EP 134: The Easy Way vs. The Hard Way – Share This Episode with Your Soon-to-be-Ex

This episode is intended to be shared with your spouse, especially for those of you who are earlier in the divorce process.

As you begin your divorce, you may not realize how much control you have over the divorce process. It is possible to avoid a lot of fighting over the assets, the children, and anything else that needs to be settled in the divorce. If you are able to avoid a long, drawn-out legal battle, it will benefit both spouses in the long run. It often benefits your children as well, if you have any.

No divorce is easy.

However, some divorces are more difficult than others. If you and your spouse are able to be fair and reasonable, you can work out a lot of the biggest issues between the two of you. For example, you can discuss over email what are the top five things that you want, within reason. Your spouse can reply with their top five priorities, and then you can negotiate. By doing so, you can do a lot of the hard work before giving it to your attorneys to iron out the details.

Sometimes, one spouse takes an aggressive approach to the divorce. Attorneys tend to exacerbate that attitude, which gets very expensive. Instead, you can stay in control of the process and spend less on attorney fees. If you start out asking for something that is obviously going to cause problems, like full custody of the children (assuming there was no abuse), then it creates a lot more fighting, which creates conflict. If you have children, you will most likely still have a relationship with this person, and adding conflict to the divorce process will not help you stay on good terms. If your financial situation is relatively uncomplicated – splitting a house, some assets, and a couple of cars – then a big legal battle will cost more than it is worth.

Often, people going through a divorce are driven by their emotions. You may have a lot of anger towards your spouse. However, an efficient and fair divorce will be the best for both of you. It will help keep your relationship intact so that you can speak to them when you need to, particularly if you have kids. Try to stay rational in this very difficult time. A divorce is a business arrangement, and the more you treat it as such, the better off you will be.