The divorce process can be a stressful time, and it’s important to have the right legal representation. Divorce lawyers are knowledgeable about the law and can help you through every step of the process.
They can also help you resolve issues outside of court, so that you don’t have to go to trial. They can also assist you in getting a fair division of your assets.
They are familiar with the legal system
If you are preparing to file for divorce, it is essential that you choose a lawyer who is familiar with the legal system. This will ensure that you receive the best possible results and protect your interests in the process.
Many Family lawyer near me work with clients who have complex issues involving family law and divorce, including child custody, support, and property division. They also help spouses negotiate a divorce settlement with their ex-spouse.
Some attorneys specialize in alternative dispute resolution methods, such as mediation, which is a less-confrontational approach to divorce. Divorce mediation is usually the fastest and most cost-effective way to resolve a divorce, especially if both spouses have a good chance of reaching an agreement.
However, if negotiations fail, a court trial may be necessary. In a trial, both parties present evidence to a judge and call witnesses to support their claims. The court then considers the evidence and renders a final decision.
They can fight your best interests in court
Whether it is custody, child support, spousal support, or the division of property and debt, divorce lawyers have the skills necessary to fight for your best interests. These skills include negotiation.
They know how to use evidence and testimony to make their case in court, ensuring that they will be successful in their battle for custody or your rights to alimony, child support, or a fair division of assets.
Divorce is a stressful time for everyone involved, and it can be hard to keep your emotions in check. You need a lawyer who will be patient and work with you to get the results you want.
The best divorce lawyers understand that a child’s needs must come first and always strive to make the child’s best interests their top priority. This is why they focus on fostering a positive relationship with the child while still allowing each parent to have a strong relationship with their children.
They can help you resolve issues outside of court
Whether you need to negotiate a settlement or go to court, divorce lawyers can help you get the best results. They can also help you get a fair division of your assets.
Divorce lawyers can also resolve disputes outside of court by involving other professionals in the process. For example, financial experts like accountants or appraisers can help spouses understand their finances and what they need to do to settle the case.
If you and your spouse can’t agree on everything, mediation may be a good option. It requires compromise and communication between both parties, but it is less expensive than going to court and can be faster.
During mediation, both parties must remain civil and refrain from name-calling or yelling. This will help them focus on the current issues and keep the process moving forward. It can also prevent disagreements down the road from dragging the whole process out.
They can help you get a fair division of your assets
If you have significant assets to divide, a divorce lawyer can help make sure you get a fair division. They can gather evidence, seek expert opinions on complex financial matters, and build the best case possible to support your rights.
sydney is an equitable distribution state, which means that the court is supposed to determine how to split marital property fairly. This does not mean 50/50, but it should be fair from both parties’ perspectives.
Divorce lawyers also help ensure that debts are assigned in a way that is clear to the creditor. This can spare you the hassle of dealing with your ex-spouse’s creditors.
While some people try to game the system and hide their assets from their spouse and the court, it’s not always possible. For example, if your spouse has an unusual account activity or starts giving away assets that they shouldn’t have before the divorce, you may want to hire a forensic accountant.
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The studio was filled with the rich odour of roses, and when the light summer wind stirred amidst the trees of the garden, there came through the open door the heavy scent of the lilac, or the more delicate perfume of the pink-flowering thorn.
From the corner of the divan of Persian saddle-bags on which he was lying, smoking, as was his custom, innumerable cigarettes, Lord Henry Wotton could just catch the gleam of the honey-sweet and honey-coloured blossoms of a laburnum, whose tremulous branches seemed hardly able to bear the burden of a beauty so flamelike as theirs; and now and then the fantastic shadows of birds in flight flitted across the long tussore-silk curtains that were stretched in front of the huge window, producing a kind of momentary Japanese effect, and making him think of those pallid, jade-faced painters of Tokyo who, through the medium of an art that is necessarily immobile, seek to convey the sense of swiftness and motion. The sullen murmur of the bees shouldering their way through the long unmown grass, or circling with monotonous insistence round the dusty gilt horns of the straggling woodbine, seemed to make the stillness more oppressive. The dim roar of London was like the bourdon note of a distant organ.
In the centre of the room, clamped to an upright easel, stood the full-length portrait of a young man of extraordinary personal beauty, and in front of it, some little distance away, was sitting the artist himself, Basil Hallward, whose sudden disappearance some years ago caused, at the time, such public excitement and gave rise to so many strange conjectures.
As the painter looked at the gracious and comely form he had so skilfully mirrored in his art, a smile of pleasure passed across his face, and seemed about to linger there. But he suddenly started up, and closing his eyes, placed his fingers upon the lids, as though he sought to imprison within his brain some curious dream from which he feared he might awake.
“It is your best work, Basil, the best thing you have ever done,” said Lord Henry languidly. “You must certainly send it next year to the Grosvenor. The Academy is too large and too vulgar. Whenever I have gone there, there have been either so many people that I have not been able to see the pictures, which was dreadful, or so many pictures that I have not been able to see the people, which was worse. The Grosvenor is really the only place.”
“I don’t think I shall send it anywhere,” he answered, tossing his head back in that odd way that used to make his friends laugh at him at Oxford. “No, I won’t send it anywhere.”
Lord Henry elevated his eyebrows and looked at him in amazement through the thin blue wreaths of smoke that curled up in such fanciful whorls from his heavy, opium-tainted cigarette. “Not send it anywhere? My dear fellow, why? Have you any reason? What odd chaps you painters are! You do anything in the world to gain a reputation. As soon as you have one, you seem to want to throw it away. It is silly of you, for there is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about. A portrait like this would set you far above all the young men in England, and make the old men quite jealous, if old men are ever capable of any emotion.”
“I know you will laugh at me,” he replied, “but I really can’t exhibit it. I have put too much of myself into it.”
Lord Henry stretched himself out on the divan and laughed.
“Yes, I knew you would; but it is quite true, all the same.”
“Too much of yourself in it! Upon my word, Basil, I didn’t know you were so vain; and I really can’t see any resemblance between you, with your rugged strong face and your coal-black hair, and this young Adonis, who looks as if he was made out of ivory and rose-leaves. Why, my dear Basil, he is a Narcissus, and you—well, of course you have an intellectual expression and all that. But beauty, real beauty, ends where an intellectual expression begins. Intellect is in itself a mode of exaggeration, and destroys the harmony of any face. The moment one sits down to think, one becomes all nose, or all forehead, or something horrid. Look at the successful men in any of the learned professions. How perfectly hideous they are! Except, of course, in the Church. But then in the Church they don’t think. A bishop keeps on saying at the age of eighty what he was told to say when he was a boy of eighteen, and as a natural consequence he always looks absolutely delightful. Your mysterious young friend, whose name you have never told me, but whose picture really fascinates me, never thinks. I feel quite sure of that. He is some brainless beautiful creature who should be always here in winter when we have no flowers to look at, and always here in summer when we want something to chill our intelligence. Don’t flatter yourself, Basil: you are not in the least like him.”
“You don’t understand me, Harry,” answered the artist. “Of course I am not like him. I know that perfectly well. Indeed, I should be sorry to look like him. You shrug your shoulders? I am telling you the truth. There is a fatality about all physical and intellectual distinction, the sort of fatality that seems to dog through history the faltering steps of kings. It is better not to be different from one’s fellows. The ugly and the stupid have the best of it in this world. They can sit at their ease and gape at the play. If they know nothing of victory, they are at least spared the knowledge of defeat. They live as we all should live—undisturbed, indifferent, and without disquiet. They neither bring ruin upon others, nor ever receive it from alien hands. Your rank and wealth, Harry; my brains, such as they are—my art, whatever it may be worth; Dorian Gray’s good looks—we shall all suffer for what the gods have given us, suffer terribly.”
“Dorian Gray? Is that his name?” asked Lord Henry, walking across the studio towards Basil Hallward.
“Yes, that is his name. I didn’t intend to tell it to you.”
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“Oh, I can’t explain. When I like people immensely, I never tell their names to any one. It is like surrendering a part of them. I have grown to love secrecy. It seems to be the one thing that can make modern life mysterious or marvellous to us. The commonest thing is delightful if one only hides it. When I leave town now I never tell my people where I am going. If I did, I would lose all my pleasure. It is a silly habit, I dare say, but somehow it seems to bring a great deal of romance into one’s life. I suppose you think me awfully foolish about it?”
“Not at all,” answered Lord Henry, “not at all, my dear Basil. You seem to forget that I am married, and the one charm of marriage is that it makes a life of deception absolutely necessary for both parties. I never know where my wife is, and my wife never knows what I am doing. When we meet—we do meet occasionally, when we dine out together, or go down to the Duke’s—we tell each other the most absurd stories with the most serious faces. My wife is very good at it—much better, in fact, than I am. She never gets confused over her dates, and I always do. But when she does find me out, she makes no row at all. I sometimes wish she would; but she merely laughs at me.”
“I hate the way you talk about your married life, Harry,” said Basil Hallward, strolling towards the door that led into the garden. “I believe that you are really a very good husband, but that you are thoroughly ashamed of your own virtues. You are an extraordinary fellow. You never say a moral thing, and you never do a wrong thing. Your cynicism is simply a pose.”
“Being natural is simply a pose, and the most irritating pose I know,” cried Lord Henry, laughing; and the two young men went out into the garden together and ensconced themselves on a long bamboo seat that stood in the shade of a tall laurel bush. The sunlight slipped over the polished leaves. In the grass, white daisies were tremulous.
After a pause, Lord Henry pulled out his watch. “I am afraid I must be going, Basil,” he murmured, “and before I go, I insist on your answering a question I put to you some time ago.”
“What is that?” said the painter, keeping his eyes fixed on the ground.
“You know quite well.”
“I do not, Harry.”