Chicago Divorce Attorney Blog

We Underestimate the Fury We Will Face

Many divorces start out friendly and then turn into train wrecks. One reason for this is because we are not properly prepared to handle the potentially explosive nature of divorce settlement discussions with our soon-to-be ex.

A barrage of fury awaits us at the bargaining table where we are prone to retaliate by adding our own fury to the mix. When our spouse says something confrontational, we become angry and retaliatory. When we are insulted, we insult back. In doing so, we aggravate our partner and aggravated partners do not want to settle, they want to fight.

No one has ever won an argument by alienating their opponent.

We fire back because we seem to think that firing back is free. It isn't. It complicates the divorce process and causes unnecessary litigation. We are not giving our spouse a pass when we do not return their attack, we are giving our wallets a pass.

Boxers do not get upset when they get punched and football players do not get upset when they get tackled. They expect to be punched and tackled and we should expect to be confronted and insulted. For us to think otherwise is naïve.

The best way to prepare for being insulted or verbally attacked is to anticipate its happening. When you know it is coming, there is no shock and there is no justifiable reason to react instinctively (and at your own expense). Simply expect an attack and you will automatically be in a position to brush it off.

Accept in advance that your spouse will be volatile or difficult; and, if you hope to prevent your divorce from becoming unnecessarily painful, lengthy, or costly, never, ever fight back no matter how tempted you may be to do so.

We Think We Have More Legal Rights than We Do

Most of us enter the divorce arena with preconceived notions of the law has in store for us. Unfortunately, much of what society has conditioned us to believe in this regard is often inaccurate.

Misinformation about divorce law and the legal system is perpetually circulating among the public. This is primarily due to decades of legend and hand-me-down stories and myth.

Our friends and family mean well, but their knowledge is generally incomplete or erroneous because it can only be as accurate as the bits and pieces of information that they have gathered from other lay people. We all know how stories become distorted as they spread throughout a community.

Consequently, many spouses enter the divorce system believing that they have more legal rights than they really do. When they learn that the law will not give them the settlement that they were expecting, they become frustrated, angry, and difficult to deal with.

This leads to unnecessary conflict and delay because most divorces will ultimately settle in a way that is consistent with the way the law is, as opposed to what one or both of the parties wishes the law to be.

It is asking a lot to expect an early settlement when one of the parties entertains unrealistic, though perhaps understandable, expectations about his or her entitlement.

It takes time, patience, and willingness for the misinformed party to become able to adjust their thinking so that they can consider other settlement alternatives.

One Spouse Wants Vengeance

Another delay surfaces when one of the parties feels wronged or angry. They see themselves as the "victim," and they want the court to know they have been victimized. These spouses don't care if the case takes a long time; they just want the judge to know how bad their partner is.

They count on the judge sharing their outrage and making the other party suffer, but this is just wishful thinking on their part. The judge is not going to declare who the victim is, and then punish the wrongdoer spouse in the town square for all the neighbors to see.

Seeking vengeance in the court system takes too long, costs too much, and usually hurts us just as much as it hurts the person we want to hurt. All it does is make it harder for the parties to reach a settlement.

Most aggrieved partners do not take kindly to the fact that the court cannot consider misconduct as a factor in determining monetary or property awards.

It is asking a lot to expect an early settlement if one of the parties persists in entertaining unrealistic, though perhaps understandable, expectations about what the legal system will actually do for them.

The judge does not compensate the victim spouse for the other spouse's bad behavior. Our divorce courts follow only the facts and the law. They do not take our hurt feelings or need for vengeance into account.

Divorce courts are not criminal courts and have neither the luxury nor the inclination to punish a spouse for behaving improperly toward his or her partner.

Divorce Papers Make People Mad

Divorce papers are upsetting and they can start wars all by themselves. The "papers" that are necessary to start a case qualify as an barrier to settlement because of the destruction they so often do to the parties' hopes for working things out smoothly.

When one of the spouses chooses to institute a divorce case, his or her attorney is required to file "divorce papers" with the court. These papers must conform to the statutory requirements for such a document and these requirements are never pleasant sounding to the person against whom the papers are filed.

Even if the lawyers make the papers as non-offensive as possible, most people get very upset when they read them. No one wants to be on the filing end of divorce papers and no one wants to read about their lives in the formal and accusatory manner in which they are set forth in these documents.

Even if the parties are intent upon having a friendly and cooperative divorce, the initial papers that are filed with the court cannot ever be as friendly or as cooperative as the parties might like them to be.

Finger-Pointing

This obstacle causes us to focus on the cause of the divorce when our focus should be on how to resolve the divorce.

The longer we spend dwelling on the reason for the divorce is the more time and money we will spend getting divorced.

Angry people see themselves as victims. This makes us want to blame and blame does not settle divorce cases; instead, it starts wars. Blame causes anger and anger causes blame. They feed off one another at our expense.

Our spouse does not want to think of us as the victim, they see themselves as the victim. They want sympathy from us, not the other way around. The way they see it, we should be apologizing to them and acknowledging our guilt for victimizing them. To blame them is like throwing gasoline on a fire.

Finger-pointing and blame do not settle divorce cases.

Feelings Count More than Money

If a divorce case goes to trial because the parties cannot resolve their financial differences, it usually has more to do with feelings that it does with finances.

As part of what I discussed in the "We Don't Know How to Get Through to Our Spouse" post, this is another of our classic misunderstandings. Most divorce wars are not about money, they only sound like they are about money. They are about unresolved feelings, which do not appear on a ledger. We have to soothe the feelings before we can settle the divorce.

However, we cannot soothe the feelings until we can talk about them constructively and this takes more time than an early settlement allows. We are rarely content with a settlement offer if we still have something to say and society has not taught us how to state our objections without stirring up trouble.

We must allow our spouse to vent without our becoming aggravated, and we must learn how to express our feelings sensibly and safely.

Feelings are a major part of divorce negotiations. Attempting to negotiate a divorce settlement without addressing feelings is like trying to land an aircraft without fuel. While this is doable, it does make the landing much harder.

We Don't Know How to Get Through to Our Spouse

This obstacle is a classic. It involves something that logic should prevent us from attempting, yet we all try to do it anyway (your blog host included). We invariably try to settle our divorce case by relying upon the same communication skills that probably caused the divorce to begin with.

In many cases, our inability to communicate effectively with our partner may very well be the primary reason for the marital breakup. Even when poor communication isn't the biggest reason, it always plays some role in bringing our marriage to an end.

Trying to convince our partner to agree to an early and a friendly divorce settlement requires that we be on the same page with them during our settlement discussions. This requires an extraordinary degree of cooperation and communicative ability.

If we were unable to achieve and maintain this high level of communication during the marriage when things were good, what chance do we have of doing it during a divorce when things are bad?

Thus, it is foolish on our part to rely upon something to keep us out of trouble when its failure to work is most likely the reason that we are in trouble to begin with.

The Parties Make Decisions Differently

In addition to what I discussed in the "One of the Parties Does Not Want a Divorce" post, another problem arises if the parties have different styles of decision making. Big decisions take time and the decision to divorce is not an exception. The spouse that wants the divorce has already made his or her decision, but the other spouse usually requires additional time in order to process things and think them through carefully.

Even if the non-moving spouse is trying as hard as they can to adjust to the fact that a divorce is imminent, he or she may have a differing style of decision making than does the moving party.

Some of us can comfortably make large purchases more quickly than others can, and some of us are more methodic in our thinking and need more time to contemplate making the same decision.

This mostly overlooked barrier rears its head when human nature causes the moving party to lose patience with the non-moving party's failure to proceed at a speed that is acceptable to the moving party.

The moving party must always honor the way that the other party processes his or her choices. The moving party must also be patient and allow the non-moving partner's timetable to control the situation. To do otherwise, is to invite trouble that can easily lead to a painful, lengthy, costly divorce.

One of the Parties Does Not Want a Divorce

Divorcing parties rarely reach the decision to divorce at the same time. Typically, one of the partners is 18 to 24 months ahead of the other in realizing that a divorce is likely to occur.

The announcement of a divorce often devastates the spouse that is not ready to get divorced. The disinterested party typically goes into an emotional state that prevents them from being able to begin settlement negotiations as early as the other may wish.

This hurts the moving party's hope for an early resolution. It further endangers the parties' chances of achieving a friendly divorce. The partner seeking the divorce is rarely capable of exercising the patience that is needed to keep things peaceful while waiting for the other spouse comes around.

This agitates the reluctant spouse and opens the door to further ill feelings between the parties.The moving party must be aware and respectful of their partner's need to take more time than the moving party might wish.

Making the decision to divorce or coming to grips with our spouse's decision to divorce is always difficult, to say the very least. However, once we finally accept that our marriage is indeed heading for divorce, we find ourselves facing the next difficulty.

Since most of us do not like agony or throwing our money away, the next difficulty has to do with minimizing the pain and cost of the divorce itself.

We want to get the settlement that we deserve and we don't want to have to waste time, energy, and money getting it. This means we must achieve a friendly out-of-court settlement as quickly and as easily as possible.

To do this we must be able to persuade our soon-to-be ex to join us in working toward a cooperative resolution - one that is to our liking.

Before we can reasonably expect to do this, we must be aware of nine invisible obstacles that stand in our way. How we handle these obstacles often spells the difference between a peaceful divorce and a train wreck.

Some of the obstacles are everyday, common sense items that we are already somewhat familiar with. However, very few of us truly understand how destructive they can be.
Without being forewarned, we normally tend to brush them off and minimize their impact.
The nine follow up posts will identify these invisible barriers.