More Than Just a Legal Event

Divorce is often considered in terms of its legal nature. A divorce process seems to be both initiated by a legal event -- the filing of a petition in a court of law; and terminated by a legal event -- the order handed down by a family court judge.

What most people don't realize, even when they are in the middle of a divorce, is that there are actually four elements -- or dimensions -- of divorce, the legal element is only one.

The others are: the Family/Social component, the Emotional component, and the Financial component. Each of these components influences the others, and each makes a very large impact on the legal component as well.

In future blogs, I'll post a little more detail, as well as some helpful links, for each of these components. For right now, let me just use a few real-life illustrations that will help you see how they interact.

** A woman files for divorce, and seeks the advice of an attorney. The attorney tells her that if she will file a temporary restraining order (TRO) along with the original petition, then she will increase her chances of being able to keep the house. The woman wants to keep the house, so she follows her attorney's advice. Here are the emotions in-play at this point:

-- for the wife: fear/anxiety that she may end up homeless if she doesn't fight for her house.
-- for the husband: anger that he is being painted as 'the bad guy' by the court.

Both of these sets of emotions will turn the divorce into an uglier spectacle than it previously was, and both parties will likely squander more resources (money, energy) in the future because of these emotions.

** A man files for divorce, and seeks the advice of an attorney. The attorney tells him that if he wants to protect his assets, he should hide them prior to filing the original petition. The man does not want to split his hard-earned money with the woman he plans to divorce, so he follows his attorney's advice. Here are the emotions in-play at this point:

-- for the husband: fear/anxiety that he may be unable to provide for himself and children.
-- for the wife: anger that she is helpless to alter the situation.

Both of these sets of emotions will decrease trust between the parties, and will likely cause them to spend far more money on the divorce apparatus (discovery, interrogatories, accountants, etc.) because of these emotions.

And, in closing... a little bit of simple math. Divorce is an emotional tsunami -- a tidal wave of feelings and impressions and events that cause more feelings and impressions that goes on and on and keeps coming at you over and over and over. And most divorcing people just want it to stop. One way to make it stop (eventually) is to take every problem, every event, every impression, every suspicion, every emotion, to your attorney. An attorney will listen to it all, bill you $350 an hour (or more) for that.... and then perform whatever next-step legal function they can to keep the stream of $350/hour coming. It will stop when you run out of money (maybe). Another way to make it stop (sooner) is to take your emotional difficulties to someone who is trained to handle emotions. A divorce coach or counselor will listen to it all, bill you about $100-$150 and hour for that... and then help you find ways to settle your divorce quickly, minimizing the number of hours you'll pay an attorney, so that you and your ex-spouse can move on with your lives. When you break it down like that, the math is quite simple, isn't it?

Peace.