Your Legal Rights!

I often hear people express concern about knowing their “legal rights” when getting a divorce and realize that they are using a phrase they often hear in television ads for legal services. Even assuming that there was such a thing, one individual’s “legal rights” are no different than those of his or her spouse. Here’s why.

The law that controls what happens in a divorce deals with the distribution of assets and liabilities, the custody of your child and children or spousal support. Nowhere in any of the statutes will you find a reference to your “legal rights.” Instead the statutes focus on how to divide up the property you acquired during the marriage equitably and how you will raise your children and meet their needs and those of your spouse if you are no longer living together.

Lawyers often talk about “legal rights” like they were some sacred code that applies to anything dealing with the law. But when you are dealing with a family, there is no such thing! The “legal rights” of the wife or mother are no different than those of the husband or father.

What I suspect people really mean when they talk about their “legal rights” in divorce is “am I going to get a fair settlement” from my soon-to-be former spouse. And what I know, without any doubt, is that in most instances both of them are trying to find a way to live separately on the same income that was often hard to live on together.

There is no winner in a divorce; neither is going to get something that the other can’t afford. For the most part the task is to determine how to reach the best possible agreement under the circumstances. And this means focusing on what you need, not on some illusion such as your “legal rights”. To think otherwise is simply to ignore reality.