Tampa Divorce Attorney.

Thor Hartwig is a men's divorce attorney that has dedicated his practice exclusively to divorce and family law in the Tampa Bay area. Having gone through a divorce in Hillsborough County, he understands first-hand the emotional and economic hardships that a man faces when going through a dissolution or dealing with ongoing family law issues.

With this in mind, he is dedicated to streamlining the legal process, focusing on the issue at hand and ensuring that the emotional distractors do not bog down a case and mount-up unnecessary legal fees.

There are many unknowns when going through any legal proceeding. In a divorce, whether the ones filing or not, it is common for men to want to know if they will have to pay spousal support, get to see their kids, keep their retirement, or even if they can continue to live in the marital home.

In order to help alleviate these unknowns, it is a priority for Mr. Hartwig to help educate a client on the general law of the case and the likely course to come. A client can expect candid advice and realistic expectations. He will also maintain open lines of communication via his personal cellphone, keep clients fully aware of updates and promptly return phone calls or emails.

All clients will receive competent legal counsel with the following family law goals in mind:

• Explore all reasonable options and create solutions

• Encourage settlements through skillful negotiation and mediation

• Control litigation costs and maintain reasonable legal fees

• Exhaust all acceptable courses of action, but when necessary, aggressively fight to protect a client's legal rights

➤ LOCATION

13311 Winding Oak Court Suite C Tampa, FL 33612

☎ CONTACT

(813) 526-2712

Thor@mensdivorcetampa.com

Areas of Practice

Initial Consultation

FEATURED ARTICLE:

How to Find the Best Tampa Divorce Attorney

What are the Main Issues in a Tampa Divorce Case? 

When people in Tampa want to get divorced, it is important to first understand what the issues are. A lot of people have pre-conceived ideas of what is important in a divorce, but it really comes down to four basic areas that can be remembered by the ironic acronym PEAC (like PEACE).

Parenting Plan: If there are minor children involved in the divorce, then a Parenting Plan is required. This plan covers Parental Responsibility, Timesharing (Custody), Insurance costs, Extracurricular costs, Claiming Dependents for tax filings, and other similar things.

Equitable Distribution: This consists of the division of all marital property, assets and debt, as well as identifying non-marital property, assets and debt, and having it excluded from equitable distribution.

Alimony: Generally, this only applies to marriages longer than seven years and where one party has a need for it, and the other has the ability to pay it. When calculating the length of the marriage, the divorce filing date becomes important. 

Child Support: If there are minor children in the marriage, then child support must be calculated. This is based largely on the income of each parent, the number of overnights each parent has, plus the cost of daycare and medical insurance paid by each parent. 

Of course, there are other aspects and important details to the divorce process, but those four things encompass the vast majority of what will be put into a Marital Settlement Agreement or Final Judgment. If you live in the Tampa Bay area and need an attorney to get your divorce started, click here. 

What you Can Expect in a Tampa Divorce Case

Many people in Tampa that want to get divorced have questions about the process, including what things are important during a divorce. Each case is unique, and consulting a Tampa Divorce Attorney is the best way to get the most accurate answers, but there are general things that a person can expect while getting divorced.

First, it generally doesn’t matter why you are getting divorced. Florida is a no-fault divorce state, so unless there are incidents of domestic violence, or other criminal actions, then the reason for the divorce really won’t matter too much.

At least on paper.

Judges are people, too, and it is impossible for them to not consider (at least subconsciously) some severe injustice caused by one party in a divorce.

However, one popular misconception is that if someone commits adultery then this can be used against them in a divorce.  Generally speaking, unless there are serious misuses of marital funds during the affair, then the adulterous act will probably not affect the outcome very much.

Again, at least on paper.  

Second, the divorce process in Tampa may not be as fast as you’d expect.  

Unless the parties agree on everything and actively work towards getting all paperwork signed, then the divorce process in Tampa Bay can take a long time. This includes Brandon, Plant City, Valrico, Riverview and the rest of Hillsborough County.

After filing for divorce, you have to wait to get the signed summons back. Then you have to get the other person served with the summons and the divorce petition. This could take a week, or more.

After being served, the respondent has 20 days to file an answer to the divorce petition. Then, about 90 days after the signed summons was returned, there will be the first Case Management Conference (CMC).

At this CMC, the judge will likely order mediation.

Depending on whether the parties get a private mediator, or if they use the Family Mediation Services at the courthouse, this could take up to several months to schedule and attend.

Then, if there is not a full agreement at mediation on all outstanding issues in the divorce, there will likely be a follow-on CMC.

Then there will be a final hearing set (trial) for the remaining issues. If it is longer than four hours, then there will also have to be a pre-trial conference about a month before the trial. Then you will have a two-week window in which the trial itself will be held.

The pre-trial and trial could take several months to schedule, given the case-load in Tampa family law courts.

Although a divorce in Tampa Bay can take some time, there are strategies that attorneys can take to help stream-line the process, such as trying to get to mediation before the first Case Management Conference. Mr. Hartwig makes it a goal of every case to do just that. This doesn’t mean giving-in to every request in order to achieve a speedy divorce, but it does mean giving honest advice on the limitations of what a client may want, and what he may get at trial.

Of course, when it comes time to standing firm on an issue and riding the full process out, then that’s what he will do to ensure his client gets the best possible outcome.