Divorce Considerations
Considering Divorce with Care
Look Before You Leave
Identify the problems in your marriage
It can be a mistake to end a marriage before fully examining why it no longer works. What exactly has gone wrong with yours?
Certain marital problems (lack of trust) can have relatively straightforward reasons (infidelity or abuse). Others (always arguing about money) can be more complicated. Clearly identifying your most serious problems can help you determine whether it’ll be more costly and painful in the end to stay married or get divorced.
Can your marriage be saved?
Marriage counseling or couples’ therapy can help clarify the difficulties you’re experiencing and determine whether your marriage is worth saving. Counseling can help you to rehabilitate your relationship, or to separate amicably.
Separation as a trial divorce
Trial separation can also help in a decision about whether to divorce. Separating can give you a preview of life outside of your marriage: who lives where, how money is earned and spent, what sort of contact if any is necessary, and whether living apart could over time be better or worse overall than living together.
Divorce Readiness
Protect your money
Staying together is often about communication and reflection. Getting divorced can be in large part about money.
As a first step, make a detailed record of all your financial information, such as your bank and retirement accounts, tax returns, and valuable property—house, cars, etc. No divorce can be finalized without this information. You should gather it right away to prevent the worst-case scenario in which your partner takes money or property that must be divided and hides it, or runs.
Breaking news to your spouse
It’s best to be up-front with your spouse if you’ve decided to divorce them. Plan on where, when, and how you’ll share your decision. It can be more effective to deliver bad news in a private setting where both parties feel comfortable, and to explain your reasons first before saying that the marriage is over. Allow time for acceptance and for the new reality to sink in.
Manage Feelings
If your spouse is the one wanting the divorce
Getting a request for a divorce can be much more emotionally difficult than giving one. Especially if you’re taken by surprise, you might feel that you’ve been betrayed and lied to, or even that your identity as a person is coming apart. Learning that your partner wants a divorce can feel physically painful, as if you’ve been punched.
Pull yourself together and begin protecting yourself. If you don’t trust your spouse, you may have to act very quickly. As before, the first step is to protect your money. If you aren’t the spouse who typically handles your shared finances, start by obtaining copies of your recent tax returns.
Emotions in a divorce
An initial feeling of freedom sometimes masks unexpressed negative emotions that can then boil over quickly. Feelings are natural and important to acknowledge. If you are having trouble controlling them or describing them clearly, personal therapy or marriage counseling can be extremely helpful.
Always keep the big picture in mind
Divorce is likely among the most difficult things you will go through because it affects all aspects of your life and leaves you facing an unknown future. To weather the powerful emotions you may experience during your divorce, try always to keep the long term picture in mind and to move toward that picture step by step. Even after very difficult divorces, people find a new life. A new life is waiting for you.
Avoiding the Worst
Divorcing in court is a process full of hostility and fighting. Each step can be a battle, and attorney fees can pile up in the blink of an eye. Avoiding court is likely in your best interest because it saves money, keeps more control in your hands, and reduces post-divorce disputes. You can have the same access to legal information and advice in an out-of-court divorce as you would in an in-court divorce, often for less than half the cost.
Divorces are hard on children, and parents worry greatly about the impact it will have on them. How do you and your spouse tell your children? How will custody work? Will you and your spouse be able to cooperate on a parenting plan? When it comes to children of divorce, the bottom line is that if their parents can’t agree on what’s best for them, the court will decide. It’s in your children’s best interest for you and your spouse to work together and minimize conflict over custody and parenting details. Therapy/counseling can again be of great help here.
Mediation, which involves a professional mediator who facilitates discussion between your spouse and you, is the step that can be taken before seeking a more combative solution in court. Divorcing couples can use mediation to reach fair decisions about child custody and money in a way that’s much less stressful and expensive than court.
Facing the Worst
Escaping violence & Obtaining restraining orders
If violence or abuse are a problem in your marriage, it’s advisable to have cash, clothes, and other supplies set aside and a safe place to live (where your spouse won’t look for you), such as a shelter, a friend’s home, or a hotel before you announce your intention to divorce. If you and your children have had to leave suddenly to escape your spouse, you should contact family court right away to request emergency custody and a restraining order.
Fighting in Court
If a court divorce is necessary, things will likely get very technical. Each spouse and their lawyer must provide information and documents such as pay stubs, credit card statements, tax returns, real estate, retirement, life insurance, health histories, inheritances, and debts. You and your spouse will likely have to give depositions under oath, answering any question that’s related to the divorce. Lawyers on each side will call witnesses, who might be your friends or family members. Court divorces can
easily cost $70K and up. These are all important factors to keep in mind, especially in your initial discussions/negotiations with your spouse.
The Future
Child custody and visitation
After the divorce, custody of your children will either be shared by you and your spouse, or one of you will be the primary custodian and the other will usually have visitation rights. Whether your children spend equal time with each of you, or more time with one than the other, you will both likely maintain equal responsibility for deciding aspects of their upbringing, such as education, medical care, and religious practices—this requires co-parenting. Parenting your children separately adds many layers of complication to an already challenging task. Seeking help from a mediator or a trusted family member or friend in creating a detailed parenting plan can reduce conflict between your spouse and you. Fighting less over custody will lessen the negative impact of the divorce on your children.
Child support and spousal maintenance (alimony)
Child support determinations are calculated according to established criteria such as parental income and percentage of custody. These calculations are more or less standardized.
Spousal support, or alimony, can be more subjective. In an in-court divorce, a Hawaii judge must consult guidelines related to factors such as length of marriage, standard of living, and child custody status, but the final calculation is made on a case-by-case basis. It’s up to the judge how much and for long one spouse will provide alimony to the other.
Should you leave your future finances in the hands of someone who knows little to nothing about you or your spouse? Unless you find it impossible to agree, either on your own or with the help of a mediator, it may be a risk to do so.