Joe Berkeley knows what it is like to go through a gut-wrenching divorce. He has a few words of advice.
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I didn’t want to write this. There were so many other things I wanted to do. Go for a bike ride, work on the house, hang out with my Labrador retriever, spend time with family and friends, go to the gym, wash the car. But I had to write this.
Frequently, when I met another guy around my age, which is 44 years old as of this writing, I’d hear the same story. “Everything was fine. I went out with my wife on a Saturday night and we had a good time. Then Tuesday, she woke up and told me we had to talk, she wasn’t happy, we were going to get divorced. I was completely blindsided.”
If you’re in a similar situation, let me begin by saying I’m sorry. I know what you’re going through. I came home from work one night and the furniture was gone. In its place was a typewritten letter informing me that my wife had moved out and moved on and all communication should take place through her attorney.
I realize there’s no way my pain can be like yours. Every divorce, every case, and every battle with the agony of an unanticipated separation is different. But I hope there are a few things I learned along the way that can help you.
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First Steps
If you can still talk to your soon-to-be ex-wife, and you’re sure that it’s over, the first thing you should try to do is go to an independent mediator and settle your divorce as soon and as practically as possible.
One of the most expensive lessons you can learn is that the court system doesn’t care about your divorce. The best thing you can do is to see if you can get your soon-to-be-ex-wife to go to mediation.
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One of the most expensive lessons you can learn is that the court system doesn’t care about your divorce. Every day, overworked judges deal with serious problems. There are drug addicts who don’t want to give up custody of their kids. There are abused women seeking restraining orders from abusive spouses. There are people who are mired in legal muck while wanting to adopt a child. Compared to these cases, your divorce is trivial. And the fact of the matter is, a mediator could cost you 66% less than paying two attorneys. That means there’s more money to split, or less debt, depending upon how you look at it.
The best thing you can do is to see if you can get your soon-to-be-ex-wife to go to mediation. You’ll both save a lot of money, and if nothing else, divorce is all about money. Come up with an agreement you can live with, then get on with your life.
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Well, that didn’t work
So you tried to go to mediation and you learned that your wife wants 80% of all of the assets. She wants the house, the car, the furniture, the 401(k), the IRA. After much hand wringing, she is willing to give you the sleeping bag you’ve had since high school, the Schwinn bicycle you bought at a yard sale for $17, two pairs of blue jeans, one T-shirt, a can of peas, and your childhood baseball card collection.
Now, this is where it gets difficult. You are going to feel angry that you have received what you consider to be an unfair proposal. This is natural. The anger may drive you to do things that you will regret. Resist that urge.
Doing bad things is only going to give you bad juju and prolong this unpleasant process. Instead, you have to channel all of your anger into doing your work. Your first order of business is finding a good divorce lawyer. Easier than finding a unicorn, not as easy as finding a competent, honest plumber.
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Finding Your Lawyer
Start by looking for a lawyer who usually handles cases that are your size. If you have a net worth of $12,987.42 you don’t want to go to a big firm that usually handles high-net-worth individuals like professional athletes.
You may be tempted to represent yourself. Bad idea. You should have taken your best shot at mediation by now. If you can’t get it done with a mediator, you can’t represent yourself. You will screw it up and regret it for the rest of your life.
More bad news: precisely when money is tight, the lawyer will need to be paid. Most will want a retainer up front. Somehow, you have to come up with a tidy sum.
The sad reality is one of the only things you can do to keep your lawyer happy and interested in your case is to pay him or her promptly. Your lawyer has more cases going on than just yours. Some of the people will be whiners. Others will be spectacularly incompetent, unable to complete any assigned tasks such as gathering documentation.
You want to stand out from all of the other clients by being the best client your lawyer has ever met. Do your work. Pay your bill. Don’t ask your lawyer to be a therapist. Be professional, not emotional. Write down all of your questions before meeting with your lawyer.
When it comes to divorce lawyers, I prefer one that owns his or her own firm, who works in an office with an unspectacular view, who is calm and rational, and wants to reach a settlement sooner rather than later. Here’s why. The lawyers who work in large firms are forced to come up with as many billable hours as possible to justify their salaries and the overhead.
If the law firm is in a skyscraper, someone has to pay for it. If you volunteer for the job, just know what you signed up for—every time that lawyer reads an e-mail from you, it’s going to cost you $75. When the lawyer says, “How was your weekend?” that just cost you $5. Every millisecond of time is billed at a rate of near $500 an hour for senior partners, $350 an hour for junior associates.
You should like your lawyer at the beginning of the case. Consider how you really like the carpenter at the beginning of the renovation, but by the end you’re ready to stick sharp objects under his fingernails to get him to finish rebuilding the deck and leave. A divorce lawyer is worse, because every time you visit, you get charged enough to pay three carpenters, maybe four. And when it’s over, instead of having a better house, you probably won’t have a house at all.
A lot of what the lawyer will say to you is the same boilerplate he says to everyone who walks through his doors. You can avoid having to listen to a lot of it, and having to pay for it all, by educating yourself on the basics. Read what you can about divorce on the website nolo.com.
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Misery Loves Company
You’re spending money you don’t want to spend. Maybe you’re living in some rat hole while you get yourself together. What can you do?
You have to get out there and find a guy who’s going through the same thing so you can commiserate. Everything you are feeling right now is 100% normal, and those who are going through the same experience have an understanding of divorce that spectators, theorists, and pundits do not and never will.
Since a startling number of marriages end in divorce, it shouldn’t be too hard to find someone. Ask around. There are also divorce support groups at local churches. Do a Google search and you’ll find plenty.
At the moment, this legal transaction is a large part of your identity. Have faith. One day, — not today, but one day, this whole situation will be a memory, like that horribly unreliable car you used to own in your early twenties.
For me, it was an Oldsmobile Vista Cruiser station wagon. It was red with a tan interior and it used to spew radiator fluid at the most inopportune moments. The brakes were dodgy. The transmission expired once and left me stranded. Every time I turned the ignition key, I did so with a mixture of fear and dread.
The fact that your clunker car was unreliable was not your fault. It was a clunker. It was what it was. The fact that your wife just checked out is pretty much the same deal. It happens all the time and you can’t beat yourself up over it.
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Do your work
For two months, I woke up every day at 4:00 a.m. to find all of the documents I required before work. My theory is that as the client, you don’t know what piece of information is going to make a difference in the case, so gather it all in a neat, tidy manner. You don’t have to spend a lot of money, but get some manila folders. Label each one.
Yes, gathering your documentation is a pain in the neck. But the easier you make it for your lawyer, the better your outcome will be. And the smaller your bill will be.
Lawyers pay paralegals to prepare their files. Be nice to the paralegal. He or she is going to do most of the work on your case. No paralegal wants to get a shopping bag filled with a pile of jumbled papers. Everyone in the legal system wants to receive orderly files where there is no ambiguity.
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Stay in the Circle of Competency
At some point, you are going to be ready for a little bit of release. This is when I want you to stay within the Circle of Competency.
When I was going through my divorce, I was tempted to a) buy a used motorcycle or b) become a spinning instructor at a fitness center.
In college, I owned a motorcycle and was driving it home one day when a woman in a white Pontiac Fiero hit me from behind. I Superman-ed over the handlebars, the Suzuki was totaled, and I was lucky to walk away from the wreck. Since the Motorcycle Gods had already given me a free pass, I didn’t think asking them for another was a good idea.
So I decided to become a part-time spinning instructor. I was going to the gym anyway, and it provided me with a release as well as $28 an hour. As a bonus, the gym gave me a free membership, which saved me $32 a month.
What is right for you depends on your skills and interests. If you’ve always liked playing softball, dive into a league. If you like reading books, join a book club. Be true to yourself. You may feel sad and shattered and ill but you have to remember you had a life before divorce and you will have a life after divorce.
Another great emotional release during divorce is a pet. Adopt a kitten. Befriend a neighborhood dog. Get a goldfish. Volunteer at an animal shelter. My Chief Morale Officer was and still is my Labrador retriever because, no matter what, he is always happy. He’s not the smartest dog on earth but he may well be the happiest, and with what you’re going through you don’t need deep and real, you need happy and lots of it.
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The Legal Process
This is not a guide to the legal process. It’s a view of at the horse manure that is a byproduct of the legal process. Again, if you want to know more about the facts and figures, read nolo.com. But this is the fertilizer that you’re in for, and there’s enough to fill a dump truck.
One of your first tasks will be to create your Financial Statement. This is where both you and your soon-to-be ex-wife will list income, assets, and expenses. You will write down the cable bill, the phone bill, the car payment, etc.
Your wife’s lawyer may counsel her to stretch the truth as much as possible. She may minimize all of her assets. She may say that the diamond ring you paid $10,000 for is really worth $9.99. She may shrink her income. This may be a long list of lies.
You will employ a strategy that appears to be tomfoolery in the short run, but will prove to be brilliant in the long run. You tell the truth.
Collect all of your receipts and your bills. Get a stack of white Xerox paper and some Scotch tape. Tape each receipt or bill to the piece of paper and write down what you spent, the date, and what it was for. Document everything.
Do the same with your financial statement. Collect all of your assets and the paperwork that proves what they’re worth.
You’re going to get really upset when you read her financial statement if it’s all lies. In the short run, the lies will appear to work in your ex-wife’s favor. In the long run, the truth is the best policy.
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What you can do to get this done
Tell your lawyer to get a trial date, right away. The lawyer will say, “Don’t worry about it.” Tell the lawyer you’re the client and you want a trial date and you want him or her to apply for it right now. If he refuses, threaten to fire him or her.
Because 95% of all divorce cases settle before the trial. But if your soon-to-be ex-wife procrastinates, the settlement isn’t going to happen until right before the trial date.
For the lawyers, your divorce isn’t an emotional event. It’s a game. Like in a lot of games, there is a game clock. The object of a lot of lawyers is to milk the clock, and the client’s wallet, until the buzzer. That’s the court date. So at the last minute, instead of going to trial, which the judge isn’t going to let you do anyway, the lawyers agree to strike a deal. Both will act surprised but they knew the outcome of this contest long before it started.
If your soon-to-be ex-wife thinks she’s going to get everything and you’re going to get nothing but the weed whacker and the pasta strainer, it puts her lawyer in a great position to squeeze every cent out of her. “Yeah, you have to pay me a couple of more thousand in fees. But I will get you everything!”
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Pre-Trial Conference
Before you get to sit down with opposing counsel and reach a settlement, you’re going to go to a pre-trial conference with the judge. This is where the judge reviews memos from both attorneys. For instance, your wife’s counsel may present a very different view of the facts. That’s what lawyers do. On the same day, they could argue both sides of a legal precedent for two different clients. That’s their job and boy, do they love it.
Your lawyer will present your view of the facts, preferably in a calm, rational manner.
The judge is going to look at both memos, and after a few minutes of disinterested introspection, tell you both that 1.) you both have excellent representation 2.) you both have risks and 3.) you should go work this out between the two of you. The lawyers know this, and will both act somewhat surprised when the judge suggests you split the difference between the two of you.
Because in divorce court, the Judge almost never lets anyone run up the score. While there are perfect games in baseball and blowouts in football, there is no divorce case with regular people where one party gets everything and the other gets ooma-la-gatz.
The judge went to law school. The judge practiced law. The judge got appointed. And the judge figures if the method of “split the baby in half” was good enough for King Solomon, it’s good enough for him.
The settlement negotiation will give you a headache. And you’re going to have to pay for the privilege of being legally drawn and quartered. But the reason you accept this indignity is it will slow down the ticking on the lawyer’s never-ending meter and it will cost less than a full-blown trial, which is never going to happen anyway because the judge will keep rescheduling the trial until you learn your lesson and settle.
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Rebuilding Your Life
You have to get over the fact that you can’t go out and get new everything. If the toaster still works, and you have it, who cares if your ex-Mother-In-Law gave it to you? Over time, the memory of Mother in Law will fade and your appreciation for toast will continue.
You may need to buy some things to survive in the short term. Try to do so as inexpensively as possible because one year from now your life is going to change a lot. The purple La-Z-Boy recliner with cup holders and your favorite team’s logo on it may look quite sweet today, but you’re not thinking clearly at this moment. Craigslist.org can be a great place to find short-term furnishings for short money.
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Some things you should buy new.
Don’t pay top-dollar retail prices, but do treat yourself to the essentials. A good set of pots and pans will pay for itself, and you can’t cook if you don’t have any. Get a decent, new set at a value-oriented store like Wal-Mart or Target.
Purchase a decent set of new sheets. They don’t have to be the best, but something in the middle of the range is going to be just fine.
Buy some cleaning supplies and give the place you’re living in a thorough scrub. Make the bathroom so clean you could eat off the floor. Living in a clean place will give you a sense of dignity and establish some order in a life that is filled with chaos.
If you own a bicycle, get it tuned up. If your helmet is more than three years old, buy a new one for short money on bikenashbar.com. Your bicycle will get you around town and save you money on gas. You’ll be more likely to meet new people, and the activity of turning the pedals over will be good for your morale. If you don’t have a bicycle, buy one on craigslist.org or at your local bicycle shop.
Treat yourself to good, fresh food from the supermarket. Buy enough groceries so you can pack a fresh lunch every day. By making your own lunches, you will eat better and become healthier. Avoid the food in the company cafeteria and the restaurants around your office that sell unhealthy food at big prices. If you can do it, this is a great time to give up soda and junk food. The first few days will be difficult. Then you’ll get used to it and you’ll feel better.
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New life, new goal
One day, this divorce is going to be over. It’s going to be a somewhat strange celebration, as you are celebrating the death of a relationship that you once thought was going to be positive.
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One day, this divorce is going to be over. It’s going to be a somewhat strange celebration, as you are celebrating the death of a relationship that you once thought was going to be positive. A good way to turn this ambivalence into a positive feeling is to come up with a 100% positive goal that will be at the same time the divorce is coming to a close.
You can participate in a road race, walk across the state, swim across a pond, climb a rock, lose 15 pounds, build a bookcase, paint every room of the place where you live, learn how to scuba dive, or do 100 pushups without stopping. What is important is that you set a goal you have a chance of achieving, and then go about preparing for it in a professional manner.
For me, it was the Mt. Washington Hill Climb. I like riding bicycles and the event represented a challenge. Eight months before the event, I started training. I knew I was out of shape, so I had to lose 18 pounds and increase my strength. My goal for the event was to ride my bike to the top of the mountain in less than one hour and twenty minutes.
As I rode up the mountain, the sweat poured out of me and landed on the road, leaving the toxic karma of divorce behind. I rode my race, at my pace, and was pleased to arrive at the finish line in one hour, seventeen minutes, and seven seconds. I accomplished my goal, achieved a healthier lifestyle, and left the past behind.
When you set your goal, it should be something that you can achieve if you try really hard. Don’t make it too easy, like, “My goal is to eat an entire box of Devil Dogs… with no milk!” But don’t make it insane, either. My goal could’ve been, “I want to become a professional athlete.” But you know what, at this age, it’s not going to happen.
After you set your goal, tell your family and friends what it is. By discussing your objective, it becomes real. You become accountable. Speaking about it makes you visualize it. When you visualize it, you can achieve it.
During the difficult moments, it’s good if you have a little mantra you can repeat to yourself. Mine was, “I ride like the wind, I climb like the angels.” Now, keep in mind I don’t ride like the wind and I don’t climb like the angels. But this was my vision of being a better version of myself, and if you repeat it enough, you believe it. If you believe it, you can become it. And while you’re going through the wretched, awful, miserable transaction that is divorce, more than anything else, you have to believe in yourself.
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Let it go, again
This is the most difficult part, and it’s going to take more courage than you think. No matter what happened, you have to let it go. All of it.
You might not like it, but you’re never going to know why your ex-wife did what she did. Even if you ask her, the answer isn’t going to make you feel any better. So don’t bother.
The greatest gift you can give yourself is to call your ex-wife and forgive her. Don’t expect her to say anything when you do. This isn’t about her. This is about you leaving the past in the past.
When you meet someone new, and you will, she doesn’t want to hear about how bitter you are. So forgive your ex-wife and do your best to forget about her. Make a pledge to live a simple, happy life, free of drama and nonsense. You will soon be in a better place than you are right now.
You just have to do your homework, be honest, stay rational, and don’t let the miserable, agonizing, screwed-up divorce process define you. One day, it’ll be a distant memory, a gale force storm that you endured and survived. I wish you well on your journey. Godspeed.
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photo: londonmatt / flickr
She will die alone. That’s the best revenge. And rest assured she will know why she’s alone. Visit her in the nursing home if you get the chance and spit on her.
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Has anyone ever been successful to getting their estrange wife back? Pleading, reasoning, begging, asking for forgiveness, telling them you love them ECT. doesn’t work. So I am going to try the 30 day no-contact rule first. If anyone has had success of getting their estranged wife back, please comment. Thank you.
Great article! If you had asked me on Oct 29th, 2013, if I ever thought that I would be getting a divorce, I’d say, “Hell no!” Things changed dramatically on Oct 30th. Divorce is harsh and brutal, and even though the divorce was 100% her fault (she cheated on me), she was still too much of a coward and did her damndest to take as much as possible from me. I’ve since forgiven her and I have taken up several healthy activities to get my life back on track. Having been the sole breadwinner in though…I don’t think I’ll ever… Read more »
I liked your advice but I do disagree with one section: “The fact that your clunker car was unreliable was not your fault. It was a clunker. It was what it was. The fact that your wife just checked out is pretty much the same deal.” Having a dodgy car is not your fault but having a wife leave you may be as a result of many things and some of them MAY be areas that you messed up. I think both parties usually have contributed so this period after a divorce can be a time of reflection for you… Read more »
Well, jp, it boils down to semantics. Having a dodgy car is also your fault, to the extent of you either not fixing it yourself, having it fixed by womeone else, or replacing it. I think the context of the “your wife checked out and it’s not your fault” statement, should be that you didn’t go together. Whatever shortcomings you may have had that contributed to this, it’s too late to try and correct now. Not saying that it’s always unneccessary or too late to reflect on your behaviour for future scenarios. But for the “right here, right now” it’s… Read more »
I’d add 1 additional suggestion…
I thought my attorney was crazy when she told me
” be prepared to be arrested. In at least 33% of my cases the husband is accused of something. Be meek and cooperative and most of all say nothing except ‘ I will only discuss this in the presence of my lawyer.”
Joe, this was freakin’ great. When I first scanned the length, I thought, ‘oh jeez’. I enjoyed every section and you speak with wisdom. I will especially support the need to learn to let the bitterness go. I have clients and friends who spend their waking hours thinking and speaking in negative tones about their ex – even 4 yrs. later! I wrote a newsletter today about guys who say, “Divorce is NOT an option” when they are working to improve their marriage. Well, it’s ALWAYS an option and women exercise that option much more than men. I should have… Read more »
Excellent article. Been through this myself. There is a lot of truth in here. Thank you for sharing. The only thing I might add is to this: “The greatest gift you can give yourself is to call your ex-wife and forgive her. Don’t expect her to say anything when you do. This isn’t about her.” ..Yes, but because this is about you, I suggest don’t even call (once it’s at a point where practical matters/finances/legal stuff is wrapped up). Maybe email to share your forgiveness piece. But to initiate what you hope/expect to be productive two-way communication opens the door… Read more »