Keeping divorce civil when it’s inevitable

1) File a co-petition for dissolution of marriage rather than an individual petition. Why send a sheriff out to the house or to your spouse’s work, alarming the kids or the co-workers and driving up your spouse’s blood pressure, just to bring papers for something you both already know about? A co-petition is friendlier, but it makes both of you show up at the courthouse together to file.

2) Use mediation rather than full-fledged lawyers. If a lawyer settles a family law case, his fee source dries up. Many lawyers encourage people to be competitive and nasty, giving the minimum and taking the maximum. That’s no way to end a marriage. That’s a way to end a family. Mediation is nicer, quicker, and cheaper.

3) Check your emotions at the door when you negotiate with your spouse. We get it. You don’t like each other. That’s why you’re getting a divorce. Human concerns matter greatly, and they definitely have a place, but just venting when you’re trying to talk about concrete divorce issues is pointless. At a certain point, the emotions have gotten more than their due and you have to talk facts.

4) Fight somewhere else besides your home, if you must fight at all. With children, especially older kids, you don’t know when your parenting time begins and ends, so they may just show up at the house, even when you least expect them. Making it harder to fight by having to go somewhere else is an added benefit of picking another location. That location, once you’ve picked it, needs to be in your divorce agreement.

5) Recognize that anyone can get a divorce, and even if you don’t want to divorce, there’s nothing you can do to stop it if the other spouse is determined to go ahead. It takes two people to get into a marriage and one to get out. With no-fault divorce, there is little, if anything, that you can do to prevent your spouse from divorcing you. Don’t stall the inevitable.