Section 1
What a lawyer needs before they can advise you
Advice is judgment applied to your facts. Before a lawyer can give it, they need four things in front of them. Without them, the first meeting is a consultation and the real work starts after: a retainer, then weeks of information gathering, calculations and drafting before anyone advises you on your own agreement. With the package, the consultation becomes the advice meeting.
Dates of cohabitation, marriage and separation, the children, who lives where, and which issues are in play.
Income, every asset and debt, and the documents behind them, for both of you.
Child and spousal support under the Guidelines, the property division, the pension, and the payment that balances it.
Your proposal on each issue, so the lawyer can tell you whether it is fair and where it carries risk.
Divii works through all four with you, on your own or together, and keeps the result in one file. That file is where the package below comes from.
In my experience, the retainer to begin that work is most often $5,000, and the work it pays for is what Divii does for $495.
Section 2
The package Divii builds for your lawyer
Everything you enter in Divii flows into nine documents you can print or export and hand to your lawyer, or share with them inside your file. They open the meeting with the facts, the disclosure list, the numbers and a draft agreement in front of them, which is what it takes to give you advice in the first meeting.
Names, ages, occupations and incomes, the dates of cohabitation, marriage and separation, the children, and the issues in your file.
The documents your situation calls for, with notes on when an appraisal or a pension valuation is worth paying for and when it is not.
Your proposals on parenting, child support, spousal support, security for support, property, pension, RRSPs and CPP, with the amounts, in one summary.
The rotation week by week, each parent's share of time, and the transitions, as built in the Parenting Time Planner.
Statutory holidays, special days, school breaks and Christmas, each with the arrangement you chose, written as agreement terms.
Each parent's Guidelines income and table amount, the spousal support ranges, and the after-tax picture under each scenario.
Every asset and debt, its value, any excluded property, and the equalization payment that balances the division.
An estimate of the pension value earned during the relationship, with the assumptions shown, so you can see whether a formal valuation is worth it.
The full agreement drafted from your decisions, in the language BC family lawyers use, ready for review. Page one shown.
Sample file. The names, addresses and figures are fictional.
Or skip the printing. Invite your lawyer into your file and they see all of it: the tools, the numbers and the draft, live, with comments and tracked changes on the agreement.
Section 3
Where lawyer time is well spent
With the groundwork done, a lawyer earns their fee at four points. Use them, and skip the rest.
Before you start, if you need protectionWhere there is family violence, coercive control, a serious power imbalance, or a spouse who will not disclose finances, hire your own lawyer first. Divii can still organize the information and run the numbers alongside them.
On a specific questionThe tax consequences of a division, a business or a trust, a pension with unusual terms, a spousal support range that feels wrong. Bring the number and the question, with the package behind it.
On a sticking pointWhen the two of you disagree on one or two terms, advice on where the law likely lands can settle them. So can mediation, through Divii Mediated.
On the finished agreementIndependent legal advice before signing, from a lawyer reviewing your interests alone. With the package in hand it is a short, focused meeting. When you book, ask for a consultation for independent legal advice, so the lawyer knows you need advice on an agreement, not representation from scratch.
Wondering whether you need a lawyer at all? What makes a separation agreement binding without one.
Section 4
How to run the meeting
Send the package ahead if the office will take it. Write your questions down and put the one that matters most first. Keep the meeting on strategy: what is fair, what is risky, what to hold firm on and what to give. The facts are already on the page, so you do not need to tell the story from the beginning.
Bring your lawyer a question, not a pile of paper.
More on choosing a lawyer and how involved to make them in The role of a family lawyer during your separation, and on the meeting itself in How to prepare for your first consultation with a family lawyer.
