Check out the desk of a family law attorney and you're likely to see a box of tissues positioned on the client's side of the desktop. During the early stages of the divorce proceedings, the tissue box gets plenty of use. Clients who are consulting with counsel about the legal issues in their divorce often well up with tears and apologetically explain that they are sleep deprived, unable to concentrate and completely overwhelmed by the divorce process. Many of these clients ultimately find strength and support by participating in counseling during the divorce. That said, since divorce-related anxiety has its own pattern and predictability, I offer the following practical tips to avoid losing your mind as you navigate the legal process of losing your spouse:
1. Separate from your spouse before, or as soon as possible, after the divorce filing. Living with your spouse during the divorce is a bit like quitting a job you despise and then continuing to work there for six months. If marital discord has resulted in a divorce filing, it is unlikely that the angel of peace will descend on your household once you've started the dissolution process. It is more likely that the conflict will escalate and one party, usually the husband, will be forced out of the house with a protection order, taking only his toiletry bag and cell phone. In this lawyer's view, until you separate from your spouse, all the weekly massages and therapy sessions in the world aren't going to soothe your soul during the divorce proceeding.
2. Retain an experienced attorney whose style and personality puts you at ease from the first consultation. When you hire an attorney for your divorce, you are hiring a problem solver. Divorce-related stress is often a legitimate response to a host of parenting or financial problems. Hiring the right attorney to help solve these problems should considerably reduce your anxiety. If you leave the first consultation with doubts about the attorney, go with your gut and interview another one. Keep in mind that the only thing more stressful than arguing with your spouse is arguing with your divorce attorney.
3. Block out a series of two-hour time slots to work on your financial disclosures. While most divorcing spouses have completed homework assignments, loan applications and tax returns, they are often unprepared for the flood of emotions which may arise during the completion of financial forms required for their divorce case. For the spouse who is in denial about the divorce, the financial forms are a cruel reminder that the proceeding is actually underway. For the spouse who has a lesser income and/or a lack of knowledge about the parties' finances, the financial forms can be a terrifying reminder of the spouse's need to assume financial independence from their mate. If you're anxious and emotional when you're filling out the forms, take ownership of the situation and complete them in small intervals. Just like your sixth grade teacher, your divorce lawyer won't accept the excuse that, "My dog ate the Financial Statement."
4. Make a wish list that reflects your priorities in a proposed divorce settlement. Divorcing parties who have children, homes, businesses, pension plans and marital debts are often overwhelmed by the daunting process of untying the bonds of their marital knot. Although financial settlements should be held in abeyance until you've exchanged disclosures, you should commence the divorce proceeding with a basic list of your priorities in resolving these issues. If you have minor children and their well-being is not at the top of your list, make a new list. By identifying and prioritizing the myriad list of issues in your divorce, you will hopefully realize that you're a checklist away from making it to the finish line.
5. Commit to an exercise routine. In the age of social media, divorcing parties often spend way too much time sending nasty text messages or trashing their spouse on Facebook. If you're stressed about the divorce and angry with your mate, take your marital rage to the park or the gym and turn it into a high energy calorie burn. For the jilted spouse who enjoys working out to music, I recommend downloading Gloria Gaynor's, "I Will Survive" and playing it on repeat mode.
Although the foregoing tips are designed to alleviate your divorce-related anxiety, they are not meant to suggest that divorce can or even should be free of some level of sadness or stress. From this attorney's perspective, sometimes there is simply no replacement for a good cry. Indeed, having specialized in divorce cases for the past thirty years, I am firmly convinced that the most disturbing divorce client is the one who claims to have completed the entire dissolution process without having shed a single tear.
Divorce lawyers are not marriage counselors or psychotherapists. They are not trained or skilled in those areas.
Some divorce lawyers are not even good at divorce law.
Personality is what will have you retaining a divorce lawyer who can manipulate you into trusting her/him as your case drags out and you are (over)billed for nonsense like being told to "move out of your house" and to "wish" and to "go work out" that does nothing to advance your legal case?
It is bunk. It is valueless. It is a cost with no benefit.
Divorce lawyers should stick to divorce law. And should handle the legal aspect of your divorce properly and efficiently.
Whether you work out or not? As if your divorce lawyer cares.
Your divorce lawyer does not even care about your case or what happens to you in or after the divorce.
Your divorce lawyer probably doesn't even like or respect you.
You are a source of profit to your divorce lawyer, is all.
Be your own counsel. Inform yourself. Be professional and careful.
If your divorcing spouse has a divorce lawyer while you are representing yourself, the divorce lawyer will hate it. Why? Because when there is a common sense person representing himself/herself, you will cut into profits. There won't be two divorce lawyers both able to work in concert on needless motions, squabbling and nonsense in the case that does nothing but generate legal fees for them while depleting their clients assets.
Make sure you're not a man.
That is what a divorce lawyer tells you while overbilling you and doing nothing to advance the legal part of your divorce case.
Why is it that divorce lawyers blather rather than handling the legal aspects/process of the divorce properly?
Divorce is simple -- you divide up assets, you share custody/placement of the children, and you determine support obligations.
And a divorce lawyer will have the client do all the paperwork.
I literally have done better without a divorce lawyer.
==> My questions:
What do you as a divorce lawyer actually do to help your clients?
How does having a divorce lawyer make a difference for a client other than that the client loses all of the money that the divorce lawyer bills in legal fees?
Aren't the outcomes in divorce cases for the most part bounded in any event?
In my experience, it's hard enough dissolving a long term marriage. Even harder is paying an attorney big money to tell you things like, "fill out your cost of living expenses". That list is just another thing for the piles of useless paper.
Saw former attorney in Starbucks recently. She hid behind her wall of hair and scurried out of the store. Don't rely on your attorney to do anything that you can't do yourself. Seems everyone finds this out to late.
Is she an attorney?
Here in California, millions have gotten their divorces on their own, using readily-available forms, such as those available from Nolo Press.
Attorneys who get paid by the hour may wish to prolong the proceedings--and to create animosity among the parties--for as long as they possibly can.
Smart couples work out their affairs on their own, so they can keep as much of their assets as possible.
Those who are too stubborn--or too ignorant--to have an amicable divorce may find that there is little or nothihng left after they've paid their attorneys.
Maybe the worst advice ever. If I had moved out of the house, even for one night, my ex would have accused me of abandonment and I would not have gotten custody.
2.3.4 5.
See one.. That simple..
For the divorce lawyer, the money available to converted from your household assets into her or his legal fees billed to you comes when the divorce lawyer can manufacture, maintain or escalate conflict and breed animosity and mistrust and delay the proceedings.
The divorce lawyers do not care about you or your spouse or your children.
The divorce lawyers care about legal fees.
Divorce is an industry.
Divorce lawyers are running businesses. Your hard-earned household assets are the source of the profits.
Is your post intended as a form of lawyer advertising?
Now the real questions:
After you "too get frustrated when [you] see an attorney churning a case" what do you do about it? ... Do you report the offending divorce lawyer to the bar association?
Or do you just let it go and throw up your hands and tell your client that the added legal fees that you are billing her/him in the case are not your fault but instead are the result of the other divorce lawyer.
How does your "hoping" do anything? Are you doing anything beyond "hoping"?
Are you getting involved in any divorce reform measures?
It is a BAD system. Are you trying to make the system better?