SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

Just curious if anyone is a lawyer and could help with basic divorce process info like splitting up debt, etc.

FYI, there is a designated divorce forum for discussing divorce. Whatever you do, I'd be real mindful about getting legal advice from anonymous posters on an internet forum. If it were easy to summarize all of divorce law in a quick post, lawyers probably wouldn't need to go to school for as long as they do. General advice may or may not apply to your particular situation. Divorce law is going to vary by jurisdiction and is going to depend on a lot of variables - things like: length of the marriage, where the marriage took place, particulars of all assets/debt (personal or shared) including details of which assets/debt were acquired before/during the marriage or after separation, income related documentation and information regarding whether a spouse is capable of supporting themselves, earning capacity, children/dependents (and ages of the same), custody, contributions to the marriage (both financial/non-financial), etc.

Your city or county should have a Family Court site with information on divorce. They should have different forms, and maybe even de novo information available.

I think "de novo" might be "pro se" in this neck of the woods. Fair point about picking the right forum. As far as soliciting advice from strangers on the internet.....you only live once. :)

Probably. It's been a long day and I didn't Google to make sure my Latin was correct.

Or it could be de novo pro se information…

I’m not a lawyer, but I did sleep at a Holiday Inn Express.

  Moving to Divorce/Separation

It is entirely dependent on which jurisdiction you live in.
For Australian posters, you can access FASS through Legal Aid in your state or family law duty services again through legal aid to help with divorce. They are usually located at the federal circuit and family court so ask at the Registry.
Property is more complex than the divorce process if you haven't already reached agreement. There is currently a small property pool pilot running across the country for parties with asset pool less than 500k.
So upshot is ring legal aid in your state to see what's available.
You can also attend a mediation service to get an agreement, and in fact it is now a requirement before filing application that you've taken genuine steps to sort something out before filing an application in respect of property (mediation may not be appropriate).
AMICA is a free online service that can generate consent orders etc.
In Australia, the court determines the split based on a number of considerations set out in the Family Law Act. It's all available online if you want to google it.

In my tribe in the middle of the Amazon forest it’s enough to beat a drum five times within one moon cycle, offer a goat to the shaman, and chant the divorce decree while crossing the stream known as "The Divorce Stream". She keeps her coconuts and I get two-thirds of the darts for the blow-gun…

That’s the beauty of the internet… We can be anyone and anywhere, and the particular nuances of local-, state or country laws that apply to me might not have any resemblance to whatever might apply to you.

You can at best get VERY general info on divorce on this site unless you are willing to limit your anonymity by sharing your location. Even then the info is only relevant if the one offering it is willing to limit his anonymity by verifying why they should be taken at value. I suggest neither do so.

What I can share is that we tend to make two big mistakes in divorce:
We tend to make it more complex than required. There will be a template for your state/country that gives you the ground-rules, and even if you think you deserve more than half the house then if the template states half then that’s what you will get.
We tend to make it simpler than required. Like it’s not enough that you take the VISA card debt, and she takes the AMEX debt. Might be equal amounts, but are the creditors willing to accept you as the sole debtor? A lot of I’s need to be dotted and t’s crossed.

To use a comparison: It’s like having your tonsils removed. It’s a simple operation, and one even the most basic of surgeons can do. It’s also done in the simplest manner – from mouth down rather than from ass and up. Few of us would try to do self-tonsilectomy…

Frankly – if the two of you have a "normal" household that needs to separate, and you are both reasonable and sensible then the chances are you can use one impartial attorney that can give you what will probably be the final decree anyways. You can minimize cost by doing the leg-work like getting copies of tax-returns, account statements, card statements, leases etc, but if an attorney has all the information in front of him chances are he can guestimate with amazing accuracy what a "fair" settlement would be.
If however you have the same attorney solely as your attorney and your brief to him is to get as much as possible… That’s when he starts arguing that you deserve more of the cake. If the cake is big enough, then sometimes that might pay off. For us normal folks dealing with cookies rather than cakes… maybe not so much.

I didn't realize this would get moved to a different thread so I'd started the other one about splitting up debts. I've been down this road before and I know how the divorce process works I just didn't have a house and student loans last time to deal with. We don't have kids to worry about since we didn't have any while we were married.