You've hemmed and hawed. Maybe you've been in counseling for months; maybe you've just been quietly observing -- unable to believe it -- as your marriage disintegrated into ignored conversations and diverging lives. No matter the situation, you've decided that you want a separation. (I'm assuming, by the way, that you've thought this through a great deal and aren't just impulsively making major life decisions.) I've compiled a few steps based on my personal experience, my professional experience, and conversations with other people, that may give you some guidance in this extremely traumatic time. Bear in mind, this applies more to logistics than it does emotional preparation.
First stage: Information Gathering
- Tell someone you trust about your plans. This is important both for safety concerns as well as emotional support.
- Are you planning on moving out, or asking your spouse to leave? If you plan on moving out, where will you go? A friend's house? How long would you be able to stay there? Will you find a Craigslist roommate? After you inform your spouse that you are leaving the relationship, you should stop living together as soon as possible. Staying in the same place creates a volatile situation, so have your plans ready before you have the conversation.
- What are your expectations for the separation? Do you see it as temporary, or the first step in the process of divorce? Will you still see each other at all?
- How are your finances set up? If they are all kept in one pot, you technically have the right to half of that pot. Do some serious thought about how you want to handle finances once you are no longer living in the same place, and please, don't let your emotions rule your spending. As any daytime judge show can tell you, spending someone's money or taking their stuff because they hurt your feelings is not justified.
- Start thinking about the items you and your spouse own. What items do you need, and what items would you be okay parting with? Make a list.
- Go through the services you use (Internet, phone plans) and find out what plans are linked, and what plans are not.
- Do you know where all your paperwork is -- marriage certificate, car deeds? Do you know how to access your financial information online?
Second stage: Basics and planning
- Write out a basic script of what you want to say to your spouse. Don't speak out of anger or out of wanting to hurt the other person. Keep the discussion about your experience of the marriage and why you are leaving, not why your spouse failed you. Be as explicit as possible about your expectations for the separation, and be sure, in your script, to ask your spouse what he/she thinks of those expectations.
- If both you and your spouse are employed, consider separating your money that way. Create a very basic budget of the money you'll anticipate spending in your new living situation, and compare that to the money that you make independently. If there's no way that'll be enough, go back and add to your script a discussion about how you would like to divide your income.
- Open a bank account for yourself. You'll be needing one.
- Have all of your bank information handy, as you will most likely be spending time there separating your accounts, redirecting your pay checks, etc.
Third stage: Dropping the bomb.
- Make a deliberate plan to tell your spouse, rather than having it tumble out while you're at a social function, or as he/she is about to leave for work, or when you're angry. If you are at all concerned about your physical safety, you may choose to have the talk in a public place, like a park. Do not do this in a restaurant. Choose a time that is calm, when you're not arguing, and when you have time to talk.
- Have a friend or therapist on call for you after you have the talk.
- Do not have the talk until you have a plan of how to leave. (Now here's where I editorialize a bit: it's my personal opinion that if you're choosing to separate from your spouse, it is your responsibility to leave the house you share. Some people disagree.)
- Go through your script with your spouse, keeping your voice calm, and pause regularly to check in with your spouse. This is a huge thing you are dropping on him/her, and it will take time to be absorbed. In fact, the talk could be broken into several sections, done at different points in time, depending on how each section goes. You could divide it into: "I think we should separate and here's why"; "Here are my expectations for the separation"; "Here is my plan for how this will look."
- Immediately after having the conversation, it's time to separate yourselves for processing, with the option that you can call each other if need be. Set up a place to go.
These aren't foolproof steps, and they won't apply to every couple, but often when we go through emotional situations, we forget logistics or decide they don't matter, and that isn't the case. Emotions are even harder to process if you're couch-surfing or have no access to your money. Think things through before you act, and your spouse will thank you for it.
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Are you serious? If my spouse asked me to leave if she wanted a separation I would laugh in her face...You want to split? You leave.
There are many different scenarios but having the courage to initiate a divorce should not necessarily mean that one is to either run away, or slink away, tail between the legs (metaphorically).
It weakens one's position in the ultimate distribution of marital assets, "you left them behind, therefore you do not value them as highly as the one who refuses to leave" and it also implies that one will do almost anything, and give up almost anything, in order to be free of the marriage. This is a difficult notion to dispel. Your spouse and children feel abandoned and resentful, even if the responsibility for the problems in the marriage is equally shared.
In my case I was never able to return to the house for the division of property to make sure I had retrieved everything which I had brought into the marriage many years before, including, but not limited to, the photographs chronicling my entire life before the marriage. Ironically, Katrina made the issue moot a few years later by drowning his new house, but it still distresses me that I was so desperate to escape, after many times begging for a divorce where we would consider who would stay in the house I had found and
You voluntarily gave all your marital possessions to the court (and the divorce lawyers, agents of the court) when you retained your lawyer.
This reality is the basis of the argument that the plaintiff in a no fault divorce should be fully responsible for all financial implications of the divorce.
Do you realize, once you file for divorce, the court may not allow you to remain married if you some how reconcile with your spouse?
The court is under no obligation to ever return any of your possessions to you?
The court may not even allow you to keep your kids?
Do you realize that you ok'd this court having jurisdiction in your life (and your stbx) when you signed that retainer agreement? (Hence the term, Power of Attorney) That this court would have no power over you or your spouse if you hadn't retained an Attorney?
I think asking the plaintiff to leave the house in the face if this total betrayal is a small price to ask. You literally brought all this grief on the both of you.
You will feel like you got revenge on your ex, if you're lucky, your ex gets to pay your attorney, and you've messed up both of your lives for the foreseeable future. Oh, and if you have children, they can be used to really hurt your soon-to-be ex. If you have any questions, be sure to ask your attorney. If there is a way to be the lowest form of reptile, they'll find it, and make you feel good about going for it. It's their job.
So all you need to do is make the call. Then you can just sit back and watch as you continuously torture the person you promised to love no matter what, while smirking and planning the next legal volley that will be even more devastating than the last. It's such a liberating experience... everyone should have it at least once.
The divorce lawyer will play to the notion that as long as your divorcing spouse is "losing" you are "winning".
But in the end it is only the divorce lawyers who "win". And virtually everything pocketed by the divorce lawyers could have been kept in the divorcing household.
The divorcing household shifts the orthodontia/college fund for its children into the college fund of the children of the divorce lawyers.
Divorce with divorce lawyers is a "fool and money" things.
The divorce lawyers get the money.
Guess who you the divorcing spouses are?
No fault means no fault. (It also should mean no blame.)
There should be little to no room for argument about who is good/bad in divorce court.
The only thing that does is profit the divorce lawyers.
There are bad people in divorces. Of course. And many parents in divorce court (most divorce-initiating parents) are bad parents.
But that is not really relevant to any legal issue that a divorce court can resolve.
Maybe there should be a "bad person court" right next to the divorce court.
No (greedy/profiteering) divorce lawyers are allowed in "bad person court" -- and divorce lawyers aren't allowed to make "bad person" accusations in divorce court.
The "bad person court" has exclusive jurisdiction over any accusation that a spouse is a "bad person".
So if a divorcing spouse is intent on showing the world that her spouse is a "bad person" she can sue him in "bad person court" -- at the same time as the divorce is pending.
She can present her case of horrible with all of her might. Schedule a full-day trial.
The divorcing husband is allowed no defense. He must sit there and listen; but he can't say anything.
At the end of the trial the judge will declare the husband a "bad person" pound the offender on the head with the gavel.
But when it comes time for the Big D, she can lay claim to half of the house and half of my retirement.
That is absolutely nuts.
And yes, I see the absolute stupidity, but that is what marriage boils down to. Two become one and in the end, it doesn't matter in the least bit who did what, who wants what, who was responsible, and who had the fling with the pool-boy and now wants a divorce to be with him.
With the way no-fault has been written, there is absolutely no reason necessary to file for a divorce, and absolutely no brain activity in family court for using the "Wisdom of Solomon." It was written for the 1950s and 1960s when women didn't work and men were supposed to be the ones to take care of them. As more and more women become "victims" of these laws, those who pass them, pretending to be the "Knights in Shining Armor" will no longer be able to sell them to the ones they are pretending to protect. Unless of course, they can pinpoint by gender. But laws can't do that... however, with complete discretion (lacking laws), the judges sure can and do.
Easy solution... don't get married. Don't pay her bills. Don't remain involved with someone who is struggling financially. Tell them to come back when they figure out basic finance. But once married, yep...it's absolutely nuts.
If you earn income and your ex-wife does not (or does not much), even if you have equal parenting time with your children you still will be paying child support to her (that she doesn't actually have to spend on the children, by the way).
I guess one explanation is that you deserve punishment because (even though you didn't intend to and didn't realize it) by commuting to work every day and grinding it out to earn an income to support the family and allowing your wife to stay at home and do whatever she wanted including spending your income rather than having to work for a living you were being a bad person.
You the man were keeping the woman down.
Shame on you.
Shame on you.
It's also excellent advice for what people ought to be discussing before they get married.
In fact, before they hop in the sack.
Before I a bunch of flack for this, I say it jokingly, because I've experienced it.
like the Meatloaf song, Prayin for the end if time.
actually being an adult and facing the person seems silly when you could clean out the house while they are at work and sell of their stuff leaving them homeless, broke and wearing the only clothes they own.
We're all guilty of not facing the difficult issues/problems in our marriage and finding resolution together, until it is far too late and too much hurt has taken the place of love and respect.
New wife and Great baby Boy.
Hard working loyal , generous to a fault, all that mushy stuff.
Kissed me goodbye as I left for the office.
15 minutes after I left ( witness' say ) a Church BUS and a Moving truck pulled up and my house was EMPTY in 20 minutes.
SO was my Bank and all bills had gone unpaid for months.
WHY?
I wouldn't join their Church.
Been 27 years and I can't see trying that one again.
That is all
Your married male friends will be sad and jealous, clinging to your anecdotes like dying men sharing a dirty ladle of well water in the Sahara. And their wives will be hitting on you.
Ahhhhh.
Mixed religion marriages mean neither side actually believes the superstitions they were born into.
Why three steps with three letters is enough... "Bye" that is all you need.
H