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"Believe me when I tell you - the last thing I want to do is hand my hard-earned money to a lawyer. I&amp;#039;d love to get this divorce all sewn up between the two of us with minimal interaction, minimal paperwork and minimal fuss. I&amp;#039;ve since faced the hard reality that it just isn&amp;#039;t going to work like that. I liken it to trying to fix a leaky faucet yourself in order to save money on a plumber and ending up with a burst pipe flooding your basement later in the day. It&amp;#039;s (as my granny used to say) &amp;quot;penny-wise and pound-foolish&amp;quot;. The reason lawyers cost so much is because they know all the things you didn&amp;#039;t even think to ask, or take into account. I&amp;#039;ve been basing a lot of what I&amp;#039;m going to be asking Peter for (support-wise) on his income vs. mine. The lawyer tells me that&amp;#039;s extremely short-sighted and not an accurate way to look at this. What I need to look at is not just what he&amp;#039;s earning now, but his potential of future earnings vs. mine. Well, that certainly throws things in a new light! Since I have primary custody of my kids, I (like a lot of women, I suspect) take on most of the burden of their day-to-day care. That includes before and after school pickup/dropoff/childcare coordination, taking care of them on sick days (and leaving work when they&amp;#039;re sick at school), helping out with school activities, shuttling them to afterschool clubs and sporting events... the list goes on and on. The list also makes it pretty much impossible for me to move up in my job, as well. All the higher-paying corporate positions generally expect a higher time commitment out of you, and the ability to travel or have a more flexible schedule when an important project or deadline is looming. I simply can&amp;#039;t meet a commitment like that, not when I&amp;#039;m the one who has to wrangle the kids around. Peter not only outearns me by a lot, he also has a higher chance of moving up. And since he pursued the graduate degree and special certifications (all while I held down the fort after work and shooed the kids out of his hair so he could study and get his projects done), his opportunities are much broader than mine for the future. Not only do I need to take that into account, but according to my lawyer, those are points the court will definitely consider and weigh as we decide on support. Did your spouse have higher &amp;quot;potential&amp;quot; earnings than you? What effect, if any, did that have on your support agreement? "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.womansday.com/relationships/dating-marriage/a47601/why-you-need-a-lawyer/>