The four decisions every divorce has to make

When you read court paperwork or talk to a lawyer, the sheer volume of words can make the whole thing feel like a labyrinth. It isn’t. Underneath the jargon, every divorce in every state is trying to settle the same four things. Everything else — the forms, the hearings, the deadlines — is procedure built on top of these four decisions.

Here they are.

1. The kids

If you have minor children together, the court has to figure out who is responsible for them and where they live.

This actually splits into two separate questions, and confusing them is the most common mistake people make reading their own paperwork.

A typical arrangement is joint legal custody plus one parent who has the kids most weekdays, with the other parent on weekends and a slice of holidays and summer. There is no "default" pattern — many shapes are possible, and the right one is whichever the parents can actually make work week to week.

If there are no minor children together, you skip this decision entirely. The case still exists, but the most emotional part of the conversation is off the table.

2. Money in: support

Support is ongoing money flowing from one ex-spouse to the other after the divorce. It comes in two flavors.

Child support is money paid by the parent who has the kids less of the time, to help cover the cost of raising them. Every state has a formula — most use income and parenting-time percentages as the main inputs — and the formula spits out a number. Courts can deviate from the number for unusual circumstances, but the formula does most of the work.

Spousal support (also called alimony or maintenance, depending on the state) is money paid from one ex to the other when there’s a big income gap, usually after a longer marriage. It is not automatic. Some states use formulas; others use a list of factors. Many divorces end without any spousal support at all.

The thing to know is that these are two different conversations, decided by different rules, even though they both look like "monthly check from one ex to another" on the surface.

3. Money out: property and debt

Everything you and your spouse own and owe gets sorted into two buckets.

How the marital bucket gets divided depends on your state. Most states use equitable distribution — the court divides things fairly, which doesn’t always mean equally. Nine states use community property — start from 50/50 and work backward. (More on this in why your state matters.)

Debts get the same treatment. A car loan, credit-card balances, the mortgage — all of these get assigned to one party or the other, or split.

4. The rules going forward

This is the one most people don’t realize is a decision until the paperwork forces them to make it. Once the divorce is done, you and your ex are still going to interact — over kids, over money, sometimes for years — and the divorce decree is where the ground rules get written.

This shows up in three main places:

• Parenting plan. If you have kids, this is the schedule and the rules: who has them which days, how decisions get made, how communication works (text only? email? a co-parenting app?), how holidays rotate, what happens if someone wants to move.
• Support terms. Not just the amount, but the method of payment, how raises or job losses affect it, what happens when a child ages out.
• Property division terms. Not just who gets what, but the timeline. If one spouse is buying the other out of the house, when does that happen, and what happens if they can’t refinance?

These rules become a court order. Violating them later isn’t a fight — it’s a contempt motion.

What isn’t on the list

Notice what isn’t one of the four:

• Whose fault it was. No-fault divorce is the standard almost everywhere now. The court isn’t weighing in on blame.
• What you say to each other in private. The court only cares about the four decisions above.
• The shape of the relationship before divorce. Unless there’s a specific legal claim (abuse, financial misconduct), history doesn’t matter to the four outputs.

Why this matters

Once you know there are only four decisions, divorce paperwork stops looking like a wall of foreign language. Every document you read, every form you fill out, is doing one of these four things, or it is procedure (deadlines, signatures, certifications) attached to one of them.

When you’re lost, ask: which of the four is this about? That single question will get you back to the map almost every time.