You and your (soon to be former) spouse tried to have a civil divorce, but things quickly spiraled out of control. Now everything is being contested and it's become a major legal headache. It is possible to get out of this situation by carefully choosing your battles and knowing when to withdraw from unimportant details.
Don't Nitpick Child Custody
The hardest part of any divorce proceeding is managing child custody. All children deserve to have two parents in their lives, but it can be hard to decide who gets most custody of the child and how to split up visitation rights and child support. As a result, this battle often becomes the major part of any divorce proceeding, with both sides fighting over small things, such as what holidays the child spends with each parents and minor details in child support payments.
When settling this difficult issue, try to avoid nitpicking such minor concerns, such as who buys snacks, beverages, clothing, and other basic necessities and settle on having either parent buy them as these needs occur. Fighting to make your spouse pay for all of your child's clothing is a minor detail that could derail a divorce in a way that is just not worth it.
Avoid Hassling Over Minor Items
There are numerous stories about divorcing couples viciously battling over minor items. For example, huge fights over the food items in a fridge, luxury items (such as massage chairs), visitation rights with pets, inexpensive furniture, and other strange items often eat up excessive time in a divorce proceeding and are, in the end, a major waste of time.
Why should you avoid hassling over these minor items? For a few reasons. First of all, both of you likely have divorce attorneys, and if you spend six hours fighting about $50 worth of canned potatoes, you spent much more than that on legal fees. Secondly, there are just more important items to discuss, such as ownership of the house and automobiles. Let those remain the main focus of the proceeding.
Just Let Go Of Gifts
When dividing up your property, you may have a strong desire to either take back gifts you gave to your spouse or to hold onto gifts that they may want. This can be an emotionally difficult situation, because these gifts often represent better times, and they can be hard to let go. However, it is typically not worth going into a major battle over these gifts: simply let them go if your spouse wants them back.
Why? These gifts, while often seeming like a positive memento, may be signs of codependency. Putting great importance on them elevates an unrealistic and untrue history of the relationship in your mind. This can cause you to hold onto the relationship longer than you should, making it harder to recover emotionally.
By following this advice, you can be the better person and streamline your divorce. It's understandable that you want this final battle with your spouse, but thinking of this as a "battle" will only make it more difficult for you, your spouse, and your children.
That said, you don't want to be taken advantage of by your spouse. A professional divorce attorney can help streamline the process, smooth out the fights, and make everyone as happy as possible, given the circumstances.
Share11 August 2016
Family attorneys are hired to help families through all sorts of things. Everything from divorce, child custody and adoption can be handled by a family attorney. If you are planning to adopt a child, you will need an attorney to help ensure that everything goes well. There are so many documents that need to filed, inspections to be performed and approvals to receive. This blog will cover all different kinds of cases and situations that a family attorney may be able to help your family with. Everything from the good to the bad will be discussed right here on my blog.
