Going through a divorce is a difficult period in your life and once you have decided to go your separate ways you will want to get all the paperwork over and done with as soon as possible so that you can move onto the next chapter in your life.
Filing for divorce can be a challenging and difficult thing to do, which is why people like Lawalways are often used to provide the professional guidance needed to complete the process.
You will also want to keep everything as low key as possible in order to protect your privacy and keep your stress levels down as well, so here are some pointers on how to seal off your divorce record as efficiently as possible.
Why seal a divorce record?
Your divorce details will normally be a matter public record but there are certain circumstances where you would definitely prefer to keep the details of the transaction private.
You might ask the court to seal your records as a way of keeping financial disclosures private, or when a child is involved and you believe they could be vulnerable if the information is made public.
Unfortunately, courts don’t often seal records just because you are embarrassed about the details, but there are plenty of valid reasons when sealing would be a good move.
Demonstrating good cause
You should remember that the default option when it comes to divorce is that the records will be available publicly, so you might want to seek out professional guidance to help persuade the judge why it would not be a good idea to make your divorce record available to anyone who wants to view it.
You need to demonstrate good cause if the court is going to consider your request for privacy.
Filing a motion
There are two ways to approach the task of requesting privacy and have your divorce records sealed.
If your ex-spouse doesn’t agree to ask the court to seal your divorce records you can always go it alone to try and get a positive outcome.
However, if you are both in agreement that this is what you want the thing to do would be to file a joint motion.
Partial sealing
Courts are not always that keen to seal records and this means they tend to seal at least a portion of the record as opposed to the whole thing.
A good example of how this would work in practice is that you might be asked to compromise by agreeing for the court to only seal parts of the divorce that could be damaging or sensitive in the public domain.
Keeping sensitive information away from the process.
It will depend on the state where you file for divorce but it may be potentially possible to ask the court to waive the requirement for spouses to file certain documentation.
This is known as waiver of filing and you may want to seek out a professional opinion if this is a route that you want to take in order to keep sensitive information away from your divorce details.
You might think that divorce is a private matter but it pays to be mindful that your details might be freely available to the public unless you take steps to avoid that happening.
