DIVORCE—DO YOU NEED A NEW PERSPECTIVE?

Big life events often call for advice beyond your own circle of friends and family. Among those are divorce and pregnancy, which surprisingly have a lot of similarities. Friends, family, even strangers want to give you advice. Free, unsolicited advice is often worthless and almost always alarming. Some want to scare you with their overinflated horror story. Others want to impress you with their overinflated success story. It is painful. And while most mean well, you really need a trusted professional—a physician or midwife in one case and a well-vetted family law attorney in the other—to guide you through it.

With the ever-changing landscape of family law, just like prenatal care, you need advice from a professional who knows exactly where you are and can guide you to where you’re going. Since 2017, I have found that most of the people sharing their experience, advice, and criticism weren’t even divorced at a time that the current statute was in place. The fact that your neighbor’s brother’s wife received $10,000 per month of maintenance for life is obviously irrelevant when you finally find out she was divorced in California in 1980. But the story, as it was being told, made you feel inadequate and made you question whether your attorney was protecting your best interest. In fact, the story made you feel as though you should probably go get another attorney because what if your attorney’s strategy, plan, or lack thereof, was fatally detrimental to your divorce, and therefore, your future success.

Each divorce has its own unique circumstances and nuances. While all must follow the same laws, each divorcing couple will have a unique arrangement and it’s your attorney’s responsibility to help guide you to your best outcome. Please do not judge the success or failure of your current divorce attorney, based on a success story of another couple. However, if you have concerns about your attorney’s strategy, focus, plan, or the lack thereof, getting a second opinion—a new perspective—is a good idea. Before you decide to switch attorneys, hire a different family law attorney to review where you are at and determine if your case strategy makes sense and whether you’re on track to meet your goals.

When you need a new perspective, the attorneys at Strategic Divorce can be retained to review your situation, discuss your current strategy, review documents and give you advice—even before you decide whether you want to make a change.

Michone J. Riewer is an attorney with Strategic Divorce in Lake Bluff, 847-234-4445, strategicdivorce.com.