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Countersign separation agreement

hello my name is Leah kisaki today we're here to talk about what clients should be thinking about when they go to see a lawyer about separation agreements and I'm here today with Andrew Sodano an expert in family law Andrew let's jump right into it what are the important consideration people should have when drafting separation agreements Wow I think people should know going into Oh even before considering whether or not they want a separation agreement is - do they have the ability to compromise and work together with the other party because a separation agreement is essentially that a compromise figuring out how parties can determine what's best for them and their families moving forward and if the parties don't have any ability to communicate it there's a high degree of conflict then right at the outset you might think that a separation agreement isn't for them but taking a step back from the high conflict realm separation agreements can be very useful and very very cost saving for a lot of families and it really allows parties to get into the very detailed or no details possible on how they want to divide their assets or arrange for childcare or pay support as so it allows for a lot of flexibility for parties to ultimately create some sort of structure to determine what's best for them and their families moving forward well let's talk about that for a minute what are the specific clauses that you would be interested in if your family with children and wanting to develop a parent a schedule well when some considerations would be division of other than the obvious parenting schedule which is where the child is going to reside primarily and like the normal weekend week off things like that nature has agreed upon between the parties more specialized or detailed scenarios would be division of holidays such as who's gonna get March break this year who's gonna get the Christmas holidays PA a days other special occasions like birthdays or parents birthdays and Mother's Day Father's Day things like that which can certainly reduce the amount of conflict between the parties because it's set out in the agreement as to who's going to be doing what but other clauses like taking advantages of the schedules you can attach a separation agreement such as the travel consent which makes it easier for the parties to know well what document do I need to be able to travel with the children and setting out the structure as to who's going to be doing what when one child decides to travel with a child and even other general travel clauses such as giving the other person notice like two months notice beforehand along with the copy of the travel itinerary and contact information also goes a long way for the parties to know what's going to be happening when and of course make other arrangements for make up access for the parent for the non traveling parent what about special cases like a lot of families have children's special needs or they have very demanding extracurricular activities can you tell us a little bit about how you deal with that type of situation or those situations in a separation agreement well I would recommend to my clients that they make any and all extraordinary expenses or expenses resulting from a child's special needs or even those arising from like dental medical orthodontics it would be a significant one that it would be as agreed upon between the parties and the reason for this is that for instance if if we had a child and you wanted to enroll that child at hockey and our child played competitive hockey and it would cost the tune of something like eight thousand dollars a year and I didn't want to pay well that might be a bone of contention between us so you want to set out in the agreement as to who's gonna be doing what and how the parties are gonna arrive at calculating these or she dividing these expenses to avoid the escalation of conflict in the future and one party essentially racking up the bills for the other well it's all about the kids but kids grow up children grow up when children become adults how do you deal with the termination of the provisions in a separation agreement in most separation agreements you have a set of clauses which should say that upon the earliest of the following events taking place child support would be terminated for any of the children some of these events would be when the child reaches a certain age like either 18 23 25 when a child obtains an extra the first undergraduate degree when the child marries when a child becomes self-sufficient when a child obtains full-time employment these are some of the standard clauses you would have that trigger but I would highly recommend that a person speak with a lawyer about how those triggering clauses would play out to go through all the different scenarios for that specific family and of course that specific child as you mentioned earlier some children might have special needs and it could be there could be no termination date for that specific child as the child could still technically under the divorce act be eligible for to receive support for the remainder of their life as they would be unable to withdraw from their parents care okay what one more last question when families separate when couples separate they divide their assets can you tell us a couple of things that people in your experience you find do wrong when they're coming up with a separation agreement well I would one often thing I see is is that the parties and when completing the financial statements themselves they need they would generally need to speak with a lawyer to really understand how to complete it properly to make sure that they get that they divide their assets correctly and I'll give you an example when completing a financial or the financial statement and the division of property statements called the form 13b and FP and division net family property the form asks for the date of the marriage and that's straightforward and the valuation date the valuation date is also the separation date but there might be a dispute between the parties as to what the separation date is and it's important for the client to speak with a lawyer to determine what date that is because not only does that that valuation date dictate all of the calculations and all the agreements but it could also depend on or it could also factor in to how the assets are going to be divided if they are already divided and I'll give you an example if two people separate in February but then ultimately decide to begin to divide up their assets in March and then move out and live separate apart in April there could be an argument that while April should be the separation date because we no longer live together when in fact if the parties agreed to separate in February and have already begun dividing their assets well then the division the date evaluation should be in February so it's very important for people to understand that specific issue another one would be the importance of full and frank financial disclosure not only because the absence of that could result in the whole and the entire separation agreement being set aside because one party had no idea what the other person's true financial picture was but when a client comes to see me and they say in their agreement and - I have no idea as to how these numbers were calculated your guess is as good as mine I tell the person that my advice to you would be is to absolutely do not sign this agreement because you have no idea what bargain you're signing well I think we could go on and on about these various various subjects but I think that you've taken some of the mystery out of separation agreements for us so thank you Andrew for discussing these issues with us and thank you for tuning in you