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If there were no legal system, no lawyers and no courts, divorce would still be difficult and it would still take time to go through it. Divorce is at least a major crossroad in your life, maybe even a full-blown life crisis.

So, here you are, you and your spouse, going through your personal life changes, when the State comes along and says, “Excuse me! You can’t go through this without us. Your divorce has to be conducted on our field and under our rules . . . and you can’t even hope to understand our rules. Oh, by the way, this divorce system we’re going to put you through has no tools for helping you solve problems or negotiate with your spouse. In fact, our system is based on conflict and it is specially designed to cause trouble and greatly increase your expense. Please pay your filing fees on the way in.”

Our system of justice is known as an “adversary system.” This is the nature of the beast. It began hundreds of years ago in the middle ages with “trial by combat,” where people with a disagreement would fight it out and whoever survived was “right.” Today, physical contact is no longer a recognized legal technique, but things are still set up as a fight. The parties are regarded as adversaries, enemies in combat. When a divorce is conducted in our legal system, the spouses and their attorneys are expected to struggle against one another and try to “win” the case, to “beat” the opposition.

The rules control the way your attorney works with you. Your attorney is required to be “adversarial,” that is, aggressive and combative. The adversary system and the way lawyers work in it is a major cause of conflict, trouble and the high cost of divorce. You want to have as little as possible to do with the legal system. It is designed to work against you.

In spite of the way things seem, lawyers are not always villains and not always to blame for stirring up conflict. But even for lawyers who mean well, the tools they use and the system they work in will usually increase conflict. Law schools do not require courses in communication or negotiation. Rather, they stress manipulation of rules of law, aggressive and defensive strategy, how to take any side of any case and make the most of it, how to argue, and how to get the most financial advantage in every situation.

Professional standards of practice dictate how a lawyer will conduct your case. For example, professional ethics forbid your lawyer to communicate directly with your spouse–the adversary. It is expected, instead, that your spouse will be represented by an attorney and your lawyer can only communicate through your spouse’s lawyer.

This means that your attorney can’t “talk sense” to your spouse, or explain to your spouse how you see things, or even help you talk to each other. It means your attorney will always have a one-sided view of your case and can never achieve an understanding any greater than your own.

If you retain a lawyer, he will definitely take your case into the contested cycle of the legal system because that’s the only thing he can do. He has to. There are no other formal tools a lawyer can use.

The primary tools the lawyer uses are pre-trial motions and discovery. An attorney can take you and your spouse into court to get temporary orders for support, custody, visitation or keeping the peace. An attorney can use formal discovery to get documents and information under oath.

So, if you and your spouse can work out your own temporary arrangements and share all information openly, you’ll have no need for those incredibly expensive legal tools. You can keep your case out of lawyers’ offices and out of court.

But, if either spouse retains an attorney, that attorney will invariably write formal letters, file legal papers, make motions, and do discovery. These actions will surely cause the other spouse to get an attorney, too. Now, instead of two people who don’t communicate well, you have four people who do not communicate well. The case is now contested and the cost and conflict level will go way up. Attorneys tend to ask for more than they expect to get; it’s considered “good” practice. Your spouse’s lawyer will oppose your lawyer’s exaggerated demands by offering less than they are willing to give and by attacking you and your case at the weakest points.

Now you’re off to a good, hot start and soon you’ll have a hotly contested case, lots of cost, and a couple of very upset spouses. Fees in contested cases can run from tens of thousands of dollars each all the way up to everything.

Summary: Except in high-conflict cases, the legal system has little to offer. The things an attorney can do for you are expensive, upsetting, and tend to increase conflict rather than reduce it.

If you don’t want to (or have to) use the legal system, go around it–work out your arrangements outside the legal system and, if necessary, get limited assistance, in the form of information and advice, from attorneys who do not represent the spouses.

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The biggest mistake that people make when getting divorced is that they fail to plan. They simply decide to leave the relationship and then enter and ugly and expensive battle that ends up hurting everyone involved. There are some things that you could accidentally do that will make your divorce 100 time more miserable than it really has to be.

As with anything in life, you need to have a plan. The same is true for divorce. If you dont plan for what you want – chances are you won’t get what you want. The first step towards having a plan is to know exactly what you want. After you know what you want you can plan to get it.

Here is an excercise: (Get our a piece of paper and a pencil. Write the answers down to the following.)

• Decide how much money you want (realistically) our of your divorce.

• Decide how often you would like to see the children (if you have any)

• Determine if the divorce will be uncontested or an all out battle.

• Determine “when” you want to be divorced.

• Write down all the possessions that you want (realistically).

• Write down any other ‘details’ that you want established in your divorce.

Take a few minutes and try to put everything you can on this list. You will always be able to add to it later.

Now that you have made your list, go back and reread the list. Cross off everything on the list that isn’t worth fighting for, or doing hard work to get. You can save yourself a lot of hassle by knowing what not to ight for. If it really isn’t worth it to you – then don’t worry about it.

Important Note: The things that you crossed off the list as things you didn’t want to fight for are things that you can ‘pretend to be willing to fight for’! So when you negotiate you can mention that you have to have these things. Then you can “trade” them for more important things that you really want.

Now you have a list of everything that you want. Be sure to include intangible things like “peace of mind”, and other concepts that aren’t related to physical stuff. This is important because you will be using this list to get every thing you want out of your divorce.

Now you need to take your list and figure out a time line. If you want to get divorced in 3 months, you should probably already be contacting a lawyer. This brings up another point. Choosing the wrong lawyer can absolutely devestate the entire divorce process for you. There is a way to choose the perfect lawyer but you can ask me about that later.

It is also important that you DON’T tell your spouse that you want a divorce until you have followed the right steps to make sure all of your bases are covered. There may be some financial things that you want to take care of BEFORE you tell your spouse you want a divorce. If you just lose it and tell them you want a divorce, they won’t let you change names on the mortgage, car, checking account, etc…

So you need to plan ahead. If you can plan ahead things will go smoother. Now if you are already in the middle of a divorce, there are still things you can plan for and other ways to get everything you want also. You need access to come easy to use tricks that can help you negotiate for everything you want. This article does not cover those tactics because there are too many to list here. A key factor in your negotiating skills is making your spouse believe that they are getting a better deal than you. There are ways to do this. If you can’t get them to believe they are getting a better deal, then you need to employ stronger tactics to get what you want. You will be able to use the items that you crossed off of your list as leverage in your negotiations.

It is vitally important that you plan for divorce with the right divorce method. From the list you just made, you can make a detailed divorce method of your own to get exactly what you want from your divorce. You should also seek out special techniques that will accelerate the results of your plan. If there is a way that you can tap into the experience of thousands of people to get results, you should do so. I am not saying this to be mysterious. If you read every last word of this article you will know where to find those resources.

Now take action and work your plan!

Source: here.