Hi I'm Dave Ward from the Ward Law Firm and I protect business owners who are facing divorce.

The 12th step in making sure that you're going to place yourself from the best position possible when you're going through the divorce process is by making sure that you're engaged in healthy self-care that can take any number of forms. Divorce under the best circumstances is extremely stressful by making sure you're engaged in healthy self-care, you're going to help yourself keep from being burned out and it also going to allow you to make better decisions going forward.

Simple things like making sure that you're drinking water, eating properly. If you are a runner, that you're running, doing your exercise, these types of things can go a very long way in helping you deal with the stress and anxiety that normally accompany a situation like this. For other people, some of those stresses can be something that simple exercise and diet can't really fix and for those folks, there are people that you can go and that you can talk to. There are groups that you can involve yourself in where other people are going through a similar situations and are sharing in the same struggles that he can be struggling with. So by making sure that you engage in healthy self-care, you're going to help manage the stress of the situation which is going to allow you to make better decisions and help you come out ahead of where you might otherwise be.

So step number 12, healthy self-care. You've been watching our 12-step series on how to prepare if you're facing a divorce. At this point, if you're still watching the videos and you haven't seen some of the earlier videos, click on the link below and make sure you go through all of them. If you've watched all of them, you have reached this point, I want to congratulate you because you've made a smart decision in taking the first step anybody should take when they're facing a divorce and that is educating themselves.

I want to congratulate you on that good decision. If you are facing a divorce and you have reached this point in time, give me a call. We can sit down and perform our real case analysis for you where we're going to go, we're going to review all the facts, we're going to evaluate the legal issues that you're facing, we're going to analyze the strategies available to you and we're going to come up with a list of next steps in order to help you move forward with the process.

I'm David Ward from the Ward Law Firm and I help protect the business owner who's facing divorce.

Hi, I’m Dave Ward from the Ward Law Firm and I help protect business owners who are facing divorce.

Facing a divorce is never an easy thing to do for anybody. But there are things that you can do in order to better prepare yourself for what’s to come through the divorce process. And the first thing that you should do is speak with an attorney.

Speaking with an attorney at the outset rather than waiting to some further point down the process can yield a number of benefits.

Frequently, some that are unanticipated at the time the conversation occurs.

I’d like to tell you a story about a client of mine, that we’re gonna call Jim. Jim was married to a woman who was stationed overseas as part of the US army. But one day Jim got that call that nobody wants to get and she told him, “I don’t think this marriage is working out. I want a divorce.” As hard and surprising it was to have received that call, what happened next was even more surprising. She stopped sending any sort of support payment to help the household. Jim and his wife had two small boys. And, while Jim had a good job, he was dependent on the income that his wife was sending back to help support the family and make sure that the boys were taken care of in the manner that they needed to be. So, Jim was very concerned when he came to me, and what I was able to discuss with him in that initial consultation was that, the army and most of the armed services have regulations that require soldiers and sailors to support their family members. And I was able to tell Jim what he needed to do to go and get the assistance of his wife’s chain of command, in order to compel her to immediately and continue supporting the family throughout the entire divorce process.

So, this is just one example of things that can happen during a consultation. Jim didn’t expect that to be the case. He didn’t come with any anticipation that there was something that could be remedied so quickly.

So, being able to sit down and have that conversation immediately changed the game for Jim because he no longer had to worry about whether or not he was gonna be able to support the boys throughout this process.

This is just one of the benefits that comes from speaking to an attorney at the outset rather than waiting till some point later down the line. Again, my name is Dave Ward and I help small business owners facing divorce.

Hi, I'm Dave Ward from The Ward Law Firm, and I help protect business owners facing divorce. In this series we're covering things that you can do in order to prepare for divorce, and the second thing that you can do is keep a notebook or a diary.

The reason why this is important, well let me ask you a question, "What did you have for breakfast on January 5th of this year?" My guess is you probably don't remember. And the truth is most of us are not going to be able to remember all the things that we're exposed to over the course of any given period of time. Now, a lot of people will say, "Well Dave that's kind of a trivial thing," you know surely I will remember something that's important is related to my divorce.

But, let me ask you, have you ever say, been at work and had to remember a password, and go from one room to the next only to arrive at that room and forget some portion of what that password was? These are the things that happen to all of us all the time, and even though we're talking about a relatively short period of time and something that's reasonably important to do, we still have those gaps in memory. And this is the kind of thing that happens to everybody, regardless of how smart you are.

In fact, the smarter you are the more vulnerable you're going to be too this sort of thing, because people who are smart tend to rely too heavily on their ability to remember things. Having a well kept diary can make re-creating a timeline much, much simpler than it would be without doing that. It also helps to keep everything straight with regard to significant events that have occurred either before, during the filing of the divorce, and while the divorce is going on.

Some of the things that should be written down in diary include what happened, in other words what was the event, you should include a brief description of whatever that event was, and then you should also write down any witnesses that were present at that time.

By having that information you can take the situation, that may otherwise have gotten overlooked or forgotten in the preparation of the actual case, and make sure that you're going to have that information available and usable by your attorney when the time comes to present the case.

This is just one of the things that you need to do in order to prepare for a divorce. Again, my name is Dave Ward and I help protect the small business owner facing divorce.

Hi, I am Dave Ward from the Ward Law Firm and I help protect business owners facing divorce. The third thing that we need to do when we are facing a divorce is be conscious of the fact that our spouse may end up taking and moving money from joint accounts and leaving you without any access to any of the funds that have been accumulated over the course of the marriage.

In the hopes of reducing your ability to defend yourself throughout the course of a divorce. One of the things that you can do in order to combat that situation is start and fund a savings account. Some of refer to that as sort of a war chest.

The whole goal of having that is to make sure that you have the financial backing that may be needed in order to pursue your case aggressively in the best manner possible.

Often times the issues that are involved in a divorce are not necessarily known at the outset, and new ones come up all the time that are completely unexpected. And sometimes those require investigators. Some of the require the use of experts. Some of them require any number of things that having the correct amount of funding available to you is going to be an essential part of making you can take advantage of those opportunities.

So by starting your own savings account and funding it properly will help to ensure that when the time comes you have the resources that you need in order to aggressively protect your position and your case. Again my name is David Ward and I help protect the small business owner facing divorce.

The first one that I hear most often is, "Is Georgia a fault or no-fault divorce State?" And the answer is both.

In Georgia there are thirteen independent grounds that are recognized for divorce, 12 of those grounds are considered to be fault grounds.

The first ground recognized by Georgia is called the intermarriage by persons within the prohibited degrees of affinity.

The second has to do with the mental incapacity of one of the parties at the time that the marriage occurred and this really impart goes to the validity of the marriage because in order to form the marital quote on quote contract both parties have to be capable of making sound decisions about that.

The third round recognized and it's pretty self-explanatory is impotency at the time of marriage. Before it has to do with forced Menace, duress or fraud in obtaining the marriage and again these are things that can go to the actual validity of the marriage but what this has to do with his taking somebody and compelling them to do something that they otherwise would not have done.

The fifth ground is pregnancy of the wife by a man other than the husband at the time of the marriage, unknown by the husband.

The sixth ground is one of the ones most commonly thought of by people and that's adultery by either of the parties after the marriage has occurred and number seven is desertion by either of the parties for a term of one year or more. What's important to know about both number six and number seven, is there are some specific consequences that relate to alimony, if either one of these is determined to be the cause of the dissolution of the marriage, for example if one party commits adultery and that is determined to be the cause for the dissolution of the marriage that party cannot as a matter of law get alimony.

The eighth grounds for divorce is the conviction of either party for an offense involving moral turpitude and under which he or she is sentenced to a term of imprisonment of two years or more. This often leads the question of what is an offense involving moral turpitude and generally without getting too specific that has to do with crimes that involve demonstrations of poor character.

The ninth and this is actually also related to the twelfth is Habitual intoxication by one of the parties.

Number ten is cruel treatment by one of the parties and cruel treatment as defined by the law is treatment that either involves the willful infliction of pain or bodily or mental injury upon the other party whose filing asserting that has a ground, provided such reasonably justifies an apprehension of danger to life, limb or health. Those are read extremely broadly by the court and in fact it's very common for a situation where somebody search the ground of adultery to also assert cruel treatment because that is considered mental cruelty. Particularly if the other parties is advertising to the other spouse that they are in the process of committing adultery or have committed it etc.

Number eleven is incurable mental illness and one very interesting thing about this is unlike virtually every other type of ground to assert for divorce, when asserting a around for incurable mental illness, it is often decided by the court that you never less have to continue to support that person throughout their life.

Number twelve as I said was related to number nine and number twelve is the habitual drug addiction by one of the parties. Those are what are considered to be fault the grounds for divorce in Georgia and thirteenth and this the no fault one and as a practical matter the one that is usually the basis for almost all of the divorce is that are granted in Georgia today and that is that the marriage is irretrievably broken with no hope of reconciliation .

Again, I'm David Ward from the Ward law firm and I help protect the small business owner in divorce.

This is Dave Ward from the Ward Law Firm and I help protect the business owner who's facing divorce. In this series we are talking about the three questions I am asked most frequently as well as the four questions that people should be asking when they sit down with an Attorney. Right now we are on question number 2. Question number 2 is; What is the difference between a divorce and an annulment?

Frequently when people contact my office, I first ask questions about whether or not they can get an annulment because there is a perception that an annulment is better than a divorce. In some respects, it can be usually for religious reasons.

The difference between divorce and an annulment has to do with what it is the court is actually deciding. In the case of the divorce, the court is ruling that a valid marriage is going to be dissolved and the parties are g to be treated as though they are no longer bound by the bonds of marriage. So that is a divorce.

An annulment, by contrast, is a determination by the court that a divorce is not necessary because the marriage itself never actually existed. In other words, it was void right from the beginning. Some of the grounds for that we talked about a little bit in our first video because there can be grounds for both divorce or an annulment.

The example would be a marriage that is procured through fraud upon one of the parties. In that case fraud as a general rule is a defense in a case that involves a contract in marriage is treated by law a contract between the two parties. So that can actually be one of the grounds to cert for an annulment if that's what it is you are choosing to seek. As a practical matter, it is interesting to note that Georgia like virtually all other states, does not favor annulments and the court is going to view a request for an annulment with a very, very, skeptical eye. There are reasons for that and there are actually circumstances where you cannot get an annulment even if you otherwise qualify.

An example of that is if children were born during the course of the period of time that the parties thought that they were married, even it turns that marriage was void for some technical reason or procured through fraud, etc the state of Georgia is not going to allow that to be treated as an annulment. They are going to require that you go through the divorce process.

That is some of the differences. There are many, many more differences between a divorce and an annulment. But the big overarching one has to do with what the courts deciding that is are we dissolving an otherwise valid marriage or are we making a deceleration that no marriage actually ever actually existed.

Again I am David Ward from the Ward Law Firm and I help protect the small business owner in divorce.

Hi, I am Dave Ward from the Ward Law Firm, and I protect business owners who are facing divorce. In the series we been talking about the three frequently most asked questions that I get from people who are facing a divorce. We are going to shift gears a little bit now and talk about the four questions that you should be asking.

Question number one that you should be asking is: What sort of information should I be gathering? A divorce is a lawsuit, it's just a particular kind kind of lawsuit. And like any other lawsuit if the case goes to trial or you have a hearing you are going to be required to prove your case. In order to do this you are going to need evidence.

Most often, the best evidence comes in the form of either pictures or the subject of this question and that is documentation. There is no way to list every conceivable document that you may need. There are some that are commonly to all divorce cases.

Number one would be a copy of any domestic contracts. What I mean by that is if you have either a prenuptial agreement or a postnuptial agreement, you are going to want to have those documents. Copies of your last couple of years of income tax returns, bank statements for the last couple of years are also going to be extremely helpful to determine spending patterns, etc. That is particularity important if you are worried about money being suddenly moved or disappearing from the accounts without any reasonable explanation for why those changes are occurring. The same with investment account statements and retirement account statements. Some other statements that are also important are mortgage statements; if you have car loans or credit cards, having those statements or virtually any type of loan agreement.

And of course, for business owners, keeping business records such as invoices, account statements, balance sheets, incoming cash flow statements. All the--sort of--documentation that you would normally save as a business owner.

Again, finally what we mentioned earlier: photographs that are related to the divorce. For most of these statements I usually suggest that people start by trying to gather at least the last three years worth of statements. With many companies moving to electronic statements it has become a whole lot easier to obtain these documents, however it is important to remember that passwords can be changed by your spouse which is why i usually suggest printing hard copies and putting them in a safe place where your spouse is not going to find them.

Again I am David Ward from The Ward Law Firm and I protect business owners who are facing divorce.