Getting a divorce is not a pleasant experience. But it happens. If it happens to you, what can you do to make it a successful divorce? From my experience, the following is a helpful list:

Although it is perfectly normal for divorcing parties to experience emotional tension, the parties who profit most by divorce are those who are able to disassociate emotions from the important decisions in the case. When making decisions affecting your finances and your children, which can affect the rest of your life, you should make those decisions like a banker would make them. When you are emotionally upset you are not as likely to make favorable decisions for yourself. You simply don't have the capacity to see the big picture as clearly as you should. Wait a day or two, if you can, before making those really important decisions where you are unsure of yourself. Chances are you will see the case differently the following morning.

A divorce is a major financial undertaking. If you do not initially set goals of what you expect from the process, you will be like a boat drifting in the lake without a sail. Setting goals permits you to chart your progress as you go through the case.

In many cases, parties exercise manipulation toward the other. Parties to a divorce will frequently play upon guilt of the other spouse and try to bring those emotions into the divorcing process. Guilt which you may have about the breakdown of the marriage can cause you to make concessions which should not be made. Don't fall into that trap.

In almost every marriage, one spouse is more dominant than the other. All too often, that spouse will attempt to control the decision making of the subservient spouse. If your spouse is the dominant one, you may find yourself agreeing with that spouse over suggestions that affect your goals in the case. The role of your lawyer is to bridge that gap and give you an advantage over the combined effectiveness of your spouse and lawyer. Ultimate success will depend on which team works the most effectively together. A successful divorce is a team effort of the attorney and client. Ask yourself if your lawyer and you would have made this same decision if your spouse hadn't suggested it.

Remember that a manipulative party will often try to destroy the confidence of the other spouse in their lawyer and others who provide support systems. They try to get the subservient spouse to make concessions without their lawyer.

Here are some examples:

(a) "Lawyers are only interested in themselves and their pocketbooks."

(b) "The lawyers will get all the money in this case."

(c) "If you file suit against me, you will never get a cent."

Lawyers serve an important negotiating function in this area of law. They act as buffers. They can negotiate with the other attorney based upon a trade-off of bargaining items. That is, they can make conditional concessions based upon getting something in return. This is something which the parties cannot do nearly as well themselves.

The more that children are exposed to the workings of the divorce process, the more permanent will be the damage to them. Parties should not use the children as weapons. It is unfair and cruel. Children are not equipped to handle it. Children should not be used to carry messages to the other spouse.

Children view most things in the first person. They believe that they are responsible for the break-up of the marriage, even though they are not. They need to be reassured that nothing they did or said is causing their parents to get divorced. They need extra praise during this trying period.

Even the most well-meaning parent, who would not dream of brainwashing the children, may quite innocently say or leave written information about, which the children will carry back to the other parent with the openness which is characteristic of children.

You will find that friends, relatives and associates will offer free advice regarding your divorce. The sympathy and emotional stroking that you get from these conversations is often comforting. Experience indicates, however, that when this spreads to the giving of legal advice, it can frequently cause you anxieties and create false hopes. Each case has a variable objective and subjective factors which determine its outcome. You may have to listen, out of courtesy, to these comments from these advising outside parties; but remember to keep it in perspective. If you think you heard a good idea from one of these sources, discuss it with your attorney, whose advice you should follow closely.

You must learn to distinguish between good advice on the one hand and distractions on the other hand. No two cases are alike. Well meaning friends may describe two or three terms from their divorce settlements which sound fabulous to you. You may wonder why you didn't get those terms or those amounts. There are several things you must remember. No two divorces are the same. A divorce case represents a set of relative pressures. Each side is dealt certain advantages. The success of the divorce is dependent on how well a spouse plays those advantages in the case. A friend of yours may have obtained several favorable terms for which they traded-off other benefits to their spouses. Factors such as the pressure that parties put upon themselves to get the divorce over may create very favorable terms for their spouses.

A lawyer is trained to know the meanings and legal implications of words and phrases. What may appear to be a harmless and innocent document may have serious repercussions to your case. You may have inadvertently signed away valuable legal rights and bargaining positions. To do this without your lawyer's advice is ludicrous. A partial list of documents which you should never sign includes income tax returns, corporate minutes, promissory notes, mortgages, deeds to land, powers of attorneys and assignments. Experience indicates that requests to sign these documents are often purposely made in an urgent manner with a short time limit. Don't give in without your attorney's actual approval.

In order to effectively present your case, your lawyer needs to have specific evidence of the actual financial contributions you made during the marriage in addition to the details respecting homemaker contributions performed by you and your spouse. Financial contributions include working to put a spouse through school, working in a spouse's business, as well as outright sums of money supplied by a spouse to the marriage. Evidence of financial contributions includes receipts, bank records, promissory notes, securities brokerage records and deeds to land, to name a few. Don't throw away financial records. They may be critical to establishing your position in court. By the way, homemaker contributions include child rearing activities, in addition to all the traditional activities in maintaining the household.

A case cannot be honestly resolved until both attorneys have received full and complete records dealing with all aspects of the assets, income and liabilities involved. It is often to the advantage of the spouse who exclusively has possession of financial records to attempt to originate settlement negotiations before a full financial disclosure has been made. Both sides need to be on an equal footing in terms of financial facts before settlement negotiations can be honestly and effectively undertaken on their behalf.

Financial facts change as the case proceeds and as additional financial information comes to light. Your original goals may turn out to be too high, or perhaps too low; they may turn out to be wide of the mark. It is not a sign of weakness if your lawyer suggests a modification of your original goals. This is perfectly normal and occurs regularly. Experience shows that prolonged and heated litigations invariably result where one or both spouses are unwilling to change their goals. The settlement of a divorce case is not different than any other business negotiation, where flexibility and compromise can save both sides sizeable amounts of legal fees.

Only the very smallest divorce cases should be handled by a general practitioner. The continuing change in the tax laws and the legal complexities which attend all but the very smallest divorce cases require that the parties be represented by a matrimonial specialist. Matrimonial law has become a very specialized field.

The spouses that do not do well in divorce cases are those who beat themselves up emotionally and put unnecessary pressure upon themselves. This creates inefficiencies. Winning at divorce is like winning in one's business or professional career. You must be efficient. Being efficient means organizing yourself and programming yourself in a positive way. Train yourself not to ruminate negatively over things you cannot realistically expect to get. Ruminating over positive things can be extremely significant. Your energies should be constructively focused on the real issues in the case so that you can effectively meet your short term goals that you realistically set for yourself in the case. It is only then that you can realistically expect to achieve your long term goals.

A divorce case in many ways is like a baseball game where some innings go well and some innings go poorly. There may even be several innings in a row that go poorly, but the game is not lost until the game is concluded and one side or the other has the most runs. In your case, you may lose one or more motions in court. Some days may not go so well for you. You should not be discouraged if everything does not go your way in court in temporary motions. The touchstone is how well you do at the end of the case. Always strive to see the big picture. Your confidence must remain unshaken throughout the case. Being realistically determined is a key element to success. You must think in terms of victory if you are to be victorious.

The divorce process represents a fluid portion in one's life. Your impressions will change throughout the case, along with your goals. At the beginning of the case, you should write out the impressions that you have and those things that are important to you. This represents a base line which you should refer to during the case and when the case is being concluded either by settlement or by trial. You will note that many of those things that were so important to you at the beginning of the case become less important, or not important at all, as the case progresses. This is an important learning lesson. There will probably be new or different impressions and things that are important to you when final settlement negotiations or the trial are being undertaken. The point is that our impressions change as time goes on and you should not back yourself into an unnecessary trial of the case by rigidly adhering to matters you deem important then but which you may feel much less strongly about in the future. This is where your attorney's experience is very valuable to you.

You and your attorney will work most effectively if you are a team. You should personally examine financial records and information obtained during the discovery process even though it is examined by your attorney. You will probably perceive that information from a different perspective than your attorney.

Be prepared in your case. Keep notes of relevant information. You might want to keep a notebook with copies of key financial and legal documents and notes of key facts so that you can find them quickly when you are with your attorney. Use separators in your notebook. This will increase your efficiency when you are with your attorney in office visits and at court.

Keep your own balance sheet listing the assets and debts with the appropriate amounts or values. Some assets will have an estimated value such as the value of a residence, the value of a motor vehicle or the value of a business. For those assets, you should show the value which you and your spouse ascribe to them. Use pencil so you can erase and change the information as necessary. This balance sheet will be of tremendous value to you so that you can refer to it when settlement negotiations and the trial occurs and at the end of the case.

It is also important that you keep a running list of various settlement terms that you would like to have in a settlement. This information is too important to leave to memory.