TEMPE FAMILY LAW ATTORNEY
My AZ Family Law Lawyers are experienced family law attorneys dedicated to protecting your family and what’s important to you. Our team of professionals offer legal assistance for families facing family law issues such as divorce, child custody, child support, parenting time, and spousal support.
Tempe, Arizona Family Law FAQ’s
When it comes to family, expert legal representation is a priority. Experience matters. Consult with My AZ Family Law Lawyers to get answers and options specific for your family law legal matter.
Your divorce will take at least 60 days, as that is the mandatory waiting period after the petition is filed before the divorce can be granted. If your divorce is contested, it could take weeks, if not months or years, longer than that.
The length of time a person must live in Arizona before qualifying to file divorce here is known as a residency requirement. The residency requirement to file a divorce without children in Arizona is 90 days. A child must have resided in the state for 6 months or more before Arizona will have jurisdiction over child support and custody matters.
You can either have a deputy sheriff or a process server serve your spouse with the initial divorce petition to begin the divorce process. Your spouse will have 20 days to respond if they live in Arizona, and 30 days if they live out of state.
If you and your spouse are able to agree on all issues, you can get divorced without ever going to trial. You and your spouse may submit the divorce petition along with a consent decree to negate the need to go to trial. Many divorcing couples also turn to mediation as a way to achieve a divorce settlement without ever setting foot in a courtroom.
Arizona provides child support calculators that give an estimated range of payments based on income and parenting time. Other factors that will go into determining child support include special needs of the child, if the parents have dependents from separate relationships, the child’s standard of living before the divorce, and the paying parent’s ability to pay.
The judge will look at many factors when deciding whether or not to award alimony, otherwise known as spousal support or spousal maintenance. Some of these factors include the standard of living during the marriage, the length of the marriage, each spouse’s income, whether one spouse stayed home to take care of the house and kids so the other spouse could advance their career and education, if one spouse will be the primary caregiver to shared children, the age and physical and mental condition of both spouses, and how long training for a career would take either spouse.
Child support is calculated so that the child will have a relatively similar lifestyle at each parent’s household, but this is not the sole determinant in child support. A family law attorney may be able to provide you with an estimate of how much child support you will need to pay if you have both parents’ income information available.
The court will divide property according to community property laws. Everything incurred during the marriage- assets and debts- will be split as evenly as possible between the spouses upon divorce. Only property owned before the marriage, gifts, and inheritance will be considered separate property. The spouses may need to trace back separate property that becomes commingled.
If your marriage was of short duration, few assets and debts were acquired during the marriage, and you don’t have minor children, you may be able to get away with not hiring an attorney for an uncontested divorce. If the divorce is contested, or any of these factors are present, it is probably best to retain an attorney. Assigning community contributions to retirement accounts and tracing back commingled assets. An attorney can make sure your settlement agreement is drafted to properly reflect your wishes.
No. Parenting time and child support are two separate issues. There are plenty of means of recourse if one spouse fails to make child support payments. Wage garnishments, property liens and license suspensions can all be used to force a parent who is in arrears on child support to pay their past-due balance.
The child’s wishes will start being a factor the court considers once they get a little older. Depending on the intelligence and maturity level of the child, among other factors, the child’s wishes will be taken into account around ages 10-12.
A parenting plan is a schedule of how your child will spend time with each parent. Having a court-ordered parenting plan will help ensure that you and the other parent spend a fair amount of time with the child, and that the child has a stable and reliable schedule. It will also be used to determine how much child support should be paid.
A judge may order supervised, limited, or no visitation at all if it is in the best interests of the child. If there are allegations of domestic violence, other types of abuse, a drug and alcohol dependency, or other issues that could affect the child’s well-being, the judge may restrict that parent’s visitation in one of the ways listed above.
Moving out of state with shared children is prohibited by child custody orders. If your spouse wants to move your child out of state, they will need to file a petition to modify your existing child custody orders. A modification can only be granted at least one year after the original orders are issued, or at least one year after the last modification. The parent who is moving out of state will have an uphill battle proving why uprooting the child’s entire lifestyle would be in the child’s best interests. More often, the custody plan will be changed so that the out-of-state parent has extended visitation with the child.
In a contested divorce, the spouses disagree about how matters like property division, child support, child custody, and alimony should be resolved. If the spouses are unable to reach an agreement, the case will proceed to trial, and a judge will decide how each issue will be resolved.
An uncontested divorce is one in which the spouses agree on all issues. The spouses may collaboratively work on the divorce petition and the respondent spouse can simply not respond once it is served. Or, the spouses can sign a consent decree and submit the petition to the court, who can then issue the divorce.
A preliminary injunction can be issued when the divorce petition is filed. This will prevent either spouse from selling, gifting, or disposing of community property assets during the divorce. A preliminary injunction can also prohibit certain conduct between the spouses during the divorce, and outline how custody should be handled in the interim.
