Pittsburgh Marital Settlement Attorneys
Our Pittsburgh lawyers draft Marital Settlement Agreements
for our divorce clients and our attorneys can also review Marital Settlement Agreements drafted by your spouse’s counsel.
If you have questions about Marital Settlement Agreements in Pennsylvania we would be happy to speak to you.
Law Offices of Scott L. Levine, LLC
425 1st Ave - 6th Fl., Pittsburgh, PA 15219
Phone: (412) 303-9566 - Fax: (412) 202-3852
When you are resolving an uncontested divorce it is
a very good idea to utilize a Marital Settlement Agreement to set forth the terms of how the martial assets and/or debts
will be divided. Without addressing the division of marital property prior to the entry of a final divorce decree the parties
may leave important issues unresolved leading to problems down the road.
For example, the most common issue we
encounter is where a couple has handled their divorce without using an attorney and later discover that there are problems
since they did not properly account for dividing their major assets such as a home or cars.
If your divorce is finalized before you have properly resolved home ownership either
through a sale or refinance, parties wishing to divide their interest in the home post-divorce may face additional litigation
including an expensive partition action. Further, once a marriage is legally dissolved, but a home remains owned jointly,
there are further risks of creditors of one party encumbering the asset.
Other people believe that they do not have enough
assets to warrant the use of a legal agreement. However, even modest means families can benefit from using a formal settlement
agreement which addresses transfers of vehicle ownership, checking or savings account balances, or how any past or future
tax deficiencies will be divided. Child custody is also regularly included in a settlement agreement for cases where formal
custody has never been addressed.
For
contested divorces, a marital settlement agreement can be used to resolve issues of non-contention and can provide a more
cost-effective alternative to litigating some or all of the parties economic issues.
A Marital Settlement Agreement can be drafted to include provisions
to deal with just about everything involved with the dissolution of a marriage and may address whether there will be any spousal support or alimony, and if so the duration and amount of same.
The MSA can include an agreement
for custody of children if applicable and can be as detailed as you wish to make it. The MSA
can include language about child support although the obligation to pay child support is not dischargeable by agreement.
In addition, the MSA can also lay out
in great detail the specific items or assets that each party is to receive, and the terms associated with their distribution.
MSA's are limited only by the wishes of the parties, and by the fact that they must conform to the legal requirements
of any other contract.
