Our Thoughts on How to Achieve a Good Divorce

As Resolution’s Good Divorce Week ends, the team at FLiP offer their thoughts on how best to achieve a good divorce:

“Find the lawyer that is the right fit for you. Divorce is extremely personal and the lawyer advising you should be someone you trust to guide you through the process as easily as possible” Rebecca Alexander, Associate

“Look at it from the other person’s point of view” Harriet Burge, Consultant  

“Keep at the forefront of your mind that your children are the product of you both and you will forever be a family unit” Kara Swift, Associate

“Whist divorce and separation is a painful and difficult transition, often throwing up raw emotion and a range of often complex and contradictory thoughts and feelings, try and hold onto and nurture the aspiration that you can nevertheless work collaboratively as parents mindful that your child or children will appreciate you both putting them first” Dominic Raeside, Head of Mediation. 

“This is a stressful period for everyone….get support for your own emotional sanity and for any relationship problems with your ex.” Ruth Smallacombe, Mediator and Family Consultant. 

“Try and leave the emotion at the door, and to try and see things from the other person’s perspective….trying to resolve financial matters when they are bound up with sadness, grief, anger and/or resentment inevitably makes for a much more elongated and difficult process. Engaging a therapist or counsellor early on to help process your emotions can really help with this” Mariko Wilson, Senior Associate.

“Take some time to think about how you have dealt with losses and change in the past and consider how that might play out in the current situation” Jo Harrison, Counsellor and Family Consultant

“Honesty, explanation, compassion and compromise…” Helen Greenfield, Director

“Is what I am saying /doing helpful to my children?” Pamela Collis, Consultant 

“Pay attention to the flip-side: underneath the stuff of law, money and pragmatics are the very real challenges of parents and children getting through this transition well.  So solutions are not usually based upon legal principles but upon choosing the right process and pacing” James Pirrie, Director

“Sometimes divorce is the best thing that can happen to a marriage” Nicole Phillips, Associate

“Try and remember why you married this person in the first place. Divorce can be heartbreaking, but ultimately it should be about moving forwards not revenge” Hannah Greene, Associate

“Remember that you and your ex are both human – you won’t get it right all of the time. And also try and remember that you are not the same – they may do things differently from you but that does not automatically make it bad for the kids. It’s just different” Gillian Bishop, Consultant