In today’s blog post, I am going to cover some of the basic issues that should be covered in most divorce settlement agreements.
What Types of Issues Should Be Addressed in a Divorce Agreement?
For couples considering a New Jersey Divorce, the ultimate goal is reaching a divorce agreement, commonly known as a Marital Settlement Agreement (“MSA”) or a Property Settlement Agreement (“PSA”).
It may take months or years to reach agreement. Throughout your divorce process, the divorce agreement will likely feel as though extended in space–just out of reach. Some couples can find common ground in a matter of hours, whereas others require extensive discovery, court motions and actions, and hundreds of hours of negotiation.
You may be uncertain about just what can be addressed in a Marital Settlement Agreement. The purpose of this blog post is to briefly summarize some of the considerations in a standard Divorce Agreement.
The Standard Divorce Agreement: Basic Considerations
• Child Custody. If there are children from the marriage then this will be a major divorce consideration. New Jersey considers both legal custody (the ability to make important decisions on behalf of the child) and physical custody (who spends more time caring for the children on a day-to-day basis). Agreements veer toward joint legal custody, in recent years joint physical custody is becoming increasingly popular.
• Parenting Time. Parenting time (previously referred to as child visitation) delves more deeply into the day-to-day technical details of sharing parenting. It will address drop-off and pick-up, daycare or school transportation, holiday parenting time, vacation/summer parenting time, and which days/hours per week each parent will exercise parenting time with their child(ren).
• Alimony. Alimony (also referred to as spousal support) involves payment due from one spouse to the other post-divorce in order to equitably preserve the marital lifestyle between the party’s post-marriage. The standard type of alimony case initially considered by the court was the situation where one spouse put everything into their career and earned a large salary whereas the other stayed home to raise the children and now has a deflated earning potential. Alimony has now grown to be more prevalent than perhaps initially intended but was recently scaled back some by alimony reform.
• Child Support. Child support in New Jersey is essentially an algorithm that will take inputs (such as number of overnights and incomes of parents) to produce a child support obligation.
• Equitable Distribution (the division of assets and debts). Equitable distribution is a very broad category of the New Jersey Divorce and may include everything from ownership of your pet (yes, even dogs are considered property in New Jersey) to credit card/personal debts, vehicles, the marital residence or other real property, stock options, retirement accounts, personal items, and much more. Cases where one or both parties own a business can further complicate equitable distribution in a Divorce Agreement.
• Counsel Fees. Divorces can sometimes be costly and time-consuming. One thing that should be considered is whether one party should be responsible for reimbursement of counsel fees to the other.
• Future Education Costs. Another consideration is how future college costs, private school costs, or even daycare costs will be paid and the obligation each party will have towards such payments in the present or future.
• Life Insurance Requirements. The Divorce Agreement should also address using life insurance as a collateral to protect future child support, spousal support (alimony), educational costs, or other appropriate future costs.
• Health Insurance/Future Health Costs. A Divorce Agreement should also contain language regarding COBRA for the uninsured spouse (generally available at-cost to the uninsured spouse for 18 months), coverage for any children of the relationship, and to what extent each party will be responsible for the child(ren)’s future unreimbursed medical expenses.
• Tax Treatment. Although most New Jersey divorce attorneys are not tax experts (and thus cannot provide tax advice), you should speak with a CPA/tax attorney (and collaborate with your divorce attorney) on issues of taxation and divorce.
• Education/Child’s surname/Religious Upbringing. The Divorce Agreement should also address potential parenting issue such as religious upbringing, education (for instance: private school or public?), non-disparagement clauses regarding the other parent/their family, and other miscellaneous provisions.
• Additional Clauses. The above list is by no means exhaustivebut should provide a good framework for the types of issues that will be addressed in a Divorce Agreement.
Conclusion
Thanks for reading, and I hope this blog post helped address and clarify some of the questions you may have regarding a New Jersey divorce Settlement Agreement. As with most things, for divorce strategy it is best to begin with the end in mind. By being knowledgeable about what types of issues may be addressed by a New Jersey divorce Settlement Agreement, you can be better guided in pursuing either a contest or an uncontested divorce.
Partner with Carl Taylor, Esq.
Ready to Find Your Happily EVEN After? Call Today at 609-359-3345 to Schedule a Confidential Consult (or click here to self-schedule online) and Receive a Free Copy of the 3rd Edition of my 200+ page book, Happily EVEN After: The Guide to Divorce in New Jersey.
