Are you currently married but are thinking of divorcing your spouse? Do the two of you have one or more children together? Even if the two of you have a mostly amicable split, divorces involving children can get messier than you might expect. Before you proceed with the filing of any paperwork, you'll want to consult with a child custody law expert You should do this even if your spouse is currently in agreement with you in regards to potential custody arrangements. Some things that you may want to discuss with an experienced attorney include:

Vacations: Depending on the child custody law in your state, planning a vacation after a divorce can be a messy affair. What if you want to take a vacation when it's your time to have the child or children, but you don't want to take them along? What if you do want to take them along? It's important to lay out plans and procedures for these situations now before the issue of taking a vacation comes up. The sooner you get this taken care of, the easier it will be to start making plans for the future.

Personal illness: If one of you becomes sick or injured, it's important to agree on who will be looking after the child or children. Perhaps you have a busy job and can't simply drop everything in order to suddenly have to pick up the kids after school. Or maybe the two of you don't agree on which relative is best qualified to babysit for any length of time. Although child custody isn't always helpful in this regard, this is another area where deciding what to do beforehand is going to help ensure that everything is able to continue smoothly even if an unforeseen event should occur.

Child support: The issue of child support can be a complicated matter in child custody law. Even if the two of you will hold shared custody and have approximately the same amount of income, you may wind up having to pay child support to your soon-to-be ex-spouse. An experienced lawyer can look at your current situation and help you put together a statement as to why you shouldn't be expected to pay child support in this case. Of course, a good attorney isn't going to help you to shirk your parental responsibilities if it turns out that you should have to pay child support for whatever reason.