Are you looking for a divorce checklist? We put together this divorce checklist to help you.

There is a lot to think about, and seeking out information is key. Also, check out the links in this article.

Change Your Passwords

One of the first things you need to do is to change your passwords. When you are separating, you need to protect your privacy.

You don’t want your partner to be able to download your emails. This might be with your friends, family, or even your lawyer.

If your partner is reading the emails with your lawyer, it will likely damage our case.

What happens if you tell your lawyer that you want to threaten litigation, but you don’t actually want to do it? Your partner will now be able to call your bluff.

Keep Your Children Safe

Also, if you move to a friend’s house to keep your children safe, your partner will know where you are. This will defeat the purpose of moving away in the first place.

They will also be able to find additional evidence against you. However, if you don’t have their password, you won’t be able to get additional evidence on them.

See our article about hacking your spouse.

Divorce Checklist – Visit The Bank

You will need to freeze your credit cards, mortgage credit, and any other credit you have. You don’t want the other party to be able to take out a home equity loan.

Let’s say you have $1M in equity in your homes. The bank will likely loan your spouse $800,000.

Keep in mind that you will be likely responsible for half of that debt. So your partner just got $400,000 from you.

This will likely be done for two reasons.

To get revenge on you
Because they need money to buy their own property

Get a Separation Agreement Signed If Possible

You don’t want your spouse to take out any money until you get a signed separation agreement. Also, this signed agreement must be done properly.

It needs to be created by your lawyer. Further, your spouse needs to have got independent legal advice.

Once your spouse has the $800,000 (or whatever large amount,) it’s very hard for you to get it back.

The police nor the bank will want to get involved in a family law dispute. You will then need to hire a lawyer to fight for it in court.

You might have to pay the lawyer $20,000 to get your $400,000 back. Of course, that would be well worth the money spent.

Sometimes someone is worried their partner is going to do the same thing. So they want to do it first.

If you have ever been through a breakdown of a relationship (friend, romantic partner, at work) you have probably seen that things can get ugly fast.

Gather Information Before Starting The Separation

Make sure you have lots of information so you can give it to the lawyer. You want to go back for about four years.

These documents will be helpful for calculating child support, spousal support, and the division of assets.

It is very expensive for you to have to get court orders for information from your partner.

Below are some things that you will want to have:

Marriage certificate
The title to your properties and assets
Bank statements
Mortgage statements
Tax returns
Credit card statements
Take copies of every passport (or have the passports yourself)
Company documents
Accountant statements
Calculations about finances or retirement

Divorce Checklist

If you cannot get this information, your lawyer can fight for a court order. Of course, your spouse might lie even with the court order. Therefore, it’s likely going to take a bunch of work to get to the truth.

The person who doesn’t want to pay much child or spousal support will want to show their income is as low as possible.

However, if you have information about their tax returns and company profits, this will help you.

It will also show the courts that your spouse is a liar. This might help other parts of your case.

You can also take a photocopy of everything. This is as opposed to taking the actual documents.

What You Need to Calculate

When you are working on your divorce checklist, you are trying to figure out assets and property. This is not only real estate. You want to calculate many things.

You can contact a real estate agent to calculate the value of the family home and investment houses.

The family home
Investment Properties
Cars (person or company)
Bank accounts
Pensions
Stocks
Art
Company trademarks
Antiques
Furniture (if it’s worth over a certain amount)
Firearms
Anything else of value

Divorce Checklist- Getting Quotes On Your Car

You can go to a car trader to get a quote on the car. There are also websites where you can see the rough value of your vehicles.

You can’t really say that the children’s bank accounts are their money. The child did not earn the money.

It’s hard for people to determine the value of a company. Therefore, often an accountant can go through the company and put a valuation on it.

Divorce and family law videos

Are you looking for divorce and family law videos? Are you tired of reading articles?

Most people can absorb information better with videos, instead of reading.

You can find all these videos on our Youtube channel.

This page might take ten seconds to load. There are a lot of family law videos on this page.

Find out about how many divorces can cost, and some helpful legal information. Depending on the success of these videos, we may make more.

You can contact us and let us know what topics you want us to cover. Please do this by commenting on one of the YouTube videos below.

If the videos are useful to the general public, we may consider spending money on getting some professional filming equipment.

Divorce Checklist – Get Local Legal Advice

These videos should guide you in general, regardless of where you are located. You could be in Canada, the United States, Australia, or England.

The laws in your country might be different if you are in a non-commonwealth country. Quebec (in Canada) also has its own rules.

However, these divorces could even be helpful if you are located in Russia, Quebec, or China. It will teach you to think differently.

Always speak to a lawyer in your province. These videos are just a guideline.

Divorce Checklist and Law Videos

In each video, our CEO Alistair Vigier talks about:

Do you have to go to court during a divorce?
What is independent legal advice in family law?
The difference between a contested and uncontested divorce
How much does a divorce cost?
What you can do if you can’t locate your spouse during a divorce
How can you pick the right law firm?
Do fathers have a disadvantage in the family law system?
What is a no-fault divorce?

In conclusion, we hope you enjoyed the videos. Let us know in the comments on YouTube what videos you want us to create next.

If you want more divorce and family law videos, let us know.

We hope you found this divorce checklist helpful.

Author: Alistair Vigier is the CEO of ClearWay Law

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Divorce Checklist: Embracing a New Chapter in Life