Divorce - How To Maintain Civility With Your Spouse

Maintaining civility with your spouse is important. Maintaining civility with your spouse is especially important during the early stages of the divorce process when there is a lot of uncertainty surrounding you, your spouse, and the children.  In the majority of divorces, the civility can be rebuilt or if it never ceased to exist, it can be maintained.  All that is required on your part to ensure that this happens is a little know how and effort.

In this article we have compiled a list of four ways to either rebuild civility or if the civility already exists, then to maintain it.  Again, being 100% honest with you, we acknowledge that these four ways will not be effective in every divorce scenario because some divorces get turn SO HEATED that there is no repairing.  Our hope is that your divorce is like most divorces in that you are determined to maintain continued, peaceful relations with your spouse.  If this is you, then take a look at the list below.  Our advice is that you read the list, familiarize yourself with it, and then implement the four ways into your divorce scenario:

Way #1 – Do No Surprise Your Spouse.  Let us be a little more specific.  When we say ‘do not surprise your spouse’, what we are really saying is this: Do not move out of the marital residence without discussing the matter with your spouse first; Do not take the children out of school without the discussing the matter with your spouse first; Do not consult with a divorce attorney without discussing the matter with your spouse first; and Do not file for divorce without discussing the matter with your spouse first.  If you will avoid the ‘do nots’ listed above as well as avoid additional ‘do nots’ that will arise as your divorce unfolds, then you will be able to prevent causing your spouse to have an emotional overreaction.  Take our word for it, if you will avoid surprising your spouse, you will ensure that you and your spouse are able to maintain civility between you.

Way #2 – Do Not Arrive At the Exchange Location With Your New Boyfriend / Girlfriend.  If you do not like money, and you want to just throw money away, then go ahead and arrive at the agreed exchange location with your new boyfriend / new girlfriend seated the in the front passenger seat of your vehicle.  Committing this violation is the quickest way to ensure that your spouse will have an emotional overreaction, refer to you as an expletive, and ‘lawyer-up’.  Again, just to reiterate our point, violating way #2 is a very, very bad idea.

Way #3 – Maintain Good Communication Between You And Your Spouse.  When we say ‘maintain good communication between you and your spouse’ that does not necessarily mean that you and your spouse have to be friends.  It just means that you and your spouse should be able to communicate with each other about the children or if there are no children involved, you are able to communicate with each other about the resolved issues. 

Way #4 – Express Some Empathy Towards Your Spouse.  We acknowledge that way #4 might be a bit of a stretch for most spouses.  In a minority of divorces, the spouses have good enough communication between them that way #4 is possible.  Whenever we say ‘express some empathy towards your spouse’, we are not suggesting that you and your spouse have to still be friends, we are just suggesting that you should be mindful of the fact that right now your spouse is experiencing a lot of the same negative feelings that you are experiencing and is also experiencing a lot of the same hardships that you are experiencing.  For example, one of the negative feelings that both of you are probably experiencing during the early stages of the divorce is the feeling of uncertainty.  One of the hardships that both of you are probably experiencing during the early stages of the divorce is the hardship of ‘struggling to pay the bills’ from month to month.