This guest article is written by Kat Sanders, who regularly blogs on the topic of court reporter school online at her blog Court Reporter Schools. She welcomes your comments and questions at her email address: katsanders25@gmail.com.

It’s never easy to think of a divorce and plan the process, especially when you’re still emotional about it. You tend to use your heart rather than your head to make decisions, and this could end up hurting you and being detrimental to your best interests in the long run. When you’re filing for a divorce, you need to try and keep it as open and on the table as possible in order to avoid messy and long drawn out trials, but if you’re unable to reach a consensus with your spouse, it’s best to hire a lawyer who is well versed in dealing with divorce cases.

Once you decide to retain the services of an attorney, you need to make sure that you put all your cards on the table. In short, a few of the things you definitely need to be open with your lawyer are:

• The truth about the divorce: If your divorce has come about because of your infidelity or misbehavior, it’s best to tell your lawyer about it rather than to blame your spouse for all your marital troubles. Come clean about your affair without leaving anything out.
• Any skeletons in your closet: If there are any mistakes or misdemeanors (of the extra marital kind) in your past, you need to tell your lawyer about every single detail because you can bet your last dollar your spouse is going to be spilling all the facts and then some more to their attorney. Your attorney needs to know what kind of missiles he or she is likely to face in open court.
• Your relationship status with your kids: If you have children and are filing for sole or joint custody or asking for visitation rights, you need to tell your lawyer how close you are to your kids. The nature of your relationship could decide how the judge rules, so your attorney will need to take this aspect into consideration before arguing in court on your behalf.
• The presence of a significant other in your life: If you are seeing someone else on a regular basis or are in another serious relationship, it could hamper your chances of an amicable divorce or even one that does not rip you into pieces in court. It’s one thing to be involved in a fling that ended the marriage, but totally something else to be in a serious extra-marital relationship. Alimony and property division could be affected because of this factor.