I’ve been doing divorce cases for 31 years. You tend to have two different types of cases. You have what I call child cases like custody/visitation cases and financial cases. In child cases, the first thing that you really need to do is look at the world as what best serves your children and that’s really tough because you may be under a lot of pressure and a lot of stress with your spouse or partner. But keep in mind, when the court looks at what should be done for custody – assuming that both parents are competent and that nobody is a really bad parent – the court is going to look at your work schedule, your commute schedule, the other person’s work and commute schedule, and the children’s schedule in terms of school or day care or extracurriculars and try to make it all work.

Don’t get caught up in the drama with what’s going on between you and your spouse that you lose sight of that because when you no longer live under one roof, life is going to change. You need to find out, if you can, a way to make it all work and then adjust everybody’s schedules. Then start to keep logs. If your spouse or your partner is completely unrealistic, don’t put the children through all that stress. You have to be the adult in that situation. Keep a diary. Try to get witnesses. Do your exchanges in neutral places like where they have videos cameras like convenient store parking lots or Wal-Marts. Try to stay out of trouble and get in to see a lawyer. Then there is the financial type of cases, which has different direction to it.