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Contested Divorce Procedure
The
contested divorce procedure is more complicated and is usually the road
taken when the two parties cannot come to any agreement in the
settlement of the assets and/or the custody and care of any minor
children.
A large
majority of the contested
divorces can be settled out of court with divorce Attorneys from
both
sides, each mediating for their client’s interests, the settlements,
agreements and finalisation could take anything from 3 months to up to
3 years to finalise.
Depending how much work is involved this can be a quite costly divorce
process. Below the five various stages of a divorce procedure with
useful
information that follows which can be vital when going into this
process.
The divorce
process runs in three stages,
1. The Preparation
2. The Filing of pleadings
3. the Settlement
4. The Discovery
5. The Trial
The
preparation for divorce proceedings, the divorce Attorney will ask the
client a lot of questions in order find out more about his clients. You
will be asked to produce a number of documents and divorce papers, in order
for the
Attorney to be able file for the divorce. Once the divorce Attorney has
all the paper work ready you will be able to sign them.
The Filing of Pleadings is the next stage, instructions are sent to the
Sheriff of the jurisdictional area involved. The sheriff will
then serve the Combined Summons and the Particulars of Claim on the
client’s spouse. Once these papers have been served they are then filed
with the court. Once the defending responds to the services, and the
Pleadings have been closed, the divorce Attorney will apply for a trial
date.
The Settlement does not have any particular place in
the divorce procedure, but it can be begun between the Filing of
Pleadings and Discovery which is often found to be done by many
Attorneys.
Sometimes it might continue even into the
trial. Usually the settlement period is when the two divorce lawyers from each
party get together and discuss the settlement
options. The disputed issues will be discussed and an acceptable, fair
and equitable agreement is reached. Once this has been done
the
Attorneys will commit details onto paper and draft a Settlement
Agreement. The Settlement Agreement will set out all the terms that
have been discussed and agreed on by the two parties, and then the
signing process will be done, in the presence of Witnesses, who will
also put their signatures to the documents.
The Discovery
process during this stage the divorce Attorneys of both parties will
send out the requite for documentation, they will be looking for income
information, supported by bank statements, property documents,
appraisals or evaluations maybe needed, certificates of birth,
marriage, type of marriage agreement whether community of property,
anti-nuptial, or accrual system. Identity documentation will
also
be needed of both parties. Both sides will want as much documentation
that is relevant to this stage of the divorce procedure.
The
Trial if in the event that no agreement is reached, the
matters
discussed and disagreed will have to go to court to settle the issues,
issues that most often go to trial are maintenance issues, division of
assets, spousal contact with minor children. If the matter goes to
court then you need to bear in mind that each day in court can cost
several thousands of Rand for both parties in the divorce process.
Depends on the disputed issues a court case can last from one day to
several days.
Other type of divorce procedure: Uncontested Divorce
Procedure
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