Divorcefilter -- Lawyers and Child Support and Unemployment

August 4, 2019 12:43 PM

I'm posting this question so that a friend can remain anon. He is looking for advice on how to move forward with his divorce. Yes YANAL, but maybe you've got more experience with the divorce process/how to approach lawyers? The main questions are around how mediation works (with or without a lawyer), how to get a lawyer if that's a good idea and what role unemployment plays in the whole process as they're figuring out how to split up assets.

Getting divorced. Wife is done. It's probably for the best. She seems to want to do this amicably. I agree. We have a house, (biggest asset chunk, probably 210-250k equity), some cash,(maybe $80k) and retirement accounts,(maybe $160k total between us), also, I have a pension that she is entitled to part of, (it's probably less than $20k total, current value). I am a software engineer that has been unemployed for 4, going on 5 years, (Last salary was ~$81k). My wife has a job and makes ~65k/year. I want to split all our assets 50/50, including getting half of the house equity. I want every other weekend and some holidays and part of the summer with our 15yo kid. Wife agrees to this.

I'm worried, however, that since I am unemployed, I will be seen as unable to pay child support and they will give my wife way more than half of the assets in lieu of child support. I'm scrambling to find a good job, but I'll work anywhere I can get a job in the short term if it will help my case. In the beginning of my most recent unemployment stretch, (This isn't the first, but previous job I had for almost 5 years,) the wife was OK with me being a stay at home dad for a while. That eventually became not OK. I tried to get jobs in this area, but there aren't many, so I didn't succeed and probably didn't try hard enough. We live in Washington state. Wife wants to do mediation. We seem to agree on the asset split and parenting plan, but she's acting weird and I don't know what she might be doing behind my back.

Questions:
1. How valid is my concern about the assets split being changed due to my unemployment status?
2. Should I get a lawyer first, consult, then do mediation? Should I just do mediation first and not sign until I have a lawyer look it over? How should I handle this?
3. How do I vet lawyers? How do I know which ones are good?
4. I'm worried that if I tell my wife I'm getting a lawyer, even just for consultation, that things will get extra crappy and may backfire on me. She is definitely getting a lot of free advice from her lawyer friend. How should I handle this?
5. I can probably survive for a while on the money I *think* I will have after the divorce. Should I try to start working any minimum wage job ASAP, or just focus on the divorce and getting a good software job that I intend to keep for a while?

posted by mulkey to Human Relations (16 answers total)

To add - the assumption would be that the child would spend 50% of their time with each parent in Washington state. Saying every other weekend and some time in the summer is not a good look for your friend. Unless friend needs to move very far away for a job, why wouldn't he want to be with his child more?
posted by k8t at 12:53 PM on August 4, 2019 [7 favorites]

We used a divorce financial consultant for our slightly different than normal financial division issues in Seattle. If the OP wants, memail me for the info. I would suspect the unemployment will make for some different stuff.
posted by k8t at 12:59 PM on August 4, 2019 [1 favorite]

When I was looking at getting a divorce, I paid for a one hour consultation with a lawyer that a friend recommended. This was extremely helpful in understanding what the next steps were and getting some of my questions answered. For example, where I live, division of property is decided separately from child support, which is based on a formula supplied by the state. I did not tell my spouse that I had the consult. Having a consultation doesn’t obligate you to use the attorney on an ongoing basis.

In terms of finding attorneys, personal recommendations can be helpful, but if you’re not able to do that even just doing some googling and reading reviews is better than nothing. I would definitely work with someone who focuses on family law/divorce law, not a generalist.

Now is the time to find a job in your field. I wouldn’t go for any minimum wage whatever- it takes a lot of energy and time to find a professional job.

I want to reiterate that it is normal now for parents to split custody 50/50. Where this hasn’t held true among my friends and family it has been due to distance or one of the parents being incapable of being good parents.
posted by jeoc at 2:27 PM on August 4, 2019 [2 favorites]

You need to talk to a lawyer to understand your position and what the standard disposition in cases like yours is in your jurisdiction. You can't mediate fairly when you don't understand the position from which you are starting. For example, in my jurisdiction, your wife would owe you a period of alimony, but you could forego the alimony in exchange for other things you want, or exchange it for child support or whatever. You also need a much better understanding of how child support works in your state.
posted by DarlingBri at 2:32 PM on August 4, 2019 [3 favorites]

I'm worried, however, that since I am unemployed, I will be seen as unable to pay child support and they will give my wife way more than half of the assets in lieu of child support.

This varies by state a little but it's not really how it works. The big deal, as others have said, is if your wife was employed and you were not, she may "owe" you alimony, so it's worth taking that into consideration when you think about child support. Keep in mind that, barring unusual circumstances, child support ends abruptly when your child is 18, as well as any custody arrangements. Even at this age, your kid's desires will be taken into account in terms of who they want to live with.

It's not terribly unusual for one partner to "lawyer up" and then have things get weird fast (when my parents divorced my mother's lawyer was... dogged in making sure my dad paid what he owed my mother, this was alarming to my father who didn't really want to hear it and all the while my mom was like "This is what the lawyer is doing, I can't stop them").

Keep half an eye on your bank accounts and assets just generally. A good lawyer is someone who actually does divorce law and who you can communicate well with. Also find a friend who you can talk to who is maybe just "your" friend. Divorce affects and entire community and it will be good for you to have someone to talk to about this who is NOT your wife (or your kid) to get some perspective on what you want to get out of this.
posted by jessamyn at 3:29 PM on August 4, 2019

A friend used a mediator to help walk them through the divorce. It was like six session, each focus on a different topic. The mediator would explain the issues and options and the relevant laws and then the couple would do their homework and come back with the information needed to make a choice. In their case, the mediator was perfect - the couple didn't have money for lawyers but also didn't have the personalities/relationship to figure out how to it themselves.
posted by metahawk at 4:08 PM on August 4, 2019 [1 favorite]

• See if you can value the pension and not have to mess with sharing it later.
• We had a mediated divorce, with a child and a house. It went well, though 20+years later, ex-claims he was screwed, etc. He wasn't, in fact he got a good deal, oh well.
• You should be getting employed so that you can contribute to your child's needs. Support payments vary by state, are based on income and assets, and judges may have the ability to require you to pay more than a formula requires, if they believe you could be earning.
• Print out/ save as .pdf every statement from every account for the last couple month, and the end of the year statement, just in case. This isn't adversarial, it's just good sense.
• Since you are not working, you could make creative plans for your child, like having him come to your home after school, ex- picks him up when she comes home from work.
• In Maine, one parent will have physical custody, and parental rights and responsibilities can be shared. The schedule does not have to be written, you can agree to do what works best.
• In Maine, once a child is 13, they can decide which parent they want to live with.
• Our mediator did not create the divorce agreement, we had a separate lawyer for that. I engaged her for an extra bit of time to ask some questions, paid separately.
• Being non-adversarial can be difficult, requires patience and work, but is a huge benefit, esp. for your child.

posted by theora55 at 4:22 PM on August 4, 2019 [2 favorites]

No direct knowledge, but the YouTube channel The Proper Person may be of interest.
posted by batter_my_heart at 4:48 PM on August 4, 2019

From an adversarial perspective, you probably should not get a job. Since you’ve been married for a while and not working for years, you’re probably entitled to child support and spousal support (alimony) from your soon to be ex. If you get a job, then you’re likely to get less of these supports from your ex.
posted by Doc_Sock at 7:10 PM on August 4, 2019

No, you should get a job. As far as I can tell, alimony is set at a percentage of the working spouse’s income, so even if you got alimony, it would be something in the neighborhood of $20k a year, which is not even enough to house a goldfish these days, much less a grown man and a teenager. Presumably you’d like to do things Iike eat and send your kid to college. Get a job.
posted by Autumnheart at 8:52 PM on August 4, 2019 [7 favorites]

If you've been a stay-at-home dad I don't understand why your goal is every-other-weekend etc. Why aren't you looking for a 50-50 or better physical custody split and getting at least some token CS coming your direction in addition to possibly alimony, while you continue to look for work? Even in a 50-50 split, if incomes are fairly divergent then child support can still be awarded to the lower-earning spouse.

I mean, yes, obviously it should also be a very high priority to get back into the workforce, since $65,000 is not a lot for even a single household with kids, and would be stretched very thin supporting two households. But I'm baffled* as to why the automatic assumption is that the majority of physical custody should be awarded to the parent currently working full time and not the one who is currently unemployed and has been doing the larger share of day-to-day parenting presumably.

*Not really baffled at all.
posted by drlith at 4:39 AM on August 5, 2019 [3 favorites]

Oh, yes, I will also highlight theora55's point that judges do look negatively on someone who appears to be underearning to intentionally tip the balance in the child support equation.
posted by drlith at 4:45 AM on August 5, 2019 [1 favorite]

In my non-lawyer understanding a term for that is "imputation of income", when a court evaluates a parent's earning capacity and bases calculations on that if it's found to be different from actual income.
posted by XMLicious at 5:15 AM on August 5, 2019

Seriously, at least just get an hour's consultation with a lawyer so they can talk you through the process and how it actually works where you are with your circumstances. Even if you don't hire that person, you should leave with a clear understanding of what to generally expect next. I had all kinds of fears and expectations, and most of them were wrong. (Can talk via MeMail, prefer not to post publicly.)
posted by epersonae at 2:52 PM on August 5, 2019

I am not a lawyer, but I work for the Oregon State Bar. In Oregon we have a lawyer referral service that lets you speak to an attorney for $35 to get a better idea of what your rights and responsibilities are. Google the state bar for your state and see if they have a similar program.
posted by tacodave at 5:10 PM on August 5, 2019 [2 favorites]

So.. I'm the friend that the OP posted for initially. I signed up so I could comment and because you guys are giving me great advice.

If I'm posting this in the wrong place, apologies. I haven't quite figured out how threads work here yet.

To answer why I was only asking for every other weekend and part of the summer and some holidays, it was because I was erroneously told that because the kid in question is 15, the kid would be allowed to choose where to live most of the time. Apparently, this is not usually the case in Washington. I was prepared to accept the limited custody and move across the state for better job prospects until I learned that I can probably actually get 50/50 custody. I have yet to confirm this with a lawyer, but I will be at least consulting one, if not retaining one. I doubt my wife will agree to the 50/50 child split.

I will still try to do mediation though. Hopefully, my wife can be convinced that 50/50 child split is OK. I still feel a bit weird about overriding what my kid has said about where she wants to live. I know she is a hormonal teenager that is now acting weird due to the impending divorce, but I guess I am still not sure if making her spend half time with me is really the right thing to do.

I've found that mediators can give good recommendations of attorneys. They seem to know them all from personal experience. The mediator I called talked to me for probably half an hour for free, though I doubt most will do that, (she was driving at the time.)
posted by NotFrankZappa at 2:18 AM on August 6, 2019 [4 favorites]