Regardless of your situation, divorce is a difficult transition that can throw your life into temporary turmoil and will affect your role as a parent as well as your finances. All told, it’s a lot, but if you’ve dedicated all your time to caring for your children and keeping the home fires burning it can be even more challenging.
If you are a stay-at-home parent who is facing a divorce, it’s time to consult with an experienced Round Rock divorce attorney.
As a Parent Who Doesn’t Work Outside the Home
If you’re a stay-at-home parent, your life is almost certainly jam-packed from the moment your children rise early in the morning until the moment you take care of all those pressing details before heading off to bed and starting all over again the next day. And while it’s important work, it doesn’t pay anything and does little to advance your career opportunities moving forward.
In fact, the longer you’re out of the job market, the harder it can be to reenter, and you may find yourself right back at square one – earning minimum wage or near minimum wage – if you do. If you’re facing a divorce at this juncture in your life, it can be terrifying.
The status quo – or your children’s current living situation – likely supports you becoming the primary custodial parent, which is undoubtedly a relief, but you also face the prospect of having to support yourself and your household moving forward. This puts you in a tricky situation, and you need the skilled legal guidance of a focused divorce attorney in your corner.
What You’re Up Against
When both spouses work and share childcare between them – to one degree or another – they each have their own incomes, which makes breaking out on their own in a divorce a bit less jarring. Each has the building blocks they need to forge a new path forward, although it’s never easy.
As a stay-at-home parent, however, you may have no idea how to resolve cascading financial concerns. These issues will be addressed in each of the following divorce terms – as applicable:
Alimony, which is reserved for highly specific circumstances that can include a parent who stayed home as a homemaker and childcare provider during the marriage
Why the Status Quo Matters
As the parent who has devoted your life to caring for your children around the clock and to providing them with a well-ordered, loving, and safe home, you’ve established that you check a lot of the boxes in the list of best-interest factors that Texas courts turn to when making child custody determinations.
Texas courts are motivated by what’s best for the children in every child custody case they handle, and a primary factor is the status quo.
What the Court Means by the Status Quo
Texas courts understand how upsetting a divorce can be in children’s lives, and they’re committed to minimizing the pain they suffer. One means of accomplishing this is by maintaining the children’s current living situation – if it’s serving them well – to the degree that it’s possible to do so.
It’s this current living situation in terms of all the following that makes up the status quo:
The children’s home and homelife
The children’s schooling and daycare
The children’s place in the community
As the parent who stays home with your children and is more involved in their day-to-day lives, you are integral to the status quo, which supports your positioning as the primary custodial parent.
Additional Best-Interest Factors
In addition to the status quo, Texas courts consider a wide range of best-interest factors in relation to child custody orders, including all the following:
The preferences of those children who are considered mature enough to be involved
Each child’s emotional, physical, and educational needs, including any special needs
Each parent’s commitment and ability to adequately address these needs
Each parent’s commitment to successfully co-parenting with the other and to supporting the other’s close and ongoing relationship with the children
The level of involvement each parent has had in raising the children to date
The relationship each parent has with the children
Whether domestic violence or child abuse or neglect is a concern
Any additional factors that the court considers applicable to the case in question
As a stay-at-home parent, many of these factors apply directly to you, which—again—can put you in a better position to become the primary custodial parent.
Spending Ample Time with Each Parent
The State of Texas recognizes that children’s emotional needs are best served when they are able to spend a significant amount of time with each parent and to continue strengthening their relationship with each.
In response, the court generally awards each parent a generous parenting time schedule, but one parent may take on the role of primary custodial parent, which means the following:
This parent has the children for the majority of their overnight visits.
This parent has the right to choose the children’s primary residence – within the area specified by the court.
You and your divorcing spouse can both expect to receive a significant amount of time with your children. As the stay-at-home parent, however, you have a leg up when it comes to being identified as the primary custodial parent, but with this comes serious financial concerns.
Financial Concerns Moving Forward
As a parent who put your own career on hold – or who didn’t pursue a career during your marriage – you’re at a financial disadvantage when it comes to divorce. You don’t have an income, and finding a job with a years-long gap in your resume can prove very challenging.
Even if you do find a job fairly quickly, your earnings may be at the lower end of things, and even if you’re returning to a lucrative career that you shelved during your marriage, your earning power is very likely to have taken a considerable hit.
Childcare
The financial implications of divorce for you as a stay-at-home parent are clear, but none of this takes into consideration that, if you do rejoin the workforce, you’ll no longer be able to stay home with your children – and daycare will be a considerable expense.
Parenting is always a balancing act, but if you’re a parent who left the job force to stay at home and raise your children, divorce can make finding balance that much more challenging.
The Court’s Stance
When Texas courts rule on financial matters in divorce, they take varying factors into consideration, and one is the earning differential between the spouses. In other words, the court will not ignore the fact that you stayed at home in order to care for your children when considering divorce terms like property division, child support, and alimony.
While alimony is the exception rather than the rule, a case in which one spouse’s earning power is far lower than the other’s due to their role as a stay-at-home parent, it can support an alimony order.
The Family Home
A primary concern in many divorces is how the family home will be dealt with. This is often a couple’s primary asset, which makes it a critical part of property division. As a stay-at-home parent who has dedicated your time to raising your children, staying in your home as their primary custodial parent post-divorce may be your divorce priority, and it makes sense.
What’s Best for Your Kids
Protecting your children from the emotional havoc that comes with divorce to the degree possible often translates to changing as little in their lives as you possibly can, and keeping them in their family home can mean a lot. Divorce is a massive transition, and moving is also, and when the two collide, it’s a lot to expect of anyone – especially children.
Making It Work
Wanting to stay in your family home with your children is one thing, but making it work financially is another. The good news, however, is that it may be a possibility, and a seasoned Round Rock divorce attorney can help make it happen.
A Community Property State
Texas is a community property state, and this means that everything you, your spouse, or you and your spouse together come to own while you were married belongs to both of you equally. Upon divorce, these assets will need to be divided between you fairly – when the relevant circumstances are taken into consideration.
One of these relevant circumstances is each spouse’s contributions to the marriage, including the contributions of stay-at-home parents like you.
The Factors Considered
While this fair division can mean a 50/50 split, the court can order a lopsided division that favors one spouse over the other when the circumstances support it. The kind of circumstances that are carefully considered include all the following:
The size of the marital estate
Each spouse’s separate assets, refer to those properties that either of you owned at the time of your marriage and kept separate throughout
Each spouse’s education, overall employability – which can be especially important when one spouse was a stay-at-home parent, and earning power
Any wrongdoing, which can play a role even when the divorce is no-fault, such as if your spouse was having an affair and was using marital assets to make it happen
Any fraud on the community estate, which refers to an artificial reduction in marital assets in the buildup to divorce, such as if your spouse was spending down, gifting or giving away, or hiding marital funds in anticipation of your divorce
Each spouse’s age and overall mental and physical health
The number of children involved
Dividing Assets
If your family home is the most valuable asset in your community estate, staying in it with the children will require you to address your soon-to-be ex’s ownership in the property – which may or may not be half.
Sometimes, this is resolved by offsetting the other spouse’s share with additional marital assets that – when combined – equal the value of their ownership in the home, but this isn’t always a possibility.
Additional Options
If you can’t buy your spouse’s ownership in your family home out directly with other marital assets, additional options include:
Buying your spouse out over time
Obtaining a home loan of your own and buying them out directly, which may be difficult for someone in your financial situation
Continuing to own the house together with your ex until your children are grown and living their own adult lives
Each of these except the last will likely require you to return to the work world, which is a process that you’ll probably need to get started fairly quickly.
Child Support
As the primary custodial parent, which you’re likely to become, you can expect your ex to make child support payments to you, and these will augment your ability to continue financing your family home and raising your children in your role as their primary custodian.
Child support is based on state guidelines, and the amount you receive will reflect the number of shared children you have with your ex and your ex’s income.
Alimony
Most divorces don’t include alimony, but in a situation like yours, it becomes more likely. If staying home to raise your children left you unable to cover your reasonable needs – in relation to the standard of living achieved during your marriage – and your ex has the means to help, alimony may be ordered in your case.
Don’t Wait to Call an Experienced Round Rock Divorce Attorney
Brett Pritchard at The Law Office of Brett H. Pritchard is a savvy Round Rock divorce attorney who knows only too well how hard divorce can be on stay-at-home parents and is well prepared to unleash the full force of his legal insight and imposing experience in pursuit of terms that support you well.
Learn more by contacting or calling us at 254-781-4222 and scheduling a free consultation today.