Negotiation Strategies for Divorce

No matter the method used--marriage dissolution, divorce settlement, or mediation--these all involve negotiation.  You may be angry and fed up or even vengeful, however, you still have to negotiate to get what you want. Several divorce settlement negotiation strategies and considerations can help you get the most fair and equitable outcome from your divorce:

• List and Prioritize: Create a list of the 10 most important issues for your divorce settlement and rank list them in order of importance. This allows you to log-roll items that are not that important to you (but which may be very important to your spouse) in order to get what you really want.

• Package Deal: Negotiating many items together allows for logrolling and often results in greater value than negotiating item by item.

• Set the Context: Both sides must declare what's on the table in order to effectively negotiate. The importance of those items is, however, private to each party. Knowing the context allows creative solutions and out-of-the-box thinking.

• Know Your Limits: Know what your lowest acceptable limits for each item may be and what your highest limits are. Knowing this allows to guage your progress.

Contrary to the hard-nosed, fist-pounding ads you've seen, your attorney must be negotiation savvy in order to get the most value in your divorce settlement. Learn how it may be possible to have An Amicable Divorce.