One of the roles of a family law attorney is to play defense with respect to dissipation of a marital estate during a divorce. In many cases, the family law attorney is concerned with limiting the spending of financial accounts for non-marital purposes during the pendency of a litigation. And in other cases, the family law practitioner’s goal is to prevent the sale or encumbering of real estate while the litigation is ongoing.

There are two vehicles an attorney can use to achieve the goal of preventing the sale of real estate: (1) obtain an order prohibiting the sale of real property; or (2) file a notice of lis pendens.