Divorce
Divorce attorney tampa
Ending a marriage is never an easy process and the prospect of a divorce typically brings clients to our office with a wide range of emotions. At Hughes Law Group we are sensitive to those going through a marital breakdown. Ms. Hughes is here to provide the best personal and professional representation in Tampa so this process goes as efficiently as possible from a legal perspective.
At Hughes Law Group, Ms. Hughes has been working with Florida divorce law for many years and has some of the best resources to deal with your divorce in Florida. Utilizing our familiarity with the complexity of Florida procedural law, Florida divorce statutes and case law, latest technology, and professional astute experts, we are here to help bring you peace of mind.
Divorce attorney in tampa
When going through a divorce in Florida, you, the client have many life-changing issues that require detailed attention and decision-making. Where are the children going to live? What if we can’t communicate about the children, what do we do then? How will the two households function on the funds that used to support only one household? Will the family’s business remain intact? Is alimony appropriate in our situation? What’s the best kind of divorce for us: traditional or collaborative? Will I have to go to trial? At Hughes law Group, Attorney Hughes is aware of these and many other hard decisions you are going to face and is prepared to be by your side for support and expert legal guidance. If you have made the decision to dissolve your marriage, some of the aspects of divorce you will want to talk about with our firm include:
Collaborative Divorce
Thanks to Florida’s collaborative divorce procedure, couples that wish to end their marriage in an amicable way now have the option of utilizing collaborative divorce.
Parenting - Formally Custody
When going through a divorce or paternity action in Florida, your children are your most important assets, and it is extremely important that they are protected to the fullest extent.
Timesharing & Visitation
When it comes to couples with children, child custody and timesharing/visitation decisions are usually pretty major aspects of the divorce and paternity actions.
Child Support
For those who are getting divorced and have children, or have a child with another parent, child support is a very important issue that needs to be properly calculated and planned out.
Alimony
Alimony is a Florida law that allows a wife or a husband to continue to be supported by the other spouse temporarily during the divorce and after a divorce is finalized.
Relocation
Today, more than ever, we live in a society where location change is quite frequent.
Equitable Distribution
In a divorce, the assets and debt of the parties, need to be divided up.
No matter the challenges you are facing our divorce firm in Tampa is here to uphold your rights and gain the best outcome for you and your family. Contact us today to learn more about Hughes Law Group in Tampa.
Traditional Dissolution of Marriage:
At Hughes Law Group we can advise whether to start with a traditional divorce. It can be started by proposing an agreement after there has been an exchange of financial information or it can be started as a contested action by the service of a divorce petition.
If agreed by both the parties, we recommend commencing the divorce as an uncontested divorce where financial information is voluntarily exchanged and the terms of the divorce are agreed to in a contract called a marital settlement agreement. It is important that you fully understand the implications of what you are entitled to under Florida law before you start negotiating with your spouse or partner. Attorney Hughes is an expert at guiding you through the process of developing a fair agreement that addresses your needs and responsibilities.
If all of the terms cannot be agreed to, many divorces are started as a contested action by one spouse filing a petition for dissolution of marriage. The petition gets served on the other spouse, who then has 20 days to respond. Along with the petition, there is a request for financial information called “discovery.” Certain automatic financial disclosure, called mandatory disclosure is required of both the parties within 45 days of the service of the petition. Our Tampa family law firm is adept at helping you sort through the extensive financial disclosure requirements that may be necessary at the beginning of your case.
At Hughes Law Group we feel It is important for peace of mind to get certain issues taken care of at the beginning of a case: these issues may include temporary support and temporary timesharing with the children. Most circuits require temporary relief mediation prior to scheduling a temporary relief hearing. Rather than wait until the final hearing, which may be months down the road, the parties have a right to seek temporary relief. A temporary relief procedure is not necessarily restricted to contested divorces. Sometimes a divorce is initiated with a hearing for temporary relief and subsequently becomes uncontested when the parties reach agreement on contested matters. A temporary relief hearing may cover:
- Defining a temporary time sharing plan for the children
- Paying support to the other party or for the children
- Being restricted from harassing or molesting the other person
- Being restrained from disposing of the assets of the family, or
- Being restrained from removing the minor child(ren) from the State
- Paying temporary attorney’s fees.
Temporary relief mediation for the temporary relief issues are most often held within 6-10 weeks of the commencement of the divorce. At Hughes Law Group we carefully prepare you for your temporary mediation to maximize the success of this negotiation session. If mediation is unsuccessful, a hearing is scheduled. The hearings themselves are very brief and only the simplest, most basic issues get resolved. More complex issues are reserved for the final hearing. Because of the way the Court system currently schedules temporary relief hearings, they can involve considerable delay and can get expensive in terms of legal fees.
A fully contested divorce is ultimately resolved by a trial. At Hughes Law Group, Attorney Hughes will aggressively pursue your rights while advising you of the costs and benefits of taking your case to final hearing before a judge. Some cases start out contested and end up settling prior to trial as a result of negotiations and mediation. When a party takes an unreasonable position, the best course of action may be to have the judge hear all of the evidence and render a decision.