Divorce Lawyers In Brooklyn – How Judges Look At Divorce
Divorce Lawyers In Brooklyn – How Judges Look At Divorce
Clients are very often surprised and dismayed to learn how closely the court will examine every aspect of their lives during a divorce. Many people seem to expect that the judge will look only at what they intended to share with their spouse, and that everything else will remain separate and private. But in order to make an informed decision about the various issues in divorce – Where will the children live? Who gets to remain in the house? What does the law say is the correct amount of financial support? etc. – the judge needs to get to know everything about you. You wouldn’t want the judge to make a decision without getting all of the facts! But the process of gathering those facts can be invasive and uncomfortable.
As divorce lawyers in Brooklyn handling contested and complex cases, we ask clients to try this: Imagine your life is a collection of objects on a table: your career is one object, your house is another, your children, your golf score, your cholesterol… everything. You probably imagine these objects in varying sizes based on their level of importance to you. You may even have placed them on this imaginary table into groups, near to or far from other things based on their similarity in your mind.
Now imagine the judge presiding over your divorce has asked to examine this table of objects. You may expect, or at least hope, that the judge will focus on what you focus on – the things that shine, and the things that matter to you. More often than not, however, the judge will zero in on the things a party most wishes to keep private – DUI, that text message that a client sent that was full of expletives, the exaggerations on your tax returns… It would be a nearly impossible task to say that you should be proud of all of the objects on your table – we all have the junk we have collected over the years that we wish we could throw out – but you must at least look at each item before you rush to the courtroom. It is crucial that you prepare yourself for the moment the judge asks to see them.
Matrimonial judges and their law clerks see every case through that lens. Knowing what the court is looking for — and preparing for it before you walk into the courtroom — is one of the most valuable things a divorce lawyer can do for you.
