After-effects of Messy Divorce
By: James Walsh

The free-wheeling, carefree, free-spending lifestyle of bachelorhood comes to an abrupt end. Marriage is the beginning of a new chapter in life. No longer can you hang around with friends late nights guzzling beer. There is an acute awareness that somebody at home is waiting for your return. You cannot indulge anymore in shopping binges and buying expensive stuff you used to acquire earlier. Now other family members depend on you for fulfilling their needs and there is a need to save some money for the proverbial rainy day or buy assets for the family.

Once you have children, your marital responsibility increases manifold. While earlier the family was a union of two mature adults who could go their separate ways anytime they wanted, the arrival of kids changes the equation totally. Children are vulnerable and look up to you for protection and support. It is your duty to provide a nurturing and caring atmosphere for them that ensures that they grow in all spheres and their personality develops inner strength.

Everything works fine for some years after marriage. You get busy with family life. You can see the children growing up steadily year after year. You buy assets such as car, house and consumer electronics. Soon, life settles into a fixed routine. That is when the problems start. You get bored and start looking at some excitement in life. The marriage begins to seem like a claustrophobic arrangement that shackles you.

You feel it is preventing you from breaking free and meeting your aspirations and the kind of lifestyle you want. There are frequent arguments at home as you gradually discover that your partner’s personality is not as you thought it to be and you are getting fed up. If proper care is not taken, families where there is a constant friction between spouses or extramarital affairs begin their inevitable slide toward a split. It is only a matter of time before a partner pronounces the dreaded words: “I want divorce.”

When such a thing happens, you are stunned. You look back over all the years of emotional and financial investment and the time that you spent nurturing the family and building the home brick by brick, and you feel enraged. How have things come to such a pass? Will you have to start all over again? How many years more will it take? What will happen to the children? With whom will they live? You feel sick when you think that the partner who filed for divorce is going to get half of all family property, most of which you acquired – house, vehicles, jewellery, insurance, bank deposits, expensive consumer electronics and so on.

It is easy just before divorce for the partners to decide to use the legal proceedings as a way to teach the other a lesson. They hire expensive lawyers who are instructed to drag the proceedings and contest every claim and charge of the opposing party. There are bitter arguments about child custody, division of marital assets and maintenance claims. In such divorces, it is common for lawyers to reveal intimate details in the court about each other as a way to humiliate the other partner socially.

However, using the divorce proceedings as a way to settle scores is really a big mistake. Nobody gains in the entire process, except the lawyers who are able to present a huge bill at the end. Apart from the financial setback, messy and vindictive divorce proceedings give rise to a lot of emotional stress. Such ill-will and bad feelings for the other partner do not end with divorce judgement, regardless of which way it goes.

It is common for partners to carry their humiliation and anger over years. Some have to seek professional help to come out of their depression and animosity, pick up the pieces and move on with their lives. Messy divorce impacts children too in a negative way. They develop a feeling of insecurity as parents fight over their fate.

Both the partners actually gain tremendously if you decide to bury your differences and agree to part amicably. You should try to sit together, discuss things over the table and come to an agreement about all contentious issues such as child custody, who gets what from the family property and how much the maintenance would be. This way, you can get a DIY divorce in as little as two months. You are then free to go your own separate ways with inflicting minimum emotional damage on yourselves as well as children.

Article Source: http://www.ArticleJoe.com

James Walsh is a freelance writer and copy editor. If you want to find out more about a solicitor managed divorce see www.managed-divorce.co.uk

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