How to Avoid a Vexatious Examination of Financial Records during a Simple Divorce

Roughly half of all marriages will end in divorce for one reason or another. With divorce comes the need to divide the marital assets, including your property, your finances and most other aspects of your life together, prenuptial agreements not withstanding. However, there's no reason to make the process harder on you or your pocketbook than it already will be, and it's important that you handle your divorce finances as calmly and business like as possible.

• 1

  Defuse any anger issues involved before you begin negotiations. If you and your partner can act like adults and converse logically, there's no problem. However, if there are lingering feelings of hurt and anger, then the proceedings can get very messy very quickly. Keep personal feelings as far outside of the financial agreements and discussions as you can.

• 2

  Decide what you each think is fair and necessary as far as your assets go. There's no need to go line by line and dollar by dollar, as long as you both feel that the way things are being split is fair. For instance, as long as both of you can each agree to take one of your two vehicles, there's not a need to figure out how much each one is worth and divide them exactly down the middle as far as money goes.

• 3

  Have your agreements drawn up by a lawyer. You may be able to do it yourself, but a lawyer will help put your mutual agreements into the proper legal terminology. Once the contract is drawn up, both of you need to sign it and have it witnessed. Once that's complete, present the list to the court as part of your divorce proceedings so that the divorce can go more swiftly.