Is your marriage or relationship ending, or has it ended? Are you feeling hurt and angry?
If that is what you are going through, the idea of a Good Divorce or a Kind Divorce might sound impossible. Maybe you don’t feel good or kind yourself right now? Maybe you don’t trust your partner or spouse to be good or kind?
You might be thinking more about revenge than resolution. You might wish that you never again had to see or speak to your ex. You might be more sad than angry.
Most people feel a complicated range of emotions when a relationship ends. It is normal to grieve the end of a relationship. In our upcoming book, “Breaking Up Without Breaking Down”, Dr. Tina Sinclair describes the grief that happens at the end of a relationship, even if you are the person who ended it. At MELCA we know that “The chaos of grief makes it hard to approach negotiations logically or with energy. You need understanding from your professional advisors about what you can manage, and for your spouse to understand what you are going through.”
Our recommendation is that you look for counselling support, and ideally work with a collaborative divorce team, so that you can be supported to come to the idea that making a war out of your separation will not feel like a win in the end. Both of these are on offer at MELCA.
The truth is that you can never “win” a contest about your money or your children.
As a lawyer who has retired from a couple of decades of litigation, I know that the pain of separation is not reduced by “lawyering up”, going to court, or even thinking about it.
Courts are a revenge fantasy; believe me I know.
The personal and financial cost of litigation and adversarial negotiations between lawyers is extreme. My observation is that the fighting often becomes worse than the original problem, because a litigation mindset totally excludes the idea of emotional recovery or any end-of-relationship counselling for a couple.
The pain of separation is not healed by responding to your early revenge fantasies. The way to truly recover and win is to be supported in your emotional struggle, by people who do divorce everyday, and are committed to reducing your pain and helping you to focus on the healthiest future possible for you, your family and your wealth. “Breaking Up Without Breaking Down” is a guiding light for that pathway, but until it is published in early 2017, call MELCA to learn more about how compassion meets with excellent legal and financial planning advice.
Marguerite Picard
Collaborative Lawyer and very Former Litigator
