posted 5th October 2023
How to Keep a Divorce Amicable
Most separating couples start out intending to be reasonable. What breaks it is rarely a decision to fight. It is a series of small moments where things go wrong and neither party knows how to recover.
Agree how you will communicate, early
Before anything contentious comes up, agree the ground rules: email rather than late-night messages, no discussion of money in front of the children, a reasonable time to reply.
It sounds unnecessary while you are still being civil. It is what holds when you are not.
Do not negotiate by text
Money discussions by message escalate faster than any other kind, because tone is invisible and both parties reread things at two in the morning.
Keep the substantive discussions to a structured conversation. Use messages for logistics.
Establish the figures before opinions form
Most arguments about money are actually arguments about different assumptions. One party thinks the house is worth more than the other does. Neither knows what the pension is worth.
Get the actual figures out first. A surprising number of disputes disappear once both parties are looking at the same numbers.
Separate what you need from what you resent
Both are real. Only one of them belongs in the settlement.
The grounds for the divorce do not affect how the finances are divided. Time spent arguing about who did what to whom is time paid for at someone's hourly rate.
Decide what you are willing to lose
Nobody gets everything. Working out in advance which two or three points genuinely matter, and which you will concede, puts you in a far stronger position than treating everything as non-negotiable.
When it starts going wrong, stop
Amicable divorces do not usually collapse suddenly. They erode: a message that could have been worded better, a delay that looks deliberate, a figure that appears to have been withheld.
At that point, bringing in a third party is what prevents the drift becoming a court case. It is much easier to recover a negotiation that is going badly than to restart one that has broken down.
Keep the children out of it
Not in the sense of protecting them from the fact of the divorce, which they know about. In the sense of not making them carriers of information between two adults who are not speaking.
Children are affected far more by sustained conflict between their parents than by the separation itself.
Finish it properly
The most common failure of an amicable divorce is not an argument. It is two reasonable people agreeing everything between them and never obtaining a financial consent order.
That leaves both parties open to a claim years later, whatever they agreed at the time, and attitudes change when circumstances do.
An amicable divorce still needs a binding order. Get in touch for a free initial consultation.
