By the time a couple reach the stage where they are speaking with solicitors or sitting with a mediator, it’s a pretty safe bet that each has a catalogue of resentments and hurt that they are carrying with them. Prior to reaching a final decision to end a relationship or seek professional assistance in disentangling finances and working out co-parenting plans for the future, many couples seek professional assistance with a relationship counsellor or therapist to try and resolve these issues. Sometimes however, these turn out to be impossible to resolve couples have to come to a decision to call it a day. At this point, these very issues that have understandably been the focus of many conversations or arguments at home or in the counselling room can become more than just the cause for the end of the relationship. They can easily cause the destruction of your entire life’s savings and seriously damage the ability of parents to remain active in their children’s lives.
I say this because when it comes to matters of family law, the number one reason for inordinately high legal fees is the interference to communication, fairness and personal honour that those feelings create. The legal process of divorce is, in itself relatively simple. It is even possible for those who are so inclined to do it online (though personally I wouldn’t recommend it). What creates the difficulty in divorce or separation, the thing that makes it take so long and cost so much is a couple’s inability to put aside the marital arguments for a short time and look forward, into the future they each wish to create for themselves.
Certainly, there will be high emotions running through the entire process. Without doubt each individual has a right to have those emotions heard and understood by another person so that they can learn to manage them and get on with their lives, its just that within the environments of mediation or your solicitor’s office, giving too much space to those feelings is costing you a great deal of money, drawing the whole painful process out even longer, and making it harder to you in the end to move forward, into a happiness that you deserve.
Entering a process of divorce or separation then, it is important that each couple ensure that they have support they need in different ways for the different aspects of the situation. This is not to say that feelings or emotions cannot, or should not be displayed in mediation, only that now is the time to recognise the situation as it is, and seek options and methods to making a different life possible for the future. Putting aside fault and blame for a short period, despite how difficult this might be is what is needed at this point.
To do this, may well require each member of a couple to ensure that alongside the support of their solicitor or mediator, they also have a support mechanism for their personal feelings arising from the situation. This support might be in the form of friend or possibly a counsellor. Either way, having this support in the background will enable you to engage in the practical aspects of separation more fully, with less overall costs, and will make life much easier to live once its all over.
