Divorce can be exhausting. When you are simultaneously managing a career, children, finances and the emotional upheaval that comes with the end of a marriage, an email from your divorce lawyer asking for another bank statement or another answer can easily become something you promise yourself you will deal with tomorrow.
The short answer is that you do not need to be involved in every detail, but you cannot check out entirely. Hiring a lawyer to negotiate for you does not mean stepping out of your own divorce. Good communication with your divorce lawyer is an important part of managing your case effectively, especially when substantial or complicated financial issues are involved.
Your lawyer can handle communications with opposing counsel, explain the law and negotiate on your behalf. What your lawyer cannot do is know everything you know about your marriage, your spouse or your finances. That is why effective communication matters.
In a high-asset divorce, relatively small details can lead to much bigger financial questions. Perhaps you remember your spouse mentioning an investment that does not appear on a financial disclosure. Maybe a bonus or other compensation typically arrived at a certain time of year. Perhaps marital money was used to improve a property that your spouse claims is separate. There may be trusts, business interests, stock compensation, deferred compensation, investment accounts or other assets whose history is not apparent from a current account statement. Do not assume a detail is irrelevant and leave it out. Let your lawyer decide what matters.
If your lawyer asks for financial records, try to provide a complete and organized response rather than sending documents piecemeal over several weeks. When responding to an email that contains several questions, answer each one. If you do not know an answer, say so.
The same principle applies when you have questions for your lawyer. Instead of sending a separate email each time a question occurs to you, consider keeping a running list of non-urgent questions and sending them together in one email.
Perhaps the most important rule of communicating with your divorce lawyer is also the simplest: tell your lawyer the truth, including the facts you wish were not true. Your lawyer would much rather learn about a problem from you than hear about it for the first time from opposing counsel, at a deposition or in court.
Depending on the circumstances of your case, reducing unnecessary communication with your spouse may make your life considerably easier. One of the benefits of having an attorney is that you do not have to personally negotiate every issue with your spouse. But do not extend that silence to your divorce lawyer. A productive attorney-client relationship is a partnership. So, if you need to ghost someone during your divorce, make it your ex, not your divorce lawyer!