WHAT TO DO

What to do years before you separate

Do the math on support.  My understanding is that any marriage or cohabitation for 8 years or longer in most Canadian provinces is considered a long marriage and spousal support is indefinite (check what it is in your area). Indefinite means undefined, which may translate into forever or an end may be ordered after a number of years equivalent to the marriage length (it seems to depend on how self-sufficient your spouse is, or chooses to be, on the judge you get, how long the marriage was, how old your spouse is and other factors).

Alternatively, if the length of your marriage in years + your spouse’s age = 65 or higher, support is indefinite in some Canadian provinces (this is called the ‘rule of 65’).

It may be in your best financial interest to leave a bit earlier than planned to avoid one or the other of the above kicking in.

Do the math on the kids.  Older kids will circle around the needier parent so leaving when the kids are in their mid to late teens or young adults may result in them choosing to spend 100% time with your spouse, resulting in a very high child support bill that will likely cut you out of ever getting a mortgage.  If you leave earlier, they have no choice and in most cases you will get them half the time (called 50% custody), so you can build a new relationship with them before they hit those rebellious teenage years.

If your partner is mainly a stay-at-home type, try to get them to take a job for at least 1 year before separation!  Even if you have to convince a friend to create a job for them, make it happen; them having an income and earning potential may go a long way to reducing your spousal support (alimony) amount. Want to know by how much?  Spousal support (alimony) calculator for Canada here: http://www.mysupportcalculator.ca/   Every state in the US has its own guidelines so google “alimony calculator” for your state.  Guidelines for the USA here.  In the UK it is called Spousal Maintenance – online calculator here  

The basic calculation underneath the Canadian spousal support guidelines is:  Subtract the lower income from the higher income, 1% of this amount  X years of marriage = low range support; 2% of this amount  X years of marriage = high range support. 

For example, if you have been married for 10 years, you make $200,000 per year and your spouse makes $80,000 per year, the difference between your incomes is $120,000. Multiply this by 1% to get $1,200 and then by 10 years of marriage to get spousal support or alimony payments of $12,000 per year at the low range and $24,000 per year at the high range. This will be modified by kids and other factors but it gives you a ballpark figure. To see how your spousal support affects your Canadian taxes due (it is only tax deductible if it is part of a court order), go here: http://www.ey.com/CA/en/Services/Tax/Tax-Calculators

Additional benefits of encouraging your spouse to get a job are that a person with a job has to shift how they approach the world, they get a source of self-esteem outside the home and they have to get real about how they interact with others. This will help you on a number of fronts. If you ask your spouse to get a job, document it each time along with their response. You need to ask and document your asks if you want to use this later in court.

If you are the low income spouse, document every sacrifice you make for your partner’s career, job opportunities passed by (with documented salary) because the kids or your partner needed you more. If you are working, reduce your hours to a low amount more than a year before separation.  Emphasize health concerns and start treatment for those concerns so they are documented by a doctor and are accepted by your partner. Each item could raise your potential payout. Stay in the marriage as long as you can because the longer the marriage, the longer the payout term, in general.  Plus, their pension is going to be split with you up until the date of separation but not after that day so it is in your financial best interest to prolong the marriage as long as you can stand it. I realize this is an awful dilemma to put people in but that is how our divorce laws are structured.

Watch out for these thinking patterns:

“I think I need to leave in order to let my partner do what they need to do”

If your partner is doing their personal growth work and you leave, they will collapse and tell a new tale – blaming everything on you and all the energy that would have gone to doing personal work may get turned on you with negative tones. If truly you want your partner to do their personal work, stay and create a safe space for them to do it, then decide afterwards if the relationship is right for you.

“I need you to change” sends the toxic message that I don’t want you as you are. Accept your partner fully as they are today. Period. If you are really hurt by something they do, tell them about your hurt, but don’t make it about them changing. If they keep doing it then that’s their choice. Your choice is to leave or accept them, while staying in dialogue with them about what your experience of the relationship is.

“I spent way too much time trying to get my wife to look at her problems.  She wasn’t going to do it so why did I waste the time?” E.T.

Work hard on your marriage. Even a small effort on your part will go a surprisingly long way, because your partner has been surviving on emotional crumbs from you for a long, long time.

Marriage therapy approaches:

1. Ignore the problem. (S)he’ll get over it. This is the Abdicator or Conflict Avoider in you in charge.
2. Work hard, put in long hours and make it her problem that you’re never home, because you have to support the family lifestyle. This is the Victim in you in charge.
3. Give yourself away to the home, the kids, the PTA, the church and everything but him, while maintaining you’re doing it all for him, then repeatedly ask him why he isn’t interested in spending more time with you. This is the Martyr in you in charge.
4. Ending is easier than mending. See ya!  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o0u-Fr8CXCQ; coarse language warning.  This is the Abandoner in you in charge. Read about the Avoidant attachment style here: https://www.amazon.com/Attached-Attachment-Find-Keep-Love-Find-ebook/dp/B0049H9AVU
5. Go to a psychologist or counselor for marriage counseling; you may have to try several before you find someone that you connect really well with. This is the Adult in you in charge. Many different types of counselors exist and if you are prepared to try a few out to find one who clicks with you, you can really make some awesome progress and get back on track over a few months to 2 years. This works well for light wounds, confusion about your priorities, getting permission to feel your feelings, working on your attachment style or if you just were never taught how to behave well.
   If you are really deeply wounded, I believe it is important to see a counselor in the beginning so you can get conscious about the areas you are messed up in. Then you must go much deeper…either with your counselor if they are superb, or through a series of experiences and workshops that you will find as you look for answers…
6. Do your inner work. Many marriage problems are actually individual problems where two people have perfectly matching problems, almost as if they are designed to create an inferno.
   Newsflash, they are! (see my priority list on choosing your mate). So working with a couples’ counselor who will tell you how to speak more nicely to each other is just not going to get at the core reasons for conflict. For that you need to do a lot of individual work as well as couples work (so you don’t drift too far apart on your own journeys).  Here are my favorite books to find out what is at the root of your marital conflict: The Shadow Side of Intimate Relationships.   Getting the love you want.  This one is a bit of a hard read but well worth it if you take it slow: Finding meaning in the Second Half of Life. If you want something lighter and more practical, this book is great: The Best Year of Your Life and see below. Very deep work can be done through pyschoanalysis, with certain gifted counelors or teachers, or through a long term committment to a meditative practice. Through all of these: Do your anger work. Do your grief work. Do your shame work. Do your fear work. Cultivate gratitude and joy. Growing up and truly having the life you want is a heavy lift, a Hero’s Journey and a long, deep commitment. You are worth it.

Work hard on yourself

Here is an overall map of the process –

Personal work falls into 3 main categories: Waking up, Growing up and Cleaning up. This division comes from Ken Wilber and I find it quite useful although all 3 are very inter-related. Waking up is about getting greater consciousness about myself, my actions and my impacts, intended and unintended. Growing up is about converting unhelpful behaviors (that were very useful in the past, they helped me survive my childhood) into more helpful behaviors (like a secure attachment style and a growth mindset). Cleaning up is about becoming aware of and starting to work with the repressed, denied and hidden parts of myself (also called Shadow work). I agree with Freud that most people spend their entire lives repeating the first 5 years of their lives over and over again.  It takes hard work to get off that wheel and really engage life from your deep places.

After you do this and are more or less clean and clear internally, the second work is visioning – deciding, realizing or sensing who you really want to be, who you truly are and how you want to be. The final stage is action. Bringing your vision into reality, actualizing yourself, manifesting the brilliance you bring to this world, or simply allowing your life to unfold with peace, an active witness and radical engagement. Realizing, You are the gift!  This is how the True Self emerges.

What will it take to greet your partner as your peer and as your ally, for them to be your best friend who you enjoy being with, genuinely want to help and co-create a life of abundance together? What will it take for you to become their greatest ally and cheerleader?  Well, first you have to figure out how you’re doing it now…

Identify your patterns in relationship. Here is a very brief rundown of the ones I know:

• Mother-Son
  • In charge, put together, mature, very controlling partner with a dependent, indecisive, immature partner
• Father-Daughter
  • Strong leader type, usually very controlling alpha male with a dependent, clingy, overly emotional or fearful partner. This pattern often alternates with Mother-Son.
• Brother-Sister
  • A very easy going, sometimes fun, un-energized, largely or completely sexless dynamic
• Victim or Martyr-Perpetrator
  • Also known as a Victim-Victimizer dynamic. This is where one spouse abuses the other.  People in this pattern may also cycle between victim, victimizer and rescuer roles with each spouse playing all 3 roles at different times (search Karpman Drama Triangle for more).  A key to moving through this one is learning that the victim usually cloaks the victimizer, or put another way, someone who always complains may be hiding a perpetrator so watch out! (I am speaking here about a relationship pattern, I’m not saying all victims of every bad thing are bad people or anything like that). What I’m proposing is that perpetrators (also known as victimizers) learn young in life that it’s not cool to show that side of themselves and one way they hide it is to wrap it up in a ‘Poor me, Woe is me, Why do bad things always happen to me?’ type of self-concept, which allows them to be passive aggressive (or overtly aggressive when it is societally acceptable, like during a divorce) and still keep the cloak of being the one who is hard done by.
• Rejector-Abandoner
  • The rejector sets up expectations, then judges their partner when they aren’t met, then rejects their partner for failing them (but the rejection is never complete because they want to stay in the pattern). Rejectors are the most toxic type of all because they destroy everything and everyone around them.  The Abandoner feels they deserve this rejection and this is the draw to the relationship.  They then abandon emotionally or otherwise, which draws the Rejector back to them.
• Controller-Chameleon (or Prostitute)
  • The chameleon or prostitute type is always adjusting to and reading their partners. They are often extremely intuitive and use their intuition to anticipate needs (to the great delight of their controlling partners, who keep demanding more). Chameleons do this so they are never caught flat footed and found out to be the weak or immature or unboundaried children they believe they are.  Because they believe they lack the ability to set boundaries, they seek out controllers who set their boundaries for them. Over time, this creates great anger or passive aggression in them, which they take out on their spouse.
• Seducer-Seduced
  • The seducer is one who promises more than they ever intend to deliver; they hide as they fear pain or rejection if they show themselves. The seduced wants to stay naïve and in their youth forever (like the Lost Boys in Peter Pan), never growing up and doing the hard work required to have an adult relationship.
• Narcissist-Empath
  • Article here, or google it
• Perfectionist or Hero-Giver
  • This is usually a variation on Father-Daughter. The Giver gives and gives and gives until they are completely empty and then they blow – externally seen as anger or drama, internally as depression.  This then allows the previously patronizing or distant perfectionist to ride to the rescue (be a hero) and console/comfort the Giver back into the giving mode. Lather, rinse, repeat.
• Addict-Caretaker
  • The addict craves real intimacy but settles for the quick hit. They attract caretakers or martyrs who will enable them, cradle them when they fall and stand by them no matter what they do.
• One heart open, One heart closed
  • Couples who are afraid of real connection or deep intimacy will alternate whose heart is open so they never have the amazing, soul-shaking prospect of a genuine relationship between two open hearts.

A pattern is an energetic train that you either get on or don’t. Think of boxcars going by with an open door and we are all hobos. Once you’re on, it steams ahead and is very hard to leave, partly because we get energy from it. It is also likely to be the pattern you run internally (for example, between your mind and your body, your ego and your True Self, etc.)  Exiting the pattern often is impossible, but with effort you can become aware of how it plays out in your inner life and in your relationships so you can limit its effects.  And you can outgrow it if you allow yourself to get blown open to something greater than you.  As importantly, you can find other sources of energy to enliven your life by LivingWell: doing feelings work, body work, creative pursuits, finding your passion, walking humbly in the world, creating authentic relationships, engaging in purpose-driven work, etc.  All of these will drain power from your chosen pattern(s).

For instance, some people are stuck in a Victim/poor me/look at how hard my life is/why do these things always happen to me/woe is me pattern. It kills real relationship and instead they tend to find either caretakers/martyrs to support them in their victim-hood or Victimizers/perpetrators to increase their suffering. One way to drain the energy of the Victim is through creativity. Painting, writing poetry, drawing, doodling, building lego castles, it doesn’t matter what the creative act is, so long as it is done to express the creative urge deep inside (and not done for money or to perform for anyone). Building in a creative part of your life can weaken the Victim in you so that it is no longer dominant in your relationships. More on the Victim (also called Drama) Triangle here: https://www.lynneforrest.com/articles/2008/06/the-faces-of-victim/

After growing up, waking up and cleaning up, you still need to find a way to tap into the massive energy of your soul.  Ways to do so includes expressing emotions, falling in love, painting, sculpting, writing poetry, creating or playing music, drumming, dance, prayer, meditation or touching your soul’s essence through Active Imagination.  James Hillman: Active Imagination can be used to help us contact the part of us that sees mythically and poetically, thus balancing the conventional literal and mechanical views we are trained to hold. Many people have this experience just by staring into the flames of a campfire or in that twilight space between waking and dreaming.  Easy to follow instructions for doing this here: http://www.bodysoulandspirit.net/hypnagogia/what/vonfranz.shtml

Practice Forgiveness –

http://www.laughteronlineuniversity.com/practice-hooponopono-four-simple-steps/

My thoughts on forgiveness here

Participate in personal exploration workshops and programs:

• Pathways to Successful Living
• Mankind Project NWTA for men or Woman Within/Inner Yaga for women
• Landmark Forum
• Shadow Work
• See a well respected therapist and ask them to re-parent you so you can grow up right this time

“Loneliness is the poverty of self. Solitude is the richness of self.”
May Sarton

Marital problems in general and divorce in particular seems to be designed to crush the ego and splinter inner resistance to some central truths about who we are, and what our feelings and maturity levels really are. It forces us to grow up and take responsibility for the life we have created.

“Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding.”  Kahlil Gibran

You might end up feeling empty and powerless, but from there you can settle into “ordinary”, which is actually a very flexible place to live since you don’t need to put up any false fronts.  You develop equipoise.  You watch, see, and jump at or flow into opportunities.  You learn to say Yes! a whole lot more.  You put yourself in the way of beauty.  You learn to Allow, the most powerful word in all of personal work.

Life is so much better when you allow it to unfold and don’t need to force anything.  ‘Allowing life to live you’ is sometimes how it is put.  The downside is you don’t get what you think you want, instead you get what you were going to get anyway.  And, being ordinary and Present to each moment, you revel in it! Gratitude overflows.  Your current life becomes the gift you seek and embrace and celebrate every day.

What to do months before you separate

Don’t make concrete deals, either verbally or in writing that guarantee future support, gifts of stuff, splitting of anything. A court may hold you to these later. Negotiate them verbally if possible, or put “WITHOUT PREJUDICE” at the top of any email or other correspondence discussing settlement deals, and finish with a vague statement like you are ‘comfortable tentatively agreeing to this’.

If you will likely be the one who leaves, get stuff out of the house that can easily ‘disappear’ while your spouse remains in the home. Like a collection, or a nice piece of jewelry.  Keep it in your office, a friend’s place or another safe place where it can’t be accidentally discovered by your partner before you leave, knowing that if things blow up and you have to leave in a hurry, there may not be time to grab anything from a hiding place at home. A lousy alternative is to store proof of ownership and value in a safe place so even if the item “disappears”, the value might be recoverable.

Pile up enough cash and a few pieces of clothing in a safe place outside the home (in your car, at your office or with a friend), enough for a 4 day hotel stay. Or make a deal to stay with a friend at a moment’s notice and pile up enough cash for your (and possibly the kids’) expenses for a few days. When the marriage blows, things happen really fast, it’s super hard to think straight and you need to know you won’t be sleeping in a bus shelter. Don’t hide large amounts of money from your spouse, if it is found out later it will come back to bite you badly. Or it will poison your soul; either way, bad idea! Don’t assume that just because the person you are with has been mostly reasonable during the marriage, that they will not go batshit-loonie-golf-club-to-the-hood-of-the-car-you-betrayed-me-how-dare-you-abandon-me crazy the day you leave. Protect your kids. Protect yourself.

Open as large a line of credit as you can (called an “unsecured line of credit”, one that is not based on your home or any other asset) in your name only, you will need access to money to pay legal bills and your spouse may get a court order to freeze all the family assets so you can’t access any of the funds you thought you had.  Have more than one credit card in your name only (not jointly with your spouse) and once things start to unravel, request a credit limit raise in writing (you will need to include a reason to make them feel better, like increase in the value of your home, recent raise, etc.).

Before the official separation date, all debt is shared.  So if your spouse starts going on expensive trips and racking up debt – you owe half of that.  Watch out for this behavior as a warning sign and request a stop to it in writing (like an email, which you then keep).

If there are lawyers at law firms in your town who might be particularly damaging for you to face, you can take them out of play by meeting with them for an hour consultation. Once a firm has consulted with one party in a dispute, they usually are barred from representing the opposing party.

If you are fighting and want to stop

Understand that there are two things going on: 1) your need to protect yourself legally by addressing charges or allegations made by your spouse, 2) your addiction to battle or fighting or drama; your addiction to being seen/heard by them; or your addiction to not getting pushed around by anyone, which is really about your shame.  Once you separate these two components of your fighting, you can address the first with a clear mind and then deal with the second as you would with any addiction.

Sometimes, the addiction relates to a childhood dynamic with one parent and you find yourself fighting for age old reasons.  This may be a habit and it will be HARD to break but it must be done or you’ll just find another partner to ‘lather, rinse, repeat’ it with. A deeper reason may be that this pattern is your only link to that parent and if you let it go, you lose them!  So no wonder you don’t let it go. Ways to change this dynamic can be explored with your psychologist through Attachment Theory or you can do the Tombstone process from Cliff Barry’s Shadow Work. The basic process involves going back as an adult to teach your child self a different way to love and receive love and connection.

“My divorce was a wonderful opportunity to let go of so many things that I thought mattered to me.”  N.Q.

Don’t assume that it will all work out until it’s too late for you to get ready for the separation. Get your head out of the sand and get busy soldier!! Assemble a package of photocopies or duplicate originals. Removing originals is bad if it gets discovered before everything is ready. Paperwork can get “lost” very easily and you will need these later:

1. Marriage license
2. Your birth certificate and passport
3. Your will
4. Documentation of all assets you brought into the marriage. As in, the statements from the last date prior to marriage. If you provided a down payment for a home or cottage, you will need your bank statement showing the money was there, the house purchase documents showing the down payment and then to trace the money forward through time, all sale documents, bank statements, etc. so you can show that money went back into the house or cottage each time.
5. Home ownership documents
6. All online passwords and logins
7. Any access cards, debit cards or credit cards you would want to have to prevent their abuse later
8. Statements listing latest values for all investments.

Hide or ‘lose’ all the spare keys for your vehicle. You need wheels.

Be very careful what you put in writing. Although tempers will run hot, you have to understand that your texts and emails will likely end up being used against you in court, especially if there are threats and for sure if you are the high income spouse. DON’T DO IT, this is the time to grow up and use your inner wisdom to de-escalate the situation (while still maintaining your dignity; that is, don’t roll over and give in to all their bullying, learn how to set and hold boundaries while still de-escalating things – get help from a counsellor, your grandmother or friends if you don’t know how). Having everyone simmered down will greatly help the two-way communication required to keep your legal bills down. Resist the temptation, sometimes stoked by an ethically conflicted lawyer, to burn up a lot of your money fighting, so you, your spouse and your lawyers each end up with one third of your assets.

Things to Remember
You have more than these two options – leave or stay; there are other options!  You can do absolutely nothing for a while. You can negotiate a better/different situation for the short term. You can do nothing and take stock of what’s really going on for you.

Leaving is very often done a number of times before the final leaving. If you leave, understand you may be back one or more times before all this is over so don’t burn all your bridges on your way out the door!  Ask yourself – is this an end, or the end? More on this question at Commit or Quit?

The manner in which you leave (specifically, how much disrespect you show) will largely determine the long-term future relationship between you two.  So figure out how to ‘leave well’, with respect, giving the other their dignity (even if ‘they don’t deserve it’), if you eventually want to have a civil or working relationship with the parent of your children.

In case you need them, here are some reasons to go back to your marriage and give up any ideas of leaving:

• I’m not worthy of anything better than what I have
• I won’t be able to find anyone else
• Getting divorced is the single worst financial mistake a person can make in their lives
• People like me don’t get to have fantastic relationships
• I don’t want to let everyone down – my kids, my parents, the family, our church or our friends
• “A divorce will put a gash on your children’s hearts that will not heal for the rest of their lives. Know that you are doing this to them.” N.M.
• It’s too painful, it’s too stressful, I can’t take it!
• I can’t afford to leave
• What God has put together, let no one put asunder
• I can’t leave this safe harbor. Something in me starts shaking when I consider it seriously
• I actually really love this person and want to be with them
• Often you can’t get a mortgage afterwards. This is because spousal support (alimony) and child support are considered a debt payment, with no consideration given that spousal support (in Canada) is tax deductible. And your debt payments (including mortgage and car loan/lease payments) are not allowed to be higher than 40% of the net income after taxes the bank calculates for you while ignoring all your tax deductions.

How to know if it’s time to go:
Is it so bad that the thought of being alone for the rest of your life is preferable to staying in your marriage?
Do you know in your heart that now is the time for you to leave?
Do you think the pain your kids will experience is less than the pain they and you experience in your current situation?
Do you understand that sometimes, love just isn’t enough?
Are you willing to pay the emotional cost of ending your union?
Are you willing to pay the financial cost of ending your union?

The more you answer Yes to these questions, the more likely it is time to leave.

If you need help with this whole process, here are your options:

1. Read books, talk to your friends about their horror stories, finish reading this site
2. Get a counselor or psychologist to support you through it
3. Hire a divorce coach. I don’t know anything about how this group works so do your homework.

Facts about divorce and separation in your home province or state:

For BC: https://familylaw.lss.bc.ca/resources/fact_sheets/divorce.php; http://www.justicebc.ca/en/fam/basics/sep-div/index.html

For Ontario:
https://www.attorneygeneral.jus.gov.on.ca/english/family/familyla.html

For USA:
Laws differ by state and in some places by county!
Some places to begin your search: https://www.hg.org/divorce-law-center.html
https://solicitors.guru/articles/3-things-you-should-know-about-divorce-laws-us/

If you are seriously considering separating or divorce, get a lawyer.  Choose your lawyer well – interview 2 or 3 of them and see who you click with, who answers your questions straight up and who is recommended by friends.  Only the very best and very bad ones charge for the initial interview.  Ask the lawyers you meet who else they would recommend for someone in your situation (good ones will say ‘I’m the best but here are your other options’ and give you a list with their strengths and weaknesses). They usually ask for a $2,000 to $5,000 up-front retainer if you decide to go with them, but you can negotiate this down if you don’t have the cash.

If you can’t afford a lawyer, work with your local Legal Aid society or office.

What to do when the breakup is happening

Protect yourself and your kids!  You have a new relationship now and some of the bonds are loosened on behavior so watch your spouse carefully and don’t take unnecessary risks.  Think of them like a predator if necessary.  Your presence in the home may have been a stabilizer for them and it will take time before they find a new equilibrium.  Nerdy detail on the divorce process in Canada here.

Communication strategies –
Block their email and then their texts if they are abusive and ignore multiple warnings from you. Do it one step at a time so they learn you are serious about protecting yourself.  Once everything is blocked, only allow voice messages, which you commit to check every 4 hours.  Tell them they can call back twice or three times in a row for emergencies. Don’t buckle if they whine.

If communicating about the kids as they go back and forth is a problem, co-parenting courses can be super helpful to get strategies for coping.  Alternatively, use a parenting book that gets passed along with the kids where only facts are written like what they ate, what their symptoms are if they’re sick, what the doctor said, etc.  If they abuse this, meet only in the presence of a mutually agreeable third party adult to transfer the kids, or have one parent drop them at school/day care and the other pick them up so you don’t see them during transfers.  You can also agree to only see each other in the presence of a co-parenting counsellor.  If they are still abusive, talk to your local police and have a large police officer pay your spouse a visit or two.  If all else fails, get a court order of restraint and talk to police or your local domestic violence society about how to protect yourself.

After separation, avoid transferring money to the sole name of your spouse. That’s a gift and your money is gone. It’s not something that will be split later. And sometimes, it is absolutely the right thing to do to give some security to a low income spouse with few resources.

Dealing with legal

Lawyers want to do a financial statement immediately (quite costly) to get a picture of the assets, then you and your spouse negotiate back and forth through the two lawyers, have a settlement conference or two (just you two and the two lawyers meet in one of their offices), maybe go to mediation (up to $10,000 per day if both lawyers attend) for a day or two, then exchange proposals a few times.

Eventually someone will file in court and you get to redo (and pay more) to do up another financial statement. Each time you mediate, or negotiate, or get ready for the judicial case conference, or set a trial date, the financial picture will have to be updated and this will cost you each time, essentially to summarize a similar set of documents. Lawyers will give you a Word document in PDF format to print and fill out by hand and then charge you to enter your numbers in the Word document, then charge you to add it all up.

How to hack this system:
Put everything in Excel or another spreadsheet right from the start so you have a working document you can update each time. Ask your lawyer and her assistants regularly what you can do, type, write up, etc. to reduce costs.

Don’t stand on principle – if a problem can be solved with money, pay the money!

Get to a Judicial Case Conference (JCC) sooner rather than later. You have to file in court for this to happen so it is a big step but unless you see real progress being made, there is no point to dance with your partner in negotiations and enrich your lawyers in the process.  A JCC is where you sit down with a judge in a semi-informal proceeding and tell them everything you agree on.  Whatever you agree on is put into a court order so the more you can get done here, the less needs to be done later (in family conferences, in the interim court hearings, in a JSC (Judicial Settlement Conference) negotiation session and if it comes to it, in an actual court case – yes there are a lot of steps before an actual court case!)

“Guilt over leaving can make us terrible negotiators.”  J.K.

Don’t engage in controlling behavior or hiding assets – if your spouse can demonstrate either of these, you are almost guaranteed to get a higher judgment against you.

Feel that your lawyer is on your side and know that your lawyer is definitely NOT on your side. They represent their own financial interest first and foremost, they have almost no professional oversight outside of the courts and have a weak and largely unenforceable code of ethics. This means it’s open season on your wallet.  Some are honorable and not all take full advantage but they are human so it’s hard to keep their hands out of the cookie jar for the 2-3 year period this will take to resolve.

Don’t sign any interim orders without including an end date as these will be in force forever (unless you are okay with that being the situation). Otherwise you will have to go to court and spend lots of money before you can retire because your court order for spousal support is in force forever until a court stops it. Or you will be forced to continue child support payments long after the kids leave home if your ex won’t allow you to stop (these are all true stories, I have not made up any of the situations described on this site).

How should I strive to be through a difficult divorce?  This is the most powerful way of being that I found:

• I am ordinary. I may be unique but there is nothing ‘special’ about me.
• I am here. On this planet. In this body.
• I am here Now. Present to each moment.
• I stop fighting reality. I accept what is.  I Allow.
• I feel ALL my feelings. I stay in them as much as possible.
• My heart opens and I release/face/move through my fears, one by one.
• The abundance of this earth and this life flows into me and through me.
• I learn, I decide, I take action.

Divorce Survival Guide

1. Feel all your feelings
2. Cut everything you can out of your life that doesn’t nurture you in some way
3. Reach out, say yes more
4. Find a friend or form a group to share your deep grief
5. Watch how you use alcohol, work, carbohydrates, cigarettes, drugs or coffee to ease/numb the pain
6. I believe there is a part of us that made this happen so we could feel the pain, that our true self wishes to emerge and has engineered this crisis to shatter the walls that enclose our understanding and our real self. The ego will fight back incredibly hard through anger, being vicious or through numbing behaviors like alcoholism /workoholism/ promiscuity or just being vacant/checking out
7. Allow your feelings, allow your heart to open, gain consciousness, gain wisdom
8. Let your jangly nervous system settle down (listening to classical music or spending time in nature is good for this) and then choose a different way to be

 “Cultivate the parts of you that bring you the most joy.” T.L.

 Options for what to say to your spouse about the break-up (use your own words)

1. Tell the truth. Be as authentic as you can about why you’re not happy, what your deepest truth is. Sadly, this is often used against you.  But it can be a longer term win for you because if you change the way you behave in relationship during the fire of a breakup, then you will keep this way going into your next relationship and not repeat the same mistakes with your next partner.
2. We will always be a family. In some families the moms and dads live together and in some families they live apart. Regardless of how we do it, we will always be a family. – very important to tell this to your kids.
3. I love you and sometimes, love isn’t enough.
4. I’m just so tired of all this fighting and drama.
5. Let’s work together to do this in the best way possible for our kids and our friends and family.
6. I have a deep urge for something I can’t put my finger on. I need to leave to figure out what that’s about. Alternative:  I have lost myself and need distance to find perspective.

Listen carefully to your spouse’s complaints, they always contain an essential truth about you that you absolutely don’t want to look at! See if you can find common themes among the forest of complaints, that is your guide for future work.

The process of divorcing or becoming unmarried, whether through a collaborative, mediated or court approach, is important.  This process is like grieving a lost loved one: it hurts, you don’t want to do it and you want to get it done as fast as possible. But going through the process is therapeutic by itself.  And it is necessary in order to kick start your healing and help you to eventually move on and return to having joy in life.

The Separation Clock

Why is the date of separation important?

• It establishes the length of your marriage. This can be very important as spousal support is indefinite for marriages of longer than 8 years in Canada. The length of the marriage also determines the amount of spousal support (for example, mid-range spousal support is calculated as: (bigger income – smaller income) x 1.5% x years of marriage or cohabitation).
• In Canada, you usually cannot get a divorce until you have been separated for 1 full year.
• Any pension you save or your employer pays you after the separation date is yours only.
• It is NOT the date when assets are going to be split. That date is the last time you file your documents in court (which can happen several times over the course of a long legal battle), or when you sign a final negotiated agreement with your lawyers.

Occasional sex is normal after a separation so don’t feel bad if your resolve slips occasionally, the separation clock can still be argued to have started when you both agreed to split and stopped behaving as a couple.

Negotiating with your ex

The first step is: You must get real!  Stop the con games and posturing and stop taking out your inner demons on them. Get small and firm, speak from your gut or your heart.  Don’t rehash the past, accept your situation and say ‘Where do we go from here?’

Use your negotiating skills. You are in the negotiation of your lifetime! It is quite hard on its own, but in addition your emotional condition will make it like being at high altitude – it reduces your brain’s ability to function, to cope, you suddenly lose half your memory capacity and get easily confused.

Assess how determined your partner is.  You may have underestimated them in the marriage – now is a bad time to continue that error.

Guilt over leaving makes you a very bad negotiator. The child within wants to capitulate and be a total martyr.  The seducer in you wants to try to bribe your way to a better settlement by giving too much away too early. Growing up and taking responsibility for what you did to create the nightmare you find yourself in is a long process. Protect yourself and your assets while this process is going on.

NO MATTER WHAT HAPPENS, YOU’RE GOING TO BE OK.

“The true self cannot be harmed.” – Buddha

During the breakup –

Most people break up and then get back together at least once, sometimes many times

Don’t commit to anything. Not leaving, not staying, not any kind of arrangement. Take your time to understand what you most deeply want to have happen for you.

“Shut your mouth about any love interests you develop. It will only aggravate your ex.” K.J.

Really count the emotional cost.

Think about and consider everyone and everything else and then ask the three hardest words in the English language for most people to say:  What about me???

If your spouse uses a bunch of highly rational arguments to try to convince you to stay in a bad situation, just ask:  But what about me???

Whether you leave or remain living in the same home, once you have both decided to separate send a letter to all creditors indicating you are separated now and you are each responsible for your own debts. Agree on a fair level of spousal support, if necessary.  Agree with each other to close all joint accounts and cancel joint credit cards. It can get difficult at this point if you are fighting – your spouse refuses offers of support, refuses to close the joint account and spends spends spends. If you take unilateral action, you will be accused of controlling behavior and get a much worse settlement, if you take no action, you will go broke. Our system has created this catch 22 and it can be used by nasty spouses to break your will.

If you want to feel a bit better, watch the documentary Divorce Corp.  You will see how brutally unfair the US situation is around divorce and maybe feel a little gratitude that you don’t live there and have to deal with that system.  If you do, you have my deepest sympathies.

NO MATTER WHAT HAPPENS, YOU’RE NOT GOING TO CHANGE VERY MUCH. YOU’LL STILL BE THE SAME PERSON WITH THE SAME ISSUES AND WANTS AND DESIRES AND COMPLAINTS.

 Set your goals

1. Who do you want to be through this process?
   – do you want to be the same reactive, angry, bitter, victim you’ve been through your marriage? Or is it time to start playing a new tune in your life? If you don’t change your pattern with your current spouse, NOW, while you are undergoing the second most stressful event of your life, you are almost guaranteed to repeat your pattern with your next partner. Life always gives us another opportunity to learn what we need to learn! ☺
2. How do you want to be during this process?
   – hard, holding a strong boundary?  Flexible and adaptable, like water running down a hillside? Taking care of yourself first and foremost for the first time? All of the above, and more? NOW is the time to decide what kind of person you want to move yourself toward being. Imagine it now. Make up a short phrase to repeat over and over to yourself to remind you of this commitment to a new you.
3. What do you want to get out of this process?
   – not money-wise but other ways. Do you want to get into right relationship with your former spouse? Closer relationship with the kids? Know yourself better? Learn a different way of being? I recommend you figure out what your non-monetary goals are and keep them somewhere you can check regularly to see whether you are moving in those directions. There are a lot of wins to be had and becoming unmarried is a very hope-filled journey if you are oriented that way.
4. Ask your lawyer or divorce advisor what would constitute a fair settlement in your province/state, for your particular situation. Make sure they give you exact details on amounts of alimony/spousal support, child support and asset and debt splits. Find somebody else to work with if they don’t know or waffle around too much. Write it down and judge all subsequent proposals against this bar, dollar for dollar, item for item. Your final deal likely won’t look like this but the important point here is to be able to measure every future proposal against a fixed, fair standard.

“Open your heart and release fear and you will open to all the good that surrounds you.”  C.C.

5. Don’t make it in your spouse’s best interest not to reach a negotiated agreement. By supporting them lavishly so they won’t be as mad (doesn’t work, they are hopping mad that you are leaving), by being overly conciliatory and reasonable (so they can take advantage of you) or by bending over backwards to do as much as possible for them (they will use you – gratitude is rarely in the cards in these situations). Do set your boundaries and be fair and reasonable:

• provide all requested documents promptly
• negotiate split finances sooner rather than later
• provide federal table child support
• provide spousal support at the mid-range if they agree in writing to it, with an end date (= 1.5% of the difference between the high and low incomes times the number of years from marriage to separation; so if you make $100,000 and your spouse makes $30,000, the difference is $70,000 * 1.5% = $1,050 multiplied by your years of marriage = how much yearly support you should try to give). Try to get this put in a legal agreement, if your spouse will agree, so the payments are tax deductible to you (in Canada). If they won’t, a problem arises: How do you pay the taxes due? If you subtract them and provide what is left, you will be deemed to be underfunding your spouse and engaging in controlling behavior, which is a reason to increase any judgments against you later. If you provide the full amount and eat the taxes and if you have been married a long time you will be forced into debt or forced to live on a very low income. BC family law judges seem to me (and to the lawyers I have spoken to) to be largely or completely insensitive to the diabolical situation the high income spouse is placed in when the low income spouse refuses to sign an interim agreement. And this is a good strategy to use if you are a low income spouse – refuse to sign anything or agree to anything and let the situation run for 8-16 months, during which time your spouse will try several ways to find a reasonable level of support, then use that as evidence in court later to make the case for controlling behavior.

Separating finances is very hard to do, drawing lines and saying “this is what I’m prepared to do and this is what I will not do” is very hard and brings up a lot of fear because you never know what the reaction from the other side will be.

Strategies and tactics for negotiating your Final Separation Agreement – aka, the hard part of divorce

This really depends on your income level, your desire around how much you want the children and how much you and your spouse change over the course of the separation.

If you brought assets into the marriage, you can offer to share (or cede) your premarital assets in exchange for a negotiated settlement, that is, as an incentive for them to avoid court. You can state that ANY litigation will result in your protecting your right to those assets in ALL future proceedings.  Premarital assets are not split in BC but please consult your state or Provincial law if you live elsewhere.

If selling a house, consider making a court action to impair (hold up) a significant part of the proceeds to cover your premarital assets – this becomes an incentive for your spouse to negotiate now to get those funds released so they can buy instead of rent. Note: any court action is expensive.

If your spouse is a complete jerk, play along, play nice and give them hope that maybe, just maybe the relationship can be healed until you get your first set of objectives achieved.

Negotiate as much as possible between the two of you!!!  Lawyers may charge $17-35 just to open an email so costs skyrocket the more you need them to do.

“Despite having a high priced lawyer, I felt completely unprotected and felt like I had to do so much thinking, background research, consulting and reviewing just to get information on what my rights are.” E.S.

In Canada, I have heard that when couples start the court process, 95% or more end up settling before the actual trial. The cynic will tell you this is because family lawyers don’t do much work for their large fees until they hit the court room, so they are heavily incentivized to take everyone to the courthouse steps and then strongly recommend whatever deal is going. There may be some truth to this and an equally valid reality may be that couples need to discharge a lot of anger, frustration and hurt before they are willing to accept a compromise that neither party is happy with. It may also be that an imposed solution (by a judge) is a risk most couples are unwilling to take; they would rather control their fate by reaching a negotiated solution (even if neither will ever feel very good about it).

Lump sum payout vs. ongoing alimony/spousal support

You can either pay your spouse a certain amount every month or every quarter (spousal support) or you can pay them a pile of money now with no payments ever again.  Some people take a hybrid approach and give a smaller pile of money now in order to lower the payments or shorten the length of their spousal support.  You can also offer to take over their debt payments to reduce the length of your payout.  Anything is possible so get creative!

Spousal support (alimony) calculator for Canada here: http://www.mysupportcalculator.ca/

Every state in the US has its own guidelines so google “alimony calculator” for your state.  Guidelines for the USA here.

How to think about this decision:

1. Find a “Net Present Value calculator” online and plug in your spousal support numbers (how much you will pay per month for how long) to see how much money all those payments are worth right now. This is interest rate dependent so you’ll have to enter what you think the long term interest rate will be. This allows you to have a comparison for lump sum negotiations.  Do this for total spousal support and for your after tax cost of support and keep both numbers in mind.
   1. The number depends heavily on what interest rate you plug in the calculator – I suggest you use the long term Guaranteed Investment Certificate rates offered by banks.
   2. You could also use the 10 year average prime rate, the 10 year average inflation rate (CPI) + 1% or the long term bond rate as your interest rate.
   3. I briefly engaged a financial consultant for this and did not have a good experience despite online reviews being good. Perhaps try to find someone local through friends as others had better experiences.
2. Remember that lump sum payouts are NOT tax deductible. Regular spousal support payments are tax deductible in Canada but not in the US or UK.
3. Banks and mortgage companies are painful to deal with if you’re paying spousal support – Canadian banks don’t recognize that spousal support is tax deductible and treat the raw number as a regular debt payment. Add in your child support (and maybe car payment) to this and you’ll find it really hard if not impossible to ever get a mortgage, even with a 50% down payment, because their rules are your debt payments can’t exceed 40% of your income.  My spousal and child support are at 55% of my income so I had to buy a property jointly with my parents in order to qualify (for a subprime loan on a cash flow positive rental property with 50% down!).
   1. If you pay a lump sum, this doesn’t hold but you also may not have much of a down payment left so you need to keep doing the math as the offers go back and forth.
4. If you pay spousal support, you have to exchange tax returns every year with the support levels recalculated as your income changes. This can be a regularly painful process if your spouse enjoys creating drama at every opportunity.  It can also be a tough pill for your next partner to swallow to watch you writing checks for large amounts every month.
5. Spousal support is calculated from your gross income. So if you have a business you’re starting and investing a lot in, that isn’t counted but later income from that business is counted. It’s a bitter pill to swallow so try not to get income from businesses, keep the money within and have an exit strategy.  One time gains from the sales of assets like businesses or stocks are not included in the calculation.

“Pay the money! Beg, borrow, steal, swallow your pride, do whatever it takes to pay off your spouse in a lump sum so they don’t plague you with drama for the rest of your days!  Pay the money!”  K.S.

For spousal support (alimony) to be tax deductible in Canada, the following must be met (consult your accountant for an up to date list):

• You both must be living separate and apart when the payment is made. You don’t have to live separately, you can still live together and consciously co-parent your children, but you must be living separate lives (that is, taking vacations separately, have separate bank account accounts, no co-ownership, etc.)
• Payments must be regularly made (they can be quarterly but monthly is more convincing to an auditor)
• Recipient must have full control over how the money is spent
• Must be paid directly, or are “third party payments” like making your spouse’s car loan payments
• Payments are made under a court order or written agreement (preferably one that is legally filed).

Payments made before an agreement was signed are only deductible in the year the agreement is signed and the previous year. Re-filing taxes for the prior year may or may not be worth it for you. Any payments made two or more years prior to signing an agreement are generally not tax deductible.

For instance, if you sign an agreement in 2016, you can deduct the payments you made in 2016 and 2015. 2014 and earlier payments cannot be deducted.

If you want to try to conceal a lump sum payment as a series of spousal support payments in order to make it tax deductible, that is illegal. The tax people are very strong on screening for this forget it.

What to include in a deal:

Your spouse must specifically waive rights to pensions, other business income, trusts, future inheritances and gifts, lottery winnings, life insurance policies and other such contracts.

If any asset worth more than $2,000 is later found to have been concealed, it will be split 75% to you and 25% to the concealing party.

Your low income spouse annually must provide you with a signed letter stating how much child support and spousal support you paid them in the previous year. This is because the tax people won’t believe what you say about how much you paid unless it is documented in a letter from your spouse.

What doesn’t get split up?

Premarital assets that remain untouched are protected under BC law; this varies by jurisdiction so check your Province’s or state’s laws.

Similarly, assets that can be traced into the mortgage or a house purchase maybe can be reclaimed (currently at 50:50 chances). If you used the money to pay down renovation debt or for a trip, say good bye to it.

If you put your spouse through school with money you can prove you had before you were married or living together, you may be entitled to recover that, or share in their increased income as a result.

Financial info for women in divorce (US site): http://www.wife.org/divorce/
– some useful articles to prompt you to think, very depressing stories in all the comments ☹

Navigating Court

How does the law work?

The law is confusing to say the least since there are so many factors that determine the outcome for any one case; this makes it difficult to provide any hard and fast advice.  Your lawyer will often seem to be waffling on your questions, which may be because they’re not very good but most likely it is because the law is quite nebulous.  To understand it, I use the Past, Present and Future paradigm:

The Past is the laws of the land that have been enacted.  They are long and convoluted with multiple sections and sub-sections.  Sometimes other non-divorce related laws are used and their rules are applied to cases, it depends what the lawyer’s arguments are.  An additional pile of legal weight is added by all the previous decisions made by the courts – called Case Law.  Many of these cases set precedents for how to deal with specific situations that are not spelled out in the enacted laws and then these precedents get tweaked over time.  It ends up being very complicated, or impossible, to figure out what the actual rules are!

The Present is all the facts of your case. These come in two types – facts you and your spouse agree to (like how much each of you makes) and facts that are in dispute (like the value of premarital assets or the family home value).

The Future consists of all the implications for you, your spouse, your children, the system and any other affected parties.

The legal process is designed to have a judge determine all the facts of the case, take all these past, present and future considerations into account, balance them against each other and come up with the most harmonious outcome.  In general, judges focus on determining the facts, then let the lawyers in the case argue about the law(s) the decision should be based on, future implications and what the best balance might be.  Then the judge picks a solution and imposes it with the force of the law.
It is truly scary to have a person you don’t know have that much power over you.

The final equation is:

Your legal outcome = Laws + Case law + Facts of your case + Implications for future for each of you

Learn the laws of the land here.  Search Canadian case law here: http://www.canlii.org/

The way the arguments work in court is the one suing for support or divorce gets to file a ‘BRIEF’ with the court, which is a long list of why you are a horrendously bad person and all the reasons your spouse should get more, then you get to file a rebuttal, then finally they get to file a rebuttal of your rebuttal.  So you see, the person pursuing the action (the one doing the suing) gets to say a lot more to the judge.  Keep that in mind when deciding whether you will play offense or defense.

Because the law is so complex, your tendency might be to want to curl up into the fetal position and shake while your lawyer takes care of business.  This is a very bad idea.  Your lawyer is on your side AND your lawyer is definitely not on your side, they are on their own side as well.  And for all but the most ethical lawyers, their side comes first.  So you must never surrender your sovereignty to your lawyer – this means you get to decide everything and they need to explain each step to you (you will pay for this extra time but it is worth it).  If they are not willing to let you be a partner in your own case, you might want to move on and find someone else.  If your lawyer is behaving badly, you can always go to the local Law Society (or whatever the professional body governing lawyers in your area is) and report them.  This can cause a major headache for them so don’t do this lightly and you will need to bring evidence of bad or unethical behavior.

Lawyers’ fees escalate much more rapidly than you expect or can even imagine. Each letter exchange between 2 lawyers can cost you anywhere from $400 to $2000. If this happens over and over for simple document requests, you can see how your expenses mount! It is your job to prevent your estate from being split 3 ways – 1/3 to you, 1/3 to your former spouse and 1/3 to your lawyers.

 Remember, legal fees are tax deductible for the low income spouse only! So they can drive up court costs knowing they are getting a discount later. Legal fees, also called court costs, are not the same as your lawyer’s bills, which are the majority of the total costs of divorce. Legal fees range from 10%-25% of your total bill and these are usually the only thing that can be recovered if you win a judgement that your spouse has to pay your legal fees.

“Divorce feels like you’re locked up in the caboose of a runaway money train.” N.C.

How Much Does Divorce Cost?  Free divorce in BC if you agree on everything, $2,000-$25,000 for a Collaborative divorce, $5,000-$10,000 for an amicable split advised by lawyers, $20,000-$100,000 for a not so friendly split advised by lawyers with one or two days of mediation, $60,000-$200,000+ for a court case divorce, and $400,000+ for a nasty split with long, drawn out court case.

If you need money to fight a crazy ex-spouse in court, get the house sold as soon as is humanly possible (yes, it can be done in 3 weeks) so you have the cash to fight (or sell some other assets like shares and split the money evenly). A reason to give them is that you are worried the market is in a bubble and will crash soon, so let’s take advantage of it…

If your former spouse is no income/low income and is using a free legal aid lawyer to cause you no end of problems (or if you are a high income spouse paying both sets of legal bills and your former spouse is wildly running up the legal tab), ask your lawyer to advise you only and represent yourself. This way you are not paying someone $200-$650 per hour to write emails for you in response to each individual document request (and they round up! So 20 minutes can be billed as ½ an hour or as an hour, you never know because lawyers often don’t detail it in their invoices). If you do this, send a letter to your spouse’s lawyer advising them you are now self-representing and all further correspondence should be addressed to you.

Don’t trust your lawyer blindly, do your homework and consult your local legal aid society, so you don’t miss anything that could come back to bite you later.  The most advanced update on the state of divorce law in Canada is called the SSAG Update and it is a summary document given out with a course that divorce lawyers take every 2-3 years.  If you have a kind lawyer, they may share this document with you.

If you are the low income spouse, assemble a ‘greatest hits’ collection of your spouse’s worst emails in one Word file.  These can help your case but at the end of the day in Canada there are two main reasons a judge will give you more than half the assets:

1. If your spouse exhibits a pattern of controlling behavior, or
2. If they have concealed assets. You will have to demonstrate both with a paper trail in court.

High income individuals have little choice when facing an unreasonable low income spouse. They can either capitulate to demand after demand in a never ending stream, or they can do things to limit the impact or duration of the demands and later be accused of controlling behavior in court, with major unfavorable implications on the interim or final decisions. If you as the high income spouse are a people pleaser or a weak person by nature, this should not stop you from asserting yourself firmly with your spouse but it should make you mindful to act in a very measured, respectful, non-controlling way.  Our system is set up to make it extremely hard to leave a marriage, you need to accept this and work with it as best you can.

“Without prejudice”

These words mean that the contents of a settlement proposal cannot be admitted as evidence in court. They are overused and often put in the subject line of an email that is one long rant or vent. Unfortunately, just putting this phrase at the top won’t prevent your words from being used against you in court. My understanding is ‘without prejudice’ can only be used to conceal the contents of a specific proposal or deal from future court admission.

Family law courts are a liars’ haven

“The thing I most regret about my divorce is not lying more.” F.N.  Her spouse lied like crazy and she paid the price in terms of a much smaller settlement, but kept her dignity.

As far as I can tell, there is no perjury (no penalty or jail time) for lying in family law court in Canada, the USA or the UK.
So watch out, a nasty spouse can make mountains out of molehills, take quotes completely out of context to tar and paper you, or present events completely out of order from how they occurred, just to make you look evil. You can try to do the same or pay the price. This is what family lawyers get paid to do – spin a story, provide ‘evidence’ for their narrative and thereby influence the judge in their client’s direction. Since family law courts are quite biased against men and somewhat biased against high income earners, if you fit into both categories make sure to give thanks to your low income spouse every evening for all the nasty ugly things they haven’t said about you and all the accusations they haven’t made up about you – you may feel awful about all the things they are saying about you, but it could be so much worse.

Once you exit the power games, let go of the furious, ticked-off and self-righteous energies (mostly all coming from deep shame), your feelings can begin to convert to “What are actually my/our long-term interests here?”  If kids are involved you realize you will be connected to this person for the rest of your life (at graduations, marriages and around grandchildren). Then you will move into a more mature space and say: How can I conduct myself well and in a caring manner? There is a lot of my future at stake!

How does the legal system work?

1. We don’t have a justice system, we have a legal system. In fact, we really have a best lawyer system. Meaning, the best lawyer usually wins. This kind of fatalistic thinking leads many people to throw their hands in the air and give up hope. It’s only partly true – when the facts are on your side, you don’t need as good a lawyer to win. But don’t scrimp on your lawyer! (even though it hurts a lot to hand over $250 or $550 per hour). Better yet, find a way to build trust with your spouse so you can minimize your need for legal help.
2. Laws are written to provide a framework to resolve disputes in our society while enriching lawyers in the process. Many young lawyers are astonished at the way the laws are written to promote the inflation of their billings. Then they get over it and start ringing it up…cha ching!! With few controls and limited oversight, they can unethically exploit people at one of the most vulnerable times of their lives. There is little hope of this changing because lawyers are the ones writing our laws. Accept it! Anger or frustration with the system will just make you less effective.
3. One way out is Collaborative Divorce, a process of working with lawyers, accountants and counselors who know the system is broken and wish to provide a more civil and fair way to resolve things outside the courts. You have to sign away your right to go to court temporarily so it is really only useful for couples who are both fairly reasonable people. And the downside is you’re paying at least 3 people $100-$400 per hour for their time.
4. Another way out is to use a mediator (who is often also a lawyer with a high billing rate). You can contract with a mediator alone or you can both have your lawyers there to advise you through the mediation and spend up to $10,000 per day. An amazing mediator I have heard of who is reasonable and really good in BC is Carol Baird Ellan.
5. Another way out is to find a way to build trust (or don’t break it in the first place) and do most of your negotiating outside of the legal system, then use your lawyers to write up the agreement you two have already negotiated.

Ways to reduce your legal bills

1. Find a way to build trust with your spouse so you can minimize your need for legal services
2. Represent yourself and use your lawyer (or local Legal Aid Society) as your advisor
3. Do all the grunt work for your lawyer – drafting letters, making up spreadsheets, getting info, think ahead as they often remember additional things after the fact
4. Be really clear about what you want them to do and what you don’t want them to do. Observe how you control them or abdicate to them like you tried to control or abdicate to your spouse, and STOP THE PATTERN.

What happens to people when they engage the legal system?

Overwhelm, fear, regression to a child-like state, ideal-parent projection on your lawyer, abdication of common sense/agency, potential for exploitation, perpetrator/victim, desire to be cared for, are all patterns that may be seen.  Stay alert and learn your patterns.

What to do after your final separation agreement is signed (or after divorce)

Immediately file tax documents.  In Canada, use form T1158 to register the spousal and child support payments (don’t forget to include the court order with this form) and form T1213 to get a letter so your employer can reduce the taxes deducted from each of your paychecks. These forms are submitted to different offices so pay attention to the instructions; irritatingly, T1213 has to be filed every year and it takes several months to get their authorization letter so file it every August (send an email with the Subject Line: File T1213 to everyAug1@followupthen.com and it will return to you every year as a reminder).  If you are the low income spouse, Apply to the Canada Pension Plan to divide CPP credits (or the equivalent Social Security agency in your country).

Treat yourself kindly, you have survived the second most stressful event life has to offer 😊

Take some time for yourself, to let your nervous system slowly settle down from its jangled state – no new relationships (or only comforting ones), listen to classical music, spend more time in nature or in peaceful surroundings, eat your food more slowly, learn how to breathe (yogic breathing is called pranayama, physiotherapists and Qi Gong practitioners also teach proper breathing), exercise more, do some weight training under supervision to straighten out your posture, spend time with family you haven’t seen in a while and reconnect.

Clean up your language and your energy toward your ex.  The battle is over. The Warrior must be decommissioned. One way is to treat them and talk to them like you would talk to a cashier.  No force of passion, just business, and don’t linger on anything.  Hopefully in time you will be able to build a new relationship from a different place in you, one that honors the memories you both share, honors that they are the parent of your children and that you have let go of whatever you had stuck on them all those years.

Take care of all of the financial and parenting arrangements as they are spelled out in the final separation or divorce agreement in a reasonable amount of time. You don’t need to rush this, be kind to yourself first and recognize you may be really broke for some time until you recover from the legal bills and get your tax situation sorted out.

Remove your ex-spouse as beneficiary on all policies, accounts, disability and pension plans, etc.

Re-do your will.  Shoot, I still haven’t done this…

Rebuild your relationship with your kids (and any others that suffered through this).

Patience, love, offering frequent apologies for wrecking their lives, listening much more and talking much less, and Having Fun!!! are the keys to rebuilding relationships with children.

Keep doing your personal work so you become more real, more YOU, healthier physically, spiritually and emotionally, it all makes you so much more attractive!

Moving on

“Always look for the shortest path to your bliss” B.W.

Finding love: https://tinybuddha.com/blog/how-to-find-real-lasting-love-without-looking-for-it/

“Making Your Second Marriage a First-Class Success” by Doug and Naomi Moseley

http://jamesrussell.org/blog/blog/beautiful-advice-from-a-divorced-man-after-16-years-of-marriage

Podcast: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/q/schedule-for-friday-june-10-2016-1.3628309/alain-de-botton-reveals-what-makes-a-relationship-last-in-the-course-of-love-1.3628353