There are many different emotions that we experience heading into a divorce. A couple of big ones are the sense of losing control and the fear of the unknown and unexpected. We are afraid of being unfairly treated and taken advantage of. We have never done this before and have maybe heard horror stories that are the basis to our fears about the possibility of things going very badly. In this week’s blog we explore this common sense of feeling out of control at the start of a divorce and strategies for overcoming it. These strategies include diving into getting educated, working to collaborate and communicate with your spouse, tackling the situation through mediation and avoiding involving the Court in the decision making process.
Feeling out of control. Most of us have not been through divorce before. Much of the stress and fear experienced comes from not knowing what to expect. This not knowing can quickly lead us to a frightening place of fearing for the worst. Everyone seems to know somebody who has gone through a horrible divorce battle. There are highly contentious, knock down, drag out, never ending divorces so being concerned makes perfect sense. Moving toward something that you know nothing about and that can be long, expensive and contentious, and, by the way, will impact your finances and your relationship with your children, is understandably stressful. So, what can we do to address these feelings and restore some sense of order as we move forward?
Education. One strategy that you can move right into is getting educated. You have not done this before but others have and there is information out there that will allow you to learn from their experiences. You may not know what your rights and responsibilities are, but again, you can find plenty of information online, in books, in podcasts, blogs, etc. that will provide you with very detailed information about the issues you will need to sort out, what the law has to say about those issues, and what options might be available. You can go speak to an attorney and get a general idea on what the issues are and what the outcome might be. Being proactive by getting yourself educated can go a long way toward alleviating the strain of not knowing.
Communication and Collaboration. I can’t think of a much more stressful way to go into a divorce than having all communication shut off with your spouse and at the same time each of you separately going behind closed doors to speak to and get advised by your own attorney. What is your spouse up to? What are they scheming to do with their attorney? Maintaining an avenue of communication can be an effective way to take some of the fear out of it. I understand that divorce attorneys cannot represent both sides so these meetings happen separately. Continuing a conversation about expectations and seeking to collaborate to begin figuring out a practical way to resolve the pending issues should remain an option despite obtaining independent advice. The advice from the attorney may be to not discuss the issues with your spouse. This approach unfortunately can result in escalating the tension between spouses and can stand in the way of progressing toward a solution. The more you are able to communicate and the more collaborative that communication can be, the more likely you will both begin moving from that fearful place of unknowing to that more comfortable place with a sense of mutual respect and progress toward a common goal.
Mediation. Even better, perhaps, then meeting separately with your own attorneys, is to jointly select a mediator to sit down with to help guide you through your divorce. With separate attorneys there is that fear of what is being said behind the other closed door. In mediation, the education of both spouses takes place transparently in the presence of one another. This joint education begins as early as the first session. The mediator will provide you both with the framework of the law so that you both can set right to work understanding your rights and responsibilities entailed in the divorce. The mediator cannot provide legal advice, but does provide very detailed information about the law to deliver you to a well informed place to make good decisions for yourself.
The result is that mediation can take away much of the fear about what the other spouse might be up to. Each spouse can certainly seek their own independent legal advice as they go through the process, but there is a commitment to getting jointly educated so that fairness can be accomplished in a collaborative setting. Mediation involves sitting right down at the same table to cooperatively get to a well informed place to be able to make decisions, to assure that everyone has all the information they need, and allows for putting the options on the table and communicating to come up with a solution that works.
Maintaining control of decision making. Above, I have spoken about using mediation to facilitate getting educated and to help maintain open and clear communication with your spouse as you move through the process. These are both ways to help you overcome those fears of the unknown that we are talking about. The other way that mediation supports you gaining control of your situation is that it keeps the Court out of the decision making. When you decide to divorce it is you and your spouse that are the ones who get to make the decisions. Your options are to work together and agree upon the outcome, or if you cannot do so, submit your issues to the Court and have a Judge make the decisions. Reaching an agreement with your spouse maintains your control over the issue. Submitting the issues to the Judge puts that control in the Court’s hands.
There may certainly be times where agreement cannot be reached. It may involve one spouse not being reasonable, or where you simply cannot agree to work together outside of Court. In those cases maintaining control over the decision making may not be an option. Mediation requires a willingness to sit down and give it a try and requires a rudimentary willingness to be reasonable with each other, and if you can at least commit to that much, you can work together to keep the Court out of it.
The beginning of a divorce is stressful. It is a shock to the system. It is an upheaval of all that we are used to. It is normal to feel afraid and vulnerable. There are some things you can do right away to start addressing this sense of loss of control. Get yourself educated. Seek to communicate with your spouse and come up with a plan to work with them to have open dialog about what you are each looking for and how to accomplish fairness. Choose a process such as mediation that gets you jointly working right away with a professional to help you with the education and the communication and the problem solving. Finally, be willing to work with your spouse to maintain control of the decision making so that the Court does not need to be called in to make these important decisions. Control is there for the taking.