Mediate Michigan

The legal process of reaching a separation agreement can be an unexpected marathon.

“I think of it as my bad night in Vegas,” says a single mother of the money she has spent on legal skirmishes in her divorce proceedings, which – sit down, if you’re not already – have been going on for 18 years. “It’s erosive,” says the mother of two, citing the number of motions filed in court. “I had to go to court to get a motion specifying a time for him to call the kids,” she says. “Then there was a countermotion, and I had to respond to that,” she continues, her voice trailing off in exasperation. “I can’t even remember them all now. There was even a motion to bar him from filing motions.”

Think the worst part of divorce is the long and winding road of deliberation leading up to divorce? Not always. “I have the divorce that keeps on giving,” one friend said recently, smiling ruefully in an attempt to find humour in the painfully long process – 10 years – of negotiating (and then, when that contract expired, renegotiating) the terms of her ex’s child support obligation.

via The divorce that never ends – The Globe and Mail.