What’s a good strategy for keeping the house and being awarded primary custody during a divorce?

14 comments

1. [deleted]

2. Just be a woman, bro. EZPZ.

3. Be Woman

4. Usually you have to prove that the other party is unfit to have custody. If they’re violent, for example, or spend all their time/money gambling, and so on.

5. Hire a good lawyer and hope that you can prove your ex-wife to be an unfit mother.

   Also, never stop living in your primary residence (unless court-ordered to) no matter how tempting it might be to get a hotel room or stay with friends.

6. Whatever you do NOT just assume that your wife’s lawyer has your best interests in mind. I had two separate buddies divorce and they DID NOT bother to hire their own lawyer. You cannot imagine how dumb that is and how often men do that.

7. Not getting married in the first place.

8. Don’t rise to the bait that your STBX will chum the waters with and do everything that your lawyer tells you to do.

   Many divorces will end in a predictable division of assets and custody unless one of the parents goes off the rails trying to get more than their share. The courts see through this bullshit and the ones that you hear complaining are the fools who were caught out or reacted to ploys.

9. Ha… you all are looking at this all wrong. If you think that the legal system is fair or just you are dead wrong..
   Here is how it really works..

   Judges and lawyers know that both sides lie..
   What they really look for is potential.
   But not the potential that you think.. No its not earning potential.. Who will we ( the county ) be potentially supporting?

   So lets say you are a couple with a car, a house etc. And your wife hasn’t worked in a few years due to being a stay at home mom etc. And you get divorced ? Who is most likely to become a burden on the county ?

   So dad, who is working will get nailed with child support and the house will go to mom, cause dad has a job and can rent based on his income..
   The excuse is that its the least impact on the kids..
   But its just because the county doesn’t want mom to be their responsibility…!

   So, the quicker that you can make peace with the system, the quicker you will move on from this.

   You have a 50%+ chance of getting divorced.
   And in some counties.. ( like where I lived ) the mom gets custody 90%+ of the time…

   Make sure that you know what you are letting yourself in for..

   Good luck out there..

10. Talk to a Lawyer. Hire the one with best strategy

11. I am a man who was awarded full custody of my 3 daughters in a divorce so I am very qualified to speak on this.

    First and foremost, do not leave the residence and take up residence elsewhere. This is a huge mistake that mostly men make because they just want to get away from whatever is happening that is leading to the divorce. I can tell you that refusing to leave even when she told me to get the fuck out was the single most important decision I made. Unless you are served with a court order to vacate the premises, do not do so. You might think that the court order would be more damning, but that’s not necessarily the case. You can use it to prove that you didn’t willingly abandon.

    Another very important thing is being the first one to serve the divorce papers. Many would say that’s even more important, but in my case it was secondary for sure.

    Next, I would say, is documentation. Document all of your spouses behavior. If you are going to make a case that you should get the lion-share of custody, you are probably fighting an uphill battle anyway, so have your shit together and have documentation. Video and audio recordings (if legal), writing stuff down with time notations. Documenting the names of people who may have witnessed things. All of this stuff and more.

    Edit: Another commenter made a point about the audio/video recordings. As long as you put them in places in common areas like the living room or outside, you can always claim that you did so for other purposes to skirt any legal issues. That’s really smart.

12. identify as female

13. be a woman

14. Don’t move out during divorce proceedings; courts want to preserve status quo as much as possible. If you already don’t live at the house, they’re not gonna give you the house.

    Same with custody; spend as much time with the kids as possible, be the primary caregiver. Because once again the court won’t want to upend that without a good reason.

    Be prepared to still lose, courts prefer women.