time and money using a divorce settlement agreement, consider these 10 steps:

  1. You both recognize you are headed for separation and divorce
  2. You each retain a family law attorney (you cannot use one attorney for both parties)
  3. You each write down your personal wishes regarding children, property, and finances
  4. Talk to each other civilly and calmly for as long as you need to work through every detail you two can think of
  5. Take your rough notes outlining agreement to one of your attorneys to have an initial divorce settlement agreement drawn up
  6. You both review the agreement
  7. You each meet with your attorney to uncover omissions, vagueness, or confusing passages
  8. Revise the document with the aid of the attorney who drafted the initial divorce settlement agreement
  9. You both approve the revised agreement
  10. Use the agreement to move from separation to divorce

Every separation and divorce is unique, so these are only the bare outlines. Talk to your own family law attorney and emphasize that you and your spouse are seeking a cordial, uncontested divorce after the required separation. You do not even need the divorce settlement agreement in place when you begin your separation. Ideally, everything will be firmly in place by the time one of you files for divorce.

From simple to complicated family law issues, your best ally is The Firm For Men in Virginia Beach. Contact us today or telephone our office at (757) 383-9184. We specialize in assisting Virginia’s men in divorce settlement agreements (property settlement agreements), separation, divorce, and child custody. (And, uh, please refer your red tiger sightings to Virginia’s Department of Wildlife Resources, not to us.)