Should You Try to ‘Win’ Your Divorce?

 Posted on February 29, 2020 in Divorce

It is healthy to approach your divorce with clear goals in mind and the motivation to accomplish them. You need a divorce agreement that allows you to financially support yourself and have ample parenting time with your children. However, being overly competitive with your spouse can cause problems. Trying to “win” your divorce may create contentious negotiations that prevent you from achieving an optimal divorce agreement – as well as make the process take longer than it needed to. Instead, an amicable or collaborative divorce process, such as mediation, often results in better agreements that both sides can be satisfied with.

Problems with ‘Winning’

Divorce is not meant to have “winners” and “losers.” Divorce law recognizes that both parties need to benefit from the agreement, and a divorce court will not approve an agreement that flagrantly benefits one side at the expense of the other. There are several problems with believing that you need to win your divorce:

• You may set unrealistic goals that your spouse will not agree to and a court would reject.
• You may reject a reasonable offer from your spouse that would benefit you.
• Your focus may shift towards wanting your spouse to lose, even if you are hurting yourself in the process.
• You are more likely to be dissatisfied with your final agreement, even if it is objectively a good agreement.

There are unavoidable “losses” for everyone who gets divorced. You will lose a portion of your marital properties. You will lose the ability to pool your income with your spouse’s income to pay for living expenses. You will lose some of the time that you normally get to spend with your children. It is part of the cost of divorce.

Benefits of Mediation

As the words “settlement” and “agreement” suggest, most couples try to work together on completing their divorces. Mediation is a form of negotiations in which a third-party mediator guides the spouses through reaching a divorce agreement on their own. The mediator is there to explain the technical aspects of divorce and encourage constructive communication between the two sides. If done successfully, mediation can save you money on the cost of divorce because you can split the fee for hiring the mediator and avoid having to ask the court to settle disputes. However, mediation will not succeed if you are unwilling to work together and compromise.

Contact a DuPage County Mediation Attorney

At Calabrese Associates, P.C., our Naperville, Illinois, divorce lawyers are experienced in divorce mediation and collaborative divorce. To discuss whether mediation may work for your divorce, schedule a consultation by calling 630-393-3111.

Source:

https://www.apa.org/helpcenter/healthy-divorce