Pullman, MI Divorce Law Firms & Lawyers

In my opinion, you are entitled to a share of the equity in the house. After all, a mortgage payment was made for 18 years while you were either contributing to household income or taking care of hearth and home. It is irrelevant whose name is on the deed.

She can't "withhold" it but she also does not have to go to the work and expense of procuring it for you if she believes you owe her or her firm money. You can go to the clerk of the District Court where your divorce was finalized and purchase your own certified copy for a fairly nominal fee. As to the unpaid amounts, I would suggest that you talk with your attorney directly and ask for an accounting, itemized of how the charges were incurred. Often court dates are moved and rescheduled because of the court or procedural things that are not the attorney's fault, but she still had to spend time dealing with those issues. She may very well have been working behind the scenes for you and earned that amount, but you will want to ask her to explain what she was doing.

The community portion of a pension or retirement account, meaning what was earned toward the account while married, is subject to division by the court. You should speak with an experienced family law attorney to discuss this issue. Depending on relative values of your respective pensions or retirement accounts there may be a way to offset values or amounts due from one to the other. What this means is that rather than each of you getting half of the other's pension there may be an adjustment so that, in your circumstance where yours is substantially larger than hers, nothing comes out of her pension, but what she gets from your pension is adjusted downward to reflect what would be your portion of hers.