Signatory Separation Agreement Made Easy

Signature business separation agreement

I'm Jessica Culver. I'm a family lawyer with Dummit Fradin. A separation agreement is essentially a contract between you and another party. So in most situations, we're talking about a separation agreement which encapsulates all the issues with your spouse incident to your separation, prior to your divorce. So, through a separation agreement, we can handle property division. We can handle spousal support. We can handle other issues that you may not even think you need to handle. But your attorney can identify them when you have that initial consultation, and you explain your situation. A separation agreement can make things much more pleasant. It avoids a trial. It avoids going through the court process. But we can also use a separation agreement for some issues and then go to trial on other issues. So it's a great way, if there's any issue that can be resolved with your spouse without the need for court time. It's a great way to do it. You do not have to have a separation agreement to get a divorce. As long as you and your spouse agree that you've been separated for a year, or you can present evidence to the court to prove that you've been separated a year if it is contested. Then you are eligible for that divorce. You do not have to have a separation agreement, but we reccomend that if there are any issues at all, even if there's a car title that needs to be transferred. You need to talk with your attorney about that, because many of those thing should be done prior to the divorce being finalized. I don't generally recommend a separation agreement when it comes to child custody, for a multitude of reasons. First of all a court order is just a stronger document when it comes to child custody. You can seek the contempt powers of the court with a court order. You can't do that with a separation agreement. The remedy to a broken separation agreement is a breech of contract action, and as you can imagine from that terminology it just doesn't pack the same punch as a contempt court order. So we really need a court order in most child custody situations. I don't recommend a separation agreement for that. The court order is stronger in many ways when it comes to child custody. You can seek a remedy faster in many ways when it comes to child custody. There's just nothing more important than your children and their saftey and their stability. So you need the strongest possible document, which would be a court order. It's absolutely okay to date once you're separated. The only issue that could arise if you were seeing this person during the marriage and there's some aspect of infidelity, then the other side might be able to connect the infedelity during the marriage to this relationship post separation, but aside from that, it's completely legal and appropriate if you want to date someone once you are separated from your spouse. It's very important to hire an attorney, if you want a separation agreement. We have fixed separation agreements that clients have done themselves, and it is very expensive, it's a tedious and lengthy process, and every time, the person who drafted their own agreement deeply regrets it. It can cost you months, and thousands of dollars of litigation, if you try to draft an agreement yourself and it's not sufficient. The agreements we draft are at a minimum ten pages. So that gives you an idea of how much legalese is required to make that document sufficient, make it air tight, and protect you and your interests. So it's not something you want to take on by yourself if you're not an attorney.