Your budget and lifestyle may look much different after you divorce your Michigan spouse, but your divorce gives you an opportunity to assess your financial situation and take steps to improve it. While making smart money moves is important, so, too, is avoiding common financial errors that many people in your shoes make.

Business Insider recommends that you avoid making the following money mistakes when working through your divorce.

Rather than a traditional divorce, you and your current spouse feel that mediation may work better for you. You both want to make the most of this alternate dispute resolution method, but what does that look like?

The American Bar Association offers ideas for a successful collaborative divorce. Understand what steps help achieve your goals.

A divorce is going to impact many areas of your life, and your taxes are no exception. Your tax situation looks much different as a single individual than it does a married one, and the more you understand about your new tax obligations, the better.

After a divorce, make sure to do the following when filing your taxes.

Deciding to get a divorce is just the first step in a long process. You want to sit down and figure out how to approach everything else moving forward. But the first thing you should do is figure out how to break the news to your child.

Is there a right way to do it? A way that mitigates the most damage? Or do you just have to test the waters as you go?

Recently, you learned the court awarded you and your soon-to-be-ex-spouse joint custody of your shared child. How do you make this arrangement work to everyone’s benefit? 

Parents magazine offers rules for making the most of joint child custody. Get insight on improving your child’s life and your relationship. 

If a family member or beneficiary contests a person’s will, the resulting legal process will delay the administration of the estate. Understanding the factors that lead to these conflicts can help reduce their likelihood.

These are the most common reasons for individuals to contest a deceased person’s will during estate administration.

If you are behind on child support or spousal support, you might have received warnings that garnishment action could follow. Maybe you even wondered if you could volunteer for wage garnishments to reduce the likelihood of falling behind on payments. Whatever the reason, garnishments may lead to big deductions from your income.

When you and your ex come to an agreement, the amount might add up to a much smaller figure than when courts intervene without your cooperation. However, this depends on whether the court believes your proposal seems fair.

Now more than ever, fathers’ rights are a crucial aspect of marital relations and family dynamics. Society continues to change and progress. Through that, more people acknowledge the importance of having two active parents in a relationship.

Unfortunately, courts often still favor the mother over the father. But fathers’ rights are undeniably important, and a father’s place in a family is as crucial as a mother’s.

Bias in the courts

The Fathers’ Rights Movement discusses how crucial fathers’ rights are in current day society. It is also important to look at the type of harassment and discrimination that fathers face. Until the 1970s, custody battles rarely ever happened. From that point on, society established that both parents could hold financial responsibility. Fathers were also established as real parents during the emergence of custody battles.

But to this day, a bias for mothers and against fathers exists in the court system. Outdated ideology insists that mothers hold a more essential role in the life of the child. These ideals stereotype women as the caretakers and providers for the children. They prioritize the mother due to childbirth rights. Mothers do not have to face the uncertainty and stigma of unproven paternity, either.

A father’s role

But women are as capable of abuse, neglect and carelessness as men. Mothers can abuse children just as fathers can. It is unfair to fathers everywhere to automatically side with women due to their status as mothers.

Not only that, but studies often show that two-parent households raise more stable and happier children. These children experience greater financial stability and more emotional support. They often enjoy a smoother transition into adulthood.

For the sake of children, fathers’ rights must have protection. This is especially true in court, where fathers everywhere still have hurdles to overcome.

Every year, married couples across the state of Michigan decide to bring their marriage to an end. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that over the course of 2018, more than 782,000 couples got divorced, and this only includes data from 45 states and D.C. There are many factors to take into consideration with respect to the divorce process, but spouses need to focus on properly filing all documents.

In the digital era, many people take advantage of the convenience and efficiency associated with filing paperwork online. However, parties must review and file these documents with care.

Helpful tips and options if you and your ex have disagreements bout parenting time during the holidays.

Interview by Megan Sarnacki, Grand Rapids Magazine, January 1, 2020

When you are a parent, the decision is far more difficult because you know that it will impact those that you love the most — your children.