At Clark Woods LLP, we regularly share insights into legal questions that come up in everyday situations. In this post, Family Law lawyer Quinn Johnson responds to a common one: “Can we just write up a separation agreement ourselves?” While it’s technically possible, Quinn explains why involving a lawyer is key if you want the agreement to hold up in court—and why legal advice helps ensure fairness from the start.
Do I Need a Lawyer for My Separation Agreement?
The frank answer to this question is yes, you and your ex-spouse can sit down together around the dining room table and put together an agreement and sign it before witnesses and create a Separation Agreement. However, a court may look at the Separation Agreement and point out that there are significant issues in how it was drafted, that there is unaddressed unfairness, failure to provide honest disclosure, a power imbalance, and/or that there was no advice provided to either side regarding their entitlements and obligations in accordance with the law. This may lead them to change the Separation Agreement in accordance with the law, rather than the parties wishes.
That is the value a lawyer brings to a Separation Agreement: enforceability. What this means is that where a lawyer has drafted a Separation Agreement and both parties have had the opportunity to obtain independent legal advice, a court is far more likely to uphold the Separation Agreement when it is under scrutiny. So, when an issue arises with the Separation Agreement — be it the parenting schedule, the division of property, or the amount of support being paid — the court is much more likely to follow the Separation Agreement when lawyers have been involved, as the court assumes there has been fairness, disclosure and an equal ability to negotiate.
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