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What is the difference between a contested and uncontested divorce?

On Behalf of | Feb 18, 2020 | Divorce And Family Law |

When you file for a divorce, you will have a lot of decisions to make. You may think making that big decision to file is the hardest one, but there are many more decisions to come that could prove to be very difficult. This is especially true if you find that you and your spouse cannot come to an agreement on anything.

The New Jersey Courts explains that when you cannot agree on the details of your divorce, it is a contested divorce. If, however, you and your spouse can come to an agreement about every aspect of your divorce, then it is an uncontested divorce.

The details of your divorce will involve dividing your marital property according to the law. This means you may need to determine if property belongs to both of you or just one of you. Anything you both own, you must divide. It can be tricky to determine the status of some property because the name of the title or the person who earned the money is not always the sole owner.

Another aspect that will usually require a lot of work to resolve is child support and custody. Child support is fairly simple because the state has formulas to determine the amount of support. Child custody, though, is very fluid. There are many ways of awarding custody. Ideally, the court wants you to come to an agreement together because the court wants you to parent together. Even though your marriage is ending, your responsibility as parents does not. However, that is often easier said than done, which is why many divorces end up contested over child custody matters.

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