Process is defined as “a series of actions or steps taken in order to achieve a particular end.”
Just as the first year of marriage is the hardest, the same is true of divorce. The new solo (being single) definition of normal is a lot to grapple with, so give yourself time to adjust. Some days you wish you could feel better right away, but that’s not how it works. It may take months or years to rebuild your life. Remember the old adage that “Rome was not built in a day.” Be patient with yourself.
No matter how the divorce is going down, once you start to split up and separate an estate, things can become hairy. Anger and negative verbal conversations are typical once you have to work out finances, property, belongings, and custody issues. The gloves usually come off at this point and strong emotions—even hatred—can surface.
It’s a good idea to take steps to protect yourself by changing all of your IT information. For example, did you share e-mail accounts, cell phone services, or passwords? If you don’t change these, your ex could easily snoop—or even cause bigger problems.
Do you really want someone tracking your conversations or activities?
Alice, thirty-nine, left an abusive marriage and was separated from her husband for eighteen months before she filed for divorce. She was moving on with her life, making new friends, and working on her recovery. When she did file for divorce, she realized that the reason her husband never asked her any questions or wondered about scheduling with their kids was that he knew exactly what she was doing—he was reading her e-mails and checking her calendar every day. He admitted it during a heated conversation before the divorce was final.
It’s an easy fix to cut the ties that bind by setting up a new e-mail account and changing your cell phone provider. You can keep your number, if that’s of concern. Give serious consideration to protecting your interests and privacy during this crucial time. If you do not want to be spied on, make the effort to ensure that it doesn’t happen.
And do it sooner, rather than later.
This book is not a source of detailed advice on the legal aspects of divorce; there are plenty of books and resources about retaining a good attorney. The Accidental Divorcée does, however, want to share some thoughts about this aspect of the divorce process.
If you are an emergency rescue tech, the first time you saw blood you might have thrown up and felt sorry for the injured person. When you saw the injured or deceased, it was difficult, but after a few years on the job, it probably became routine to rescue people and witness suffering on the job. You are professional and kind to the victims you help, but it doesn’t keep you up at night.
If your divorce attorney has been in practice for a while, they have had plenty of people walk into their office either enraged or deeply upset, and usually sobbing and crying. This comes with the territory of being a lawyer who manages divorces. This attorney will sit and listen to your anger and rage and figure out how to get you a divorce settlement. You will expose your life, list your assets, discuss your children, and then make a deal with your ex-spouse through the courts. That is what divorce attorneys do: manage the process.
It’s important to keep in mind that your divorce attorney isn’t your best friend. Nor are they your therapist.
When Celia, forty years old with two preteen kids at home, whose husband had filed for divorce, cried one too many times while meeting with her divorce attorney, her attorney said, “My services are $350 an hour, and a good therapist is $180 an hour. Figure it out.”
It’s not uncommon for divorce attorneys in a geographic area to know each other and even be friends. Be aware that they may be hammering out a deal with an attorney they know. Familiarity between attorneys on opposite sides of the table can be beneficial to the divorcing spouses or not.
Don’t retain the same lawyer as your ex to save money. Some people handle the legal aspects themselves and that’s okay, but it’s a conflict of interest to have the same attorney. You no longer have coinciding interests.
Your divorce attorney is a part of a terrible chapter in your life. After a divorce, many people project their negative feelings onto the instrument of the marriage destruction: the divorce attorney.
Bruce, a forty-two-year-old financial planner with elementary-school-aged boys shares: “I acted horrible during my divorce and my divorce attorney saw the worst side of me. It’s a time I would rather forget. The first six months of separation were awful and I yelled at everyone, including him.”
One of the most difficult parts of divorce is that you are faced with making excruciating decisions when you are in the worst frame of mind to do so.
Do you want half of the retirement fund, or do you want to keep the house? Do you want to pay part of your salary for child support in a percentage, or the state-mandated rates? Who gets the baby pictures? Who gets the $4,000 super-special Sleep Number bed you bought for your tenth anniversary? Who gets the dog? Who gets the kids on holidays and birthdays? How are you going to come up with the cash retainer it takes to hire a good divorce attorney?
These are not easy decisions, and you need to realize that in the end, these are decisions that you will make alone. Do not underestimate the importance of the divorce settlement and how it can affect your future. Find someone who can keep you on track. Enlisting a family member or a good friend might make sense, if that person can be helpful and not get too involved in the situation. You will need support to deal with a divorce settlement while dealing with all of the other changes in your life.
Some people obsess over their settlement and making it difficult for their ex-spouse, while others try to control their spouse through the divorce attorney or courts. Others pick up that bottle opener they always liked, gather their personal things, and leave, without asking for much of anything. Some spouses accept credit card or other debts to get out of the marriage.
Erica, a thirty-nine-year-old orthodontic assistant, was overwhelmed with the legal aspects of divorce, and both of her parents were already gone. She didn’t feel right asking her friends to help her with splitting up an estate, so she contacted her financial planner, who became an invaluable resource and helped her to figure out budgets and gave her tough settlement advice.
James, a home remodeler with two small children, was going through a divorce. He had inherited a family home that might have to be sold to satisfy the property settlement agreement. His sister was very helpful, making suggestions to him when negotiating to keep the home. It helped him feel supported to run things by her, and in the end he did get to keep it.
The Accidental Divorcée offers the following from her subjective point of view (These are some things I have observed that are important when going through the legal aspects of divorce that were not brought to my attention, as well as subjective advice and things I wish I had known ahead of time):
* Of special note for women who are divorcing: Many divorce decrees that are governed by the state give the child to the noncustodial parent (many times the dad) during the month of July. Be sure to negotiate every other Fourth of July; it’s a big holiday for children. For example, Clara, a twenty-eight-year-old mom of two little girls, didn’t include this in her decree, and so she didn’t ever have her daughters for the Fourth of July while they were under eighteen years old. It created hard feelings with her ex-husband, and she wished she had negotiated this holiday at the time of the decree.
The day the divorce is final, it may or may not upset you. At that point, you are no longer legally joined. It can be a very big deal or you might feel nothing. Each person is different. For me, it was an incredibly difficult day. It’s best to have flexible plans so you can be alone if you prefer or surround yourself with friends or family if that makes you feel better.
Ronnie, a thirty-two-year-old rancher and horse breeder, felt ready for his divorce. After twelve years of marriage, it was a fairly amicable split and they had worked though the pastor at church to remain civil because of the kids. When they went to court, it was so formal. There were pews like they had in church when Ronnie was a child, and he felt small in the courtroom.
The judge briefly chatted with the attorney, asked if both of them were amenable to irreconcilable differences in the marriage, slammed down the gavel, and that was it. Game over. Ronnie thought to himself, “Well, we got married together and I guess getting divorced was the last thing that we ever did together.”
A new onset of grief hit Ronnie that day. It was so final. He had plans to go with some buddies to a basketball game, but he cancelled. Instead he went to his parents’ house for dinner. It felt good to be with people who loved him, who understood he didn’t want to talk that day.
You may be distraught and distracted during your divorce, but try to realize the importance of looking out for your best interests. Do your research. Ask friends, family, and knowledgeable professionals for support. A divorce decree is a legal document that will control many aspects of your life. If you have kids, it will dictate visitation and parental rights until your children are eighteen years old. If you can, put all of the soul searching away for a while to put on your business hat and work through things as best you can.
Friends and family may have a lot of advice. The advice may range from solid input to emotional opinions. The most important thing to remember is that the person who is getting divorced (you!) will be living with these decisions. This cannot be emphasized enough. You will make the final decisions regarding what will go into your divorce decree. You can listen to everyone you want to for advice and counsel, but in the end the decisions are your own.
If you think your spouse who left you isn’t hurting, think again. The cut is too deep to not bleed for a while, although you may never hear about it. One thing is certain: it’s stressful to orchestrate the major life change of divorce, whether the leaver realizes it initially or not.
Some professionals say that the leaver has emotionally detached during the marriage; they’ve already mourned it and are ready for the break. But what happens after they leave can be more difficult than they planned, and their actions may have long-term consequences that they didn’t foresee.
After deciding to leave a marriage, look at the stressful nature of putting that plan into action: moving out, telling friends and family, setting up a new household, executing the legal aspect of becoming unmarried, handling the financial stress of extracting money or finding a new source of money, and/or finding work. If there are children involved, they’re managing their schedules and routines, not to mention their grief. If they have left the marriage for someone else, they’re managing a new relationship on top of leaving the old one. Executing an exit strategy from a person’s current life is a lot harder in reality than in theory. It falls under the category of huge ordeal.
Many people who leave a marriage are judged harshly, and many lose the respect of their friends, family, and community, especially someone who leaves a spouse with a young family.
Does the leaver have any idea of the grief that they will endure from leaving a marriage? People who leave a marriage pay an inestimable price in terms of their reputation, children, family ties, financial situation—everything.
Don’t think that they are getting off without any serious consequences. It’s not possible.
Some recently separated or divorced people hear the word “karma” a lot during separation and divorce. It’s the idea that the universe will get even with someone for their bad (or good) behavior. You don’t have to strike back, let karma take care of it. If you can embrace it and give justice up to the universe, it might be a philosophy that could work for you during this time.
David’s father was a successful oil and gas man in Houston. David proved to be brilliant at investing and made a small fortune in the stock market. He had married out of college and later left his wife with two small children. His parents disapproved of his decision, feeling he should have stuck with the marriage.
When his parents retired and his father had a stroke, David found out that his sister was the executor of the estate, despite his adept financial abilities. When he asked his parents what had happened, his father told him that he didn’t have much character, abandoning his family like that. David ended up watching his sister turn over the management of his parents’ estate to a big bank, which didn’t pick stocks but chose expensive mutual funds that were moved regularly to pay big fees to the broker, eating away the money. His sister put his parents in a full-care assisted living facility, which was expensive, whereas David felt they could have been cared for at home.
His decisions as a young man cost him his family’s respect, no matter how competent he was. His actions in his twenties were still affecting how his parents thought of him at fifty.