Divorce is notoriously disruptive to people’s lives. Their families and living arrangements change. Their financial circumstances often go through drastic shifts. Spouses have to pay for legal representation and time in court.
They have to cover filing fees. They also need to divide their property. The obligation to appropriately apply community property rules to the marital estate contributes to the short-term financial disruptions that people experience during divorce.
Specifically, many people find themselves struggling without access to resources that they need to buy groceries, put fuel in their vehicles and pay their mortgages. The intertwined finances of spouses can lead to complications in the early stages of divorce.
Freezing accounts is standard practice
When one spouse files for divorce, the courts may issue automatic temporary restraining orders. Although many people think of restraining orders as court orders preventing interaction between the spouses, divorce restraining orders are a separate issue entirely.
They relate to conduct that spouses should not engage in during the divorce. It is standard practice for judges to impose orders prohibiting the sale or destruction of any marital assets. They may freeze financial accounts, thereby preventing spouses from using joint credit cards or continuing to spend against a home equity line of credit.
While the spouse who chooses to file has an opportunity to prepare in advance and secure separate bank accounts and lines of credit, the responding spouse often learns about the divorce at roughly the same time that they realize they don’t have access to key financial resources anymore.
Although the restriction on using certain resources is temporary, it can cause major complications in the first weeks of the divorce process. The possibility of falling behind on bills and being unable to fulfill basic financial needs is one reason why taking control of the process by filing first can be in a spouse’s best interests.
Those who recognize that divorce may be a process that they’ll be navigating in the near future need to understand the process to protect themselves. Filing for divorce first, or at least preparing for a spouse’s filing, well in advance can minimize the financial hardship that often arises in the weeks and months after the submission of an initial petition to the California family courts.
