Must a bad marriage end in an even worse divorce?

The simple answer to this question is – no. When someone chooses to end their marriage or is faced with their spouse wanting to end the marriage, the primary need of both parties is to recover from the broken emotional and financial relationship and move on with their life as amicably and as promptly as possible. How to get to that point is often difficult. Many divorcing couples make the mistake of believing that their attorneys and/or the court are going to solve not only their legal problems- their need for a divorce- but also the personal problems that led to them wanting to divorce. Attorneys and the court cannot solve the personal problems that led to the divorce. Divorce is really a personal problem (the broken relationship) with an important legal impact (the need to legally dissolve the marriage, divide assets, determine custody and support). Unfortunately, the more the adversarial legal system is involved in your personal problems, the worse your personal problems are going to get. It is the extremely rare situation where attorneys and/or the courts can provide a person with an outright victory in court where they believe justice has been served and their former spouse has been properly reprimanded and embarrassed sufficiently by the court for their perceived wrongdoings. Instead, after one-two years (if not longer) of courtroom battles, most divorcing couples are left feeling more bitter, less satisfied, and with their personal problems actually worse than when the divorce began.

When you use divorce mediation to work through your legal issues, you replace the adversarial legal system with an environment that promotes civility, cooperation, and fairness. By setting aside your personal problems during the mediation process to work through the legal implications of your divorce in mediation, parties are way more often than not able to reach an agreed-upon resolution to all of their legal issues, in a manner that is respectful, cost-effective, and completed in a timely manner. While mediation may not resolve the parties’ personal problems that led to the divorce, it allows for them to end their marriage peacefully and places them in a position to recover emotionally and psychologically from their personal problems so that they can move forward with the next phase of their life.