Excerpts from How to Avoid the Divorce From Hell Preface So, you’re contemplating a divorce. You may be surfing the web, overwhelmed at the volume of material available and unsure which of it is trustworthy. Like anyone else in your position, you are frantically looking for books, instructions and other resources to help you navigate the rapids you are entering. This book is designed to do just that. Although I have been a divorce lawyer for many years, this book is not just about law. Its purpose is to let you know that despite the fact that the divorce process is foreign and frightening, grindingly slow, intensely painful and frustrating, you have a great deal more control over your divorce than you probably realize. You are not solely at the mercy of your spouse, the lawyers and a stranger in a black robe. Just as the choices you have made throughout your life have brought you to the point where you are charting this new course, you have choices to make at the outset of the case and at hundreds of forks in the path thereafter. Those decisions will largely determine the degree to which you experience pain and frustration on one hand or growth and renewal on the other. If you choose to engage in an adversarial procedure, consumed with hostility toward your spouse, I guarantee that hostility will be returned in spades. If, instead, you commit to steering through the process as cleanly as possible, the rewards will be manifold. Something is not working in your life. If everything were perfect, you would not be reading this book. You are either considering making some major changes which you believe will improve the quality of your life, however difficult they may be, or those changes are being forced upon you by your spouse. I am here to tell you that the process can be constructive, cleansing and, oddly enough, positive. It is possible to come out on the other side, look at yourself in the mirror and know in your heart and in your soul that you did the best you could, that you did nothing to contribute to your own or another’s pain, and that when you made a mistake, you corrected and learned from it. We can ask nothing more from life. Divorce, usually, but not always, involves a man and a woman. The impact of gender is unavoidable. In order to avoid the cumbersome he/she, I have chosen to use gender-based pronouns interchangeably. An example referring to how “she” reacts may just as well mean “he.” Also, since so many states now recognize other forms of domestic partnerships, the couple may be she and she, or he and he. The principles which I discuss here apply as much to domestic partners as they do to marital partners. You may find the same subject woven through several chapters. There is a good reason for that. Many readers will use this book as a resource and consult isolated chapters rather than reading from cover to cover, and I want the discussion to be complete. In other instances, the topic is just so important that I want to reinforce it. This book is the product of nearly thirty years as a divorce lawyer. It is designed for the ninety percent of divorcing couples who are basically sane, reasonable people who want to get through the process as whole and unscarred as possible. Most people facing divorce are scared. The system is public, cumbersome and impersonal. You must put your faith in strangers whom you hire to protect your interests and guide you through a dizzying maze of legal concepts, some of which will not make sense to you. The very fabric of your life is ripping, from where you live to how often you see your children to whether you can pay your bills. This book is designed to give you the tools to make good decisions as you wend your way through the process. It is not designed to give legal advice. That is for the lawyers. Neither is it a substitute for a therapist. Most importantly, it is not intended to replace your own judgment. Each person is responsible for the manner in which he processes this, and any other life experience. Ultimately, each of us faces divorce, as any other life-transforming process, as an individual. We are the sum of our past experiences and imprinting, and the process will not be the same for any two people. You must decide what works for you and discard what doesn’t. As you read the following pages, many of you will have no difficulty seeing your spouse. Do yourself a favor. Be honest and look again to see if you find yourself as well. I have made a number of suggestions you can use to make good decisions. You can choose to make the process a healthy, growth-inducing passage or dig a bitter, vengeful pit in which you wallow for the rest of your life. Choose wisely. |