Divorce preparation does not start at the moment you get a divorce lawyer and file for a divorce. It is a process that starts long before the divorce papers.
People are always saying staying married is hard work, but should it be? My ex-husband and I found our marriage was hard work also, especially when the two people involved did not even like each other any more. We spent more than 2 years in marriage counseling trying to figure out how to save our marriage, but in the end it was too broken.
We had not realized at the time we were in counseling, that actually what we were doing was preparing for a divorce. We were learning who we were in respect to the marriage, what it was we needed from a spouse, and if we really liked the person we had chosen to be our spouse.
Pre-divorce counseling was the best step we took to ending our twelve and a half year marriage. We were learning to communicate with each other in a way that we never were able to do when we were trying to stay married. We finally found a common ground.
The counselor helped with the divorce mediation, we could decide what was really important and have a more satisfying end result. Within our marriage, we bore two daughters and we had to consider what was going to be best for them and their stability. This issue was something we definitely could agree upon. In fact, now that we were communicating it made for a much less stressful home environment for the girls.
Since my husband’s job required him to be gone most of the week every week, we had decided that I would be a stay at home mom. Now this was going to have to change. I needed to get me some job skill so I could go to work and make enough money to carry my share of the debt we acquired and to also be able to support myself and the girls. This was going to take a little extra time to get the schooling I needed. This was not going to be a problem, since neither one of us was in a position to move out.
I went to school when the girls were in school, so they really did not notice a big change in our routines. Except that I had house work and studies in the evening. The girls were 9 and 10 years old, so they had there own things going on and did not require my full attention. They kind of liked the divorce preparation because now the time spent with their parents was more quality. Their Dad made it an extra point to spend more time with them when he was home, so they could adjust to being just with him when it was his time to have them after the divorce.
We had accumulated a lot of things while we were married that needed to be dealt with. Some things we decided to sell and get rid of the debt. We cut back our spending so we could pay down our debts. With the aid of the counselor, we decided how to handle the 401k and our home and what was best to do. Since I was having the children most of the time I would keep the house and continue keeping up the mortgage. My ex-husband would keep his 401k and retirement benefits. My ex-husband would also carry the health insurance on the girls. In return, I would keep the house and he would pay less in child support. This all balanced out pretty much as an even split.
After we cleared all the financial obligations, it was then time to bring the girls in on the counseling session. We wanted to make sure there were no issues or fears left to smolder after the divorce happened. I believe because we were not having big arguments at home and being ugly to each other, it was much easier on the girls. And with their father being gone most of the time anyway there was not going to be that much of a change.
We decide that since so much was resolved with the divorce preparation and counseling that we could share a divorce lawyer. We did not want our divorce to end up in a battle between divorce lawyers and it saved us a lot of money. All we needed the lawyer for was the divorce paper work.
It took us almost two years to get our final divorce. I had finished my schooling by then and had secured a good job. People thought it odd that we still lived together through this whole time with neither one of us moving out. But it afforded us both the time to be able to start separate lives and make rational decisions. This was a great way for us to let go of our marriage and not end up with hate and bitterness.
We got our divorce and my husband moved out. He did not move far away so when he did have the girls they were still near their friends and school.
I am so glad we did our divorce preparation the way we did. It may seem like it was a long road, but by the time the divorce was final we were ready to move on and not carry negative baggage with us. How many divorced people do you see who have been divorced for years and still they are in a bitter battle and their children suffering? I have friends now who are getting close to retirement and now have to battle over the settlement of the home or the retirement funds. Not us. We got divorced and moved on.
