| James
Walsh
The free-wheeling, carefree, free-spending lifestyle
of bachelorhood comes to an abrupt end. Marriage is the beginning
of a new chapter in life. No longer can you hang around with friends
late nights guzzling beer. There is an acute awareness that somebody
at home is waiting for your return. You cannot indulge anymore
in shopping binges and buying expensive stuff you used to acquire
earlier. Now other family members depend on you for fulfilling
their needs and there is a need to save some money for the proverbial
rainy day or buy assets for the family.
Once you have children, your marital responsibility
increases manifold. While earlier the family was a union of two
mature adults who could go their separate ways anytime they wanted,
the arrival of kids changes the equation totally. Children are
vulnerable and look up to you for protection and support. It is
your duty to provide a nurturing and caring atmosphere for them
that ensures that they grow in all spheres and their personality
develops inner strength.
Everything works fine for some years after marriage.
You get busy with family life. You can see the children growing
up steadily year after year. You buy assets such as car, house
and consumer electronics. Soon, life settles into a fixed routine.
That is when the problems start. You get bored and start looking
at some excitement in life. The marriage begins to seem like a
claustrophobic arrangement that shackles you.
You feel it is preventing you from breaking free
and meeting your aspirations and the kind of lifestyle you want.
There are frequent arguments at home as you gradually discover
that your partner’s personality is not as you thought it
to be and you are getting fed up. If proper care is not taken,
families where there is a constant friction between spouses or
extramarital affairs begin their inevitable slide toward a split.
It is only a matter of time before a partner pronounces the dreaded
words: “I want divorce.”
When such a thing happens, you are stunned. You
look back over all the years of emotional and financial investment
and the time that you spent nurturing the family and building
the home brick by brick, and you feel enraged. How have things
come to such a pass? Will you have to start all over again? How
many years more will it take? What will happen to the children?
With whom will they live? You feel sick when you think that the
partner who filed for divorce is going to get half of all family
property, most of which you acquired – house, vehicles,
jewellery, insurance, bank deposits, expensive consumer electronics
and so on.
It is easy just before divorce for the partners
to decide to use the legal proceedings as a way to teach the other
a lesson. They hire expensive lawyers who are instructed to drag
the proceedings and contest every claim and charge of the opposing
party. There are bitter arguments about child custody, division
of marital assets and maintenance claims. In such divorces, it
is common for lawyers to reveal intimate details in the court
about each other as a way to humiliate the other partner socially.
However, using the divorce proceedings as a way
to settle scores is really a big mistake. Nobody gains in the
entire process, except the lawyers who are able to present a huge
bill at the end. Apart from the financial setback, messy and vindictive
divorce proceedings give rise to a lot of emotional stress. Such
ill-will and bad feelings for the other partner do not end with
divorce judgement, regardless of which way it goes.
It is common for partners to carry their humiliation
and anger over years. Some have to seek professional help to come
out of their depression and animosity, pick up the pieces and
move on with their lives. Messy divorce impacts children too in
a negative way. They develop a feeling of insecurity as parents
fight over their fate.
Both the partners actually gain tremendously if
you decide to bury your differences and agree to part amicably.
You should try to sit together, discuss things over the table
and come to an agreement about all contentious issues such as
child custody, who gets what from the family property and how
much the maintenance would be. This way, you can get a DIY divorce
in as little as two months. You are then free to go your own separate
ways with inflicting minimum emotional damage on yourselves as
well as children.
Article Source: http://www.ArticleJoe.com James Walsh is a freelance
writer and copy editor. If you want to find out more about a solicitor
managed divorce see www.managed-divorce.co.uk
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