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Divorice or Marriage Dissolution Transcript

Hello my name is Jeff Levy I have been a practicing attorney in Ohio and in Michigan for the last 39 years.

 

My practice is in regard to litigation, anything that can lead to a trial is what I do as a trial lawyer. My practice is centered around divorce cases and criminal cases.

 

Today I'm going to talk about divorce cases there are two types of divorce in the state of Ohio.

 

You have a dissolution or a divorce, in a dissolution the parties have to agree on one hundred percent of all the terms of their dissolution. They would sign a separation agreement which would be submitted to the court called a petition for dissolution of marriage no sooner than 30 days or no later than 90 days.

 

You will have a hearing in court. When you're in court the court has to find that your agreement is fair and equitable and if you have children that the agreement is in the best interest of the children.

 

You can literally be divorced or have your marriage dissolved under that dissolution within approximately 60 days.

 

The other form is a divorce. So if you cannot agree on any of the terms of the divorce or even if you can agree on 99 out of 100 terms you still must file a divorce. You must have been a resident of the state of Ohio for six months preceding the filing of the divorce and you must have been a resident of the county for 90 days. That gives our court jurisdiction to hear your case.

 

There are five important issues in regard to a divorce. The first is grounds for divorce, that's normally pretty easy in the state of Ohio. I'm not going to go over its terms but basically if the two of you are incompatible and you agree that it is incompatible your grounds for divorce will be that incompatibility.

 

The next part of a divorce is property division. The court is pretty much going to divide on an equitable basis. Normally a basis that the property that was acquired during the marriage. If you had property before you got married and you can trace it to today then that would be yours alone and is not divided as part of the marital estate. If you inherited money and you can trace that inherited money through the present that also would be yours and not part of the property division. Everything else would be divided equitably.

 

And again probably the next part is in regard to children if you have children either you must agree with your spouse or the court will determine who should be a residential parent of the children and who should have visitation and companionship and at what times so if you can agree you can have a shared parenting agreement. And you can pretty much set forward those terms that you believe are proper for your relationship with your children.

 

The next part is child support. Child support is determined basically by child support guidelines. The Supreme Court of the state of Ohio has made a determination as to how much child support should be based upon your total income between husband and wife. Whatever that number is it can be modified by agreement of the parties or the court can determine if it should be modified either upward or downward based upon facts and circumstances involving the children.

 

Last but not least is spousal support spousal support. It is pretty much determined by the court unless the parties can agree, otherwise it really depends upon the parties incomes, the party's expenses and the amount of time that the parties have been married and what was accomplished between the two of them during the marriage. It would also include whatever the property settlement was.

 

So those are the five main things in regard to a divorce or dissolution. If you have any questions please feel free to call me at (419)244-1001 thank you