Recitals, disclosure affidavits and consent orders outlive the settlement that produced them, and the wording is read again the day someone asks to change it.
A separation agreement is drafted once and read many times, usually by people who were not in the room. Five years later a judge, a lawyer for the other side, a lender, or a pension administrator picks it up cold and takes the words at face value. What they see is not the negotiation, the compromises, or the exhaustion at eleven at night in a conference room. They see a document, and often a court file around it: a financial affidavit, a proposed order, an exhibit list, whatever the clerk stamped and kept. The careful reader checks the paperwork with that future reader in mind.
1. The recitals, which are doing more work than they look like they are
Recitals sit at the front, in the paragraphs beginning "whereas," and they read like throat-clearing. They are not. A recital that says the parties have exchanged full financial disclosure, or that each has had the advice of independent counsel, or that the home was purchased with funds from one party's inheritance, becomes the agreed factual backdrop for everything after it. When one side later argues the agreement was signed without knowing about a bonus or a brokerage account, the recital is the first thing quoted against them. Read each one and ask whether it is true, and whether it will still be defensible after memory fades.
2. Whether the numbers in the affidavit match the numbers in the agreement
Financial disclosure affidavits are sworn, and in most states they are filed. They set out income, deductions, monthly expenses, debts, and asset values as of a date. Where an agreement recites a salary of a certain figure and the affidavit shows something different, or where the affidavit lists a business interest the agreement never mentions, the mismatch is permanent and searchable. Attachments matter here too, because a federal return filed with the IRS, which is responsible for the tax treatment of alimony and dependency claims, often travels into the file as an exhibit. Reconcile the two documents line by line before anyone signs.
3. What happens to the agreement once a judge signs the order
A consent order is a settlement the parties wrote and a judge adopted. The practical question is whether the whole agreement is attached and incorporated, summarized in the order, or merged into it so the agreement no longer exists as a separate contract. Each route changes what can be enforced by contempt, what has to be sued on as a contract, and what a later judge is allowed to modify. Ask plainly which one the draft does. The answer should appear in a single sentence near the end, and a careful reader finds that sentence before signing rather than after.
4. Who is entitled to pull the file
Family court files are, as a default in most states, open to the public, and increasingly to anyone with a browser and a docket number. Some categories come out automatically: minors' names in some jurisdictions, account numbers, Social Security numbers, medical and psychological evaluations. Everything else stays visible unless somebody asks a judge to seal it, and sealing is a motion with a standard, not a checkbox. If a business valuation, a custody evaluation, or an address that needs to stay private is heading into the file, the time to raise it is before filing, when redaction is cheap and a protective order is straightforward to obtain.
5. The clauses that decide what a future judge may change
Variation is where old wording earns its keep. Support provisions often turn on whether a change is described as a substantial change in circumstances, whether a specific event such as retirement or a child's emancipation is defined, and whether the parties agreed the amount is non-modifiable. Custody schedules turn on whether "reasonable" and "as agreed" were used where a calendar should have been. Parenting language that felt generous at signing can read as vague under pressure. Define the trigger, define the notice, and name the arithmetic, so the person asking for a change knows what to prove.
None of this requires suspicion of the other side. It requires reading the draft the way a stranger will read it, without the context, and asking at each paragraph what a person who was not present would understand it to mean. That is the work a good family lawyer bills for, and it is the part of the file that keeps paying out for years.