Mediate Michigan

A very insightful article on divorce can be found here.  The author relates her own divorce experiences from breaking up to finding the right lawyer to co-parenting their children.

On handling the divorce itself the author notes:

“Then, how do you go about divorce itself? Lawyers are the obvious option. But divorce through lawyers who believe in confrontation is, these days, frankly for ninnies. Much more sensible is to go to lawyers who see the whole picture, and nowadays there are many family and conciliation lawyers around who, in that bland phrase, “sit you all down and sort everything out calmly over a cup of tea”. Unless you are mega-rich and full of hate, it’s really not worth trying to sort things out in a combative way.

Naturally, I left him. I eventually ended up with an old family solicitor completely unversed in divorce law, but who had done the conveyancing on the house very efficiently. It was only through him and his kindly words – when I was being too greedy he restrained me, and when I was being too generous he restrained me as well – that we sorted everything out. I think in the end I probably got 25 percent less than I should have, and my husband probably thought he’d been screwed by 25 percent more than he should have – and that way we reached what was probably a perfectly fair agreement.”

The author also has wise words about how to deal with your children and mutual friends.