Divorce with a smile

No matter how painful the decision to divorce is and how much you might have tried to prevent it, there are situations where a divorce is the only solution. This article is not about preventing a divorce (which we all should try our best to); this is about having a divorce without turning your former spouse into your worst enemy. Now remember that for this to work both sides have to believe in it so you must try your very best to convince your spouse that it will be in the best interest of both parties to prevent an ugly divorce.

While we strongly recommend that you get legal help to go through your divorce process, but also use your head. A divorce attorney's job is to make sure that you get what you want (a divorce) and s/he gets paid. If you and your spouse hate each other to death for the rest of your lives, it doesn't matter. So listen to your attorney but don't do anything that you wouldn't do to a friend (even if your spouse does not think of you as a friend or has done something that friends don't usually do).

How to get a divorce with a smile?

1. In this century, a divorce is not much different from a change of job. After all, every other marriage ends up in a divorce and in coming years not only we will see higher number of divorces, we will also have more than a few in our life time. So as career counselors always advise that never burn your bridges with the previous employer, the same applies here. Just think of a divorce as an end of a relationship, but beginning of a friendship.
2. Don't be greedy. The law lays down what you can and cannot have but don't fight beyond a certain point. Even if you get it, you will never be happy.
3. If you have kids, think of them. Do not make your relationship so ugly that your kids start to think of you as weird creatures. Kids who grow up in such situations have horrible problems with their relationships when they grow up. One study even points out that kids with parents who had a divorce are more likely to have one in their relationship.
4. Think of all the love you had for each other, the vows you made on your wedding day, the fun you had during the honeymoon! That is never going away; you can not erase that. Do not hate a person that you loved so much at one point.
5. Anything can go wrong in life but it does not mean that we turn everything into an ugly scene.

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