When you divorce, you must adjust many details of your life. From deciding where you will live and how to pay your expenses to adjusting your work and social schedule to fit your new life, divorced or divorcing individuals have many things to do. If you have student loan debt, learning how your divorce will affect that debt and deciding how you will manage it now and into the future is something that you must do. The first thing that all divorced or divorcing individuals with student loans need to know is that it is crucial that you keep your loans in good standing.  If you or your soon to be former spouse are having trouble making your scheduled student loan payments, contact your lender right away. Tell the lender what is happening in your life, and ask them to explain your options for keeping your loans in good standing. You may be able to postpone your student loan payments to a later date, temporarily suspend payments through forbearance, or make reduced payments for a while. Taking action to keep your loans in good standing now can help you avoid defaulting on your student loans, no matter how awful your current financial picture may be.

In addition to taking steps to keep all student loans in good standing, divorcing couples must decide who will ultimately assume legal responsibility for each student loan debt. This is a part of the property settlement process, where the couple works with their attorneys to determine who will pay which debts and who will walk away from the divorce with which assets. Texas is a community property state. The deciding factor for who must assume responsibility for each student loan debt is when each of those debts was acquired. If either of you obtained student loans before you married, those loans are the responsibility of the spouse who obtained them. Some couples attend college after they marry or they take turns going to college and working. If either of you took out student loans after you got married, those loans are part of your marital property. In a Texas divorce, marital property is divided equally among the divorcing spouses. Since marital property includes the total of all of the debts and all of the assets that the divorcing spouses obtained during their marriage, you and your soon to be former spouse can each expect to be held responsible for an equal dollar amount of those shared debts and to receive an equal dollar amount of the shared assets.

Whether you, your spouse or both are ordered by the court to take responsibility for student loan debt according to your divorce decree, it is critical that the lenders receive notice of the divorce and of the order stating who is responsible for each loan. As I mentioned before, if you run into trouble with making timely payments on your loans, contact your lenders right away. Many lenders will be able to present you with a variety of options for keeping your student loan repayment on track, and you can select a repayment option that meets your current needs.

Keeping your student loan payments on track is part of working through your Texas divorce. For help with all of your Texas divorce questions, call Texas Family Law Attorney Alex Tyra today, at (903) 753-7499.

It is no secret that many kids look forward to summer. The extended break from school gives kids more time to relax, spend time with friends and family, and enjoy their favorite activities. Parents love summer too, but work schedules and other adult responsibilities can sometimes make planning a fun summer for the whole family challenging. If a parent is divorced or divorcing, the challenges they face in designing their summer are multiplied by the fact that they must make their plans within the confines of their possession and access schedule. If divorcing parents have not yet come up with a workable possession and access schedule, the task of planning their summer schedules can be even more difficult.

Fortunately, stress and difficulty do not have to hold you and your kids back from having a great summer. When you work with your attorney and your children’s other parent and their attorney to create a possession and access schedule that is doable for everyone, you’ll have all the information that you need to make summer plans that you and your children will enjoy. If you’re starting your divorce, or if you and your children’s parent are having trouble coming together to decide on a possession and access schedule, now is the time to make creating that schedule a priority. Schedule some time to work with your attorney, your children’s’ other parent, and their attorney to attend to it as soon as possible.

The Texas family court has a standard possession order which it awards in cases where parents cannot agree on a possession and access schedule. Most pairs of divorcing parents do not want a schedule where the kids are with one parent most of the time and with the other parent on Thursday evenings and the first, third, and fifth weekend of each month. Parents are encouraged to set aside their differences, put their heads together, and work with their attorneys to create their own possession and access schedule. Parents who work together to create a possession and access schedule are almost always much more satisfied with the plan in the long run than parents who are awarded the standard possession order by the court.

As you work with your attorney, aim to create a possession and access schedule that clearly states who will spend time with the children when both during the school year and summer vacation. Include specifics for holidays and birthdays. Take care to include rules for how and when last-minute changes can be made to the schedule. Also, plan for communication between the children and each parent when they are in the care of the other parent as well as rules for notifying the other parent about plans to attend camps or other activities far from home and vacations. While you’re working on making a possession and access schedule, you may wonder whether all of the hard work, negotiation, and, yes, compromise is worth it, but as I stated before, parents who do work together to create a schedule instead of allowing the court to award the standard plan are much more satisfied with the outcome. It is almost always worth it to hang in there and do the work until you reach an agreement.

If you would like to talk with an attorney about divorce in Texas, call Texas Family Law Attorney Alex Tyra with your Texas divorce questions today, at (903) 753-7499.