A lot of people make mistakes of varying degrees during their marriage. While many of them can be worked out with your spouse and put behind you, they can quickly come back to bite you during the divorce process. If your divorce is highly contentious, then your spouse will probably dig up as much dirt on you from the past as they can find, all in an attempt to show why they’re entitled to more of the marital estate or why they should be given sole physical custody of your children.
To protect your interests throughout the marriage dissolution process, then, you have to know how to handle things you’ve done in the past that may threaten to come back to haunt you. Otherwise, you could find yourself in an undesirable position when all is said and done.
How can you prepare to address marital bad acts if they come up in your divorce?
Although it can feel like evidence of the mistakes you made during marriage will crush you in your divorce case, there’s actually a lot that you can do to try to mitigate the damage this evidence can cause while still protecting your interests. This includes doing the following:
- Focusing on the law: Simply because you made a mistake during your marriage doesn’t give your spouse free reign to grab whatever marital assets they want or to take your child from you. Instead, they have to convince the court that their position on the legal matters at hand is proper in light of the law. For example, simply because you had an affair during your marriage doesn’t automatically mean that having visitation with or custody of your child is contrary to the child’s best interests. So, make sure you revert your arguments back to the legal standards applicable in your case.
- Keeping your spouse in check: There might be a lot that your spouse tries to bring up from the past. You might be able to block some of it from being considered by the court by making objections based on the rules of evidence. You might also be able to attack your spouse’s credibility and reliability, which can minimize the amount of weight the court give’s their testimony.
- Balancing out the problems: Even though you made mistakes during your marriage, there’s a good chance that your spouse has made some, too. If you can’t prevent your spouse from attacking you and your character, then you have to be prepared to play hardball. While you might have to hit your spouse on the bad acts they engaged in during your marriage, be sure to tie it all into the legal standards that are applicable to the issue at hand. You don’t want your arguments to appear as nothing more than personal attacks.
- Finding effective negotiation strategies: Depending on the facts at hand, you might be able to avoid marital mistakes coming out by negotiating resolution that’s mutually acceptable. To be successful here, you really have to be able to identify what it is that your spouse really wants out of the divorce and use those goals as leverage.
Take control of your divorce
When your spouse threatens to air the dirty laundry of your marriage, it can quickly feel like your divorce is getting away from you. But it doesn’t have to be that way. Instead, you can develop strong legal strategies that are aimed at protecting your interests despite the evidence your spouse claims to have.
