McCormack Family Law | Top Divorce Lawyer | Child Custody & Support

Shared parenting means that you and your former spouse retain the ability to work out exactly how you will share parental rights and the responsibilities that go with them.

Separation makes sense for a lot of reasons. First, a separation agreement formalizes the relationship between the parties. It divides the marital property and debts and specifies how the parties will parent their children so that each knows specifically what their rights and responsibilities are.

Ending a marriage is difficult enough without getting bogged down in a high-conflict divorce. That is when at least one partner is less committed to fairness than to fighting court battles of revenge and personal animosity, often using children to accomplish various ends.

A friend of mine told me about a friend of hers, a child of divorce who said, ‘I don’t come from a broken home. I come from two wonderful homes.’ She grew up feeling that things were better, not worse, after her parents divorced. She had a strong family, not a damaged one.

Technically, Ohio law does not use the term ‘no-fault’. But, in a practical sense, most divorces are no-fault. That means you and your spouse agree that you are incompatible and/or that you have voluntarily lived separately more than one year. You also agree that neither of you is to blame for the situation. Dissolutions, by the way, are always no-fault. They’re lumped into the general category of no-fault divorces where people can dissolve their marriages without giving any reason at all.

When the end of a marriage appears inevitable, it can be hard to keep a cool head. On top of that, most people have no reason to know in advance what needs to be done, when, and exactly how. So here’s some knowledge that can help you get organized.