“If you don’t know where you’re going, you’ll end up someplace else.”
– Yogi Berra
All too often in family law, I see people who have failed to really think through their short-term and long-term goals. They may articulate goals like “I want a fair resolution” or “I want to pay as little as possible/I want to get as much as possible” or “I want to win/I don’t want to lose”.
Without a deeper exploration of why those goals are important or what those goals look like from a practical perspective, they are short-changing themselves. Having a clear sense of your long-term goals helps to establish your short-term goals. Knowing what you ultimately want helps to answer:
How much I am prepared to spend to get from here to there?
What is the best course of action to take now to get what I want down the road?
How is this decision now in support of or contrary to where I am going?
What is the next step?
Whether you hire a lawyer on an unbundled or legal coaching basis, a good lawyer should ask you about your goals to ensure that your (and their) actions align with those goals. And when the actions – or the content of something you or they have written – are not in alignment with your stated goals, you then have an opportunity to make a difference choice about your actions or to change your goals.
Check back next week, ‘H’ is for …