How to Negotiate a Divorce Settlement With Your Spouse

This video features Chaim Steinberger, a Family Law attorney based in New York.

Attorney Chaim Steinberger | 888-981-0039 | Schedule Your Consult Today

“If you work collaboratively and cooperatively together you could end up with more. You could end up ahead. You could get a better deal by not being gratuitously nasty.”

Divorces can be notoriously bitter, but they don’t need to be.

Chaim Steinberger is a family law attorney with Chaim Steinberger, P.C, based in New York. In this video, he explains how to negotiate a divorce settlement with your spouse that allows both parties to walk away feeling like they were treated fairly.

To learn more, contact the attorney directly by calling 888-981-0039 or by submitting a contact form on this page.

Key Takeaways From Chaim Steinberger:

Divorce negotiations and custody agreements are inherently charged with emotion. It can be extremely helpful to have a third party present and ready to facilitate open communication between parties.

Steinberger is a proponent of “win-win” techniques in divorce negotiation to avoid unnecessary destruction.

Too often people go into the divorce process with feelings of anger and hurt, both toward their spouse and themself. This can cause divorce negotiations to be rocky at best and extremely destructive at worst, with both parties lashing out at each other and causing far more damage than would otherwise be necessary. A win-win approach to divorce negotiation involves listening to each side objectively, getting to the root of what each party desires, and figuring out a compromise that is fair for both parties.

A good attorney will advise you on how to prevent knee-jerk reactions that you might regret down the road.

Successful navigation through divorce negotiations and proceedings requires a combination of effort from both parties involved as well as an experienced attorney. While spouses in a divorce can certainly apply “win-win” techniques in their communication and negotiation, due to the complexity of divorce law, Steinberger recommends seeking the help of an experienced divorce attorney to avoid unnecessary damage coming to one or both parties.

Dispute resolution, custody issues, division of assets, and other elements of the divorce process are bound by specific laws and almost always require an expert’s evaluation to decide how to move forward. When people feel threatened as they often do in a divorce, it’s easy to get tunnel vision; it can be immeasurably helpful to have an experienced attorney at your side to analyze the situations as a whole and reach a fair and acceptable outcome for both parties.

Win-win techniques have practical applications for almost any situation.

For example, Steinburger maintains that if there is a difficult subject to negotiate, it should be addressed first rather than last. Waiting to have hard conversations only increases the anxiety and impatience surrounding it.

He also recommends listening more than you talk, asking questions, and practicing reflective listening in which you repeat back in your own words what the other party said. One of the greatest tools at your disposal in a divorce negotiation is the ability to make the other party feel heard and understood. In many cases, this allows the other party to feel relaxed and respected enough to listen in return.

What might seem to be a fair agreement at first could turn out to be a missed opportunity down the road; this is why legal advice is invaluable.

Experienced divorce attorneys know how the law works and perhaps more importantly they know why the law is designed the way it is. What might seem fair to a couple negotiating without legal counsel could actually be quite skewed in the grand scheme of the law designed to protect people not only from immediate damage due to divorce, but future damage as well.

Win-win techniques are especially essential in child custody disputes.

When beginning child custody mediation it’s important to verbally recognize the status of the other spouse either as a father or mother. By first recognizing each parent’s love for and commitment to the child’s wellbeing, it can reassure both parties that a battle need not necessarily take place since they do, after all, have the same goal in mind. By setting a tone in which neither party needs to feel afraid of being shut out of the child’s life or fear being unable to care for the child, both parents can relax into their mutual care for the child enough to engage in honest, open communication as they work toward a fair custody agreement.

To learn more, contact Chaim Steinberger directly by calling 888-981-0039 or by submitting a contact form on this page.

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