how to talk about divorce with your friends and family

How To Talk About Your Divorce with Friends and Family

It can be very hard to figure out how to talk about your divorce with the important people in your life. Breaking the news or ongoing conversations can have a very real effect on your relationships, depending on your approach. Some people may have an urge to shout it from the rooftops, while others...
Older Couple getting remarried

When Is It OK To Get Remarried?

If you are planning to get remarried soon after your divorce, they key date is the date that the final divorce orders are entered with the court. That means that the orders have been signed by a judge or commissioner and filed with the clerk of the court. That is the point at which the divorce it...
living with your spouse during a divorce

Living With Your Spouse During Divorce

While people tend to assume you need to separate at the time you start divorcing, that is not necessarily true. Many people in fact do wait to separate later during the process or even at the end. While it might be difficult for many to imagine living with your spouse under these circumstances, i...

On Leaving and Being Left

In most divorces, and indeed in most relationship breakups, there is a person who has chosen to leave the relationship and a person who is being left. A key difference between the person who is leaving and the person who is being left is that the person who has made the choice to leave has had all t...

Collaborative Marriage Planning

At the annual Forum of the IACP (International Academy of Collaborative Professionals) this past weekend, I ran into a concept I really liked - Collaborative Marriage Planning, although it might better be called Collaborative Relationship Planning as it is really intended to help couples plan for th...

What is an Intimate Committed Relationship?

When an unmarried couple separates and needs legal help with dividing what they have acquired, one question that we need to determine is whether the relationship has amounted to an "Intimate Committed Relationship". To make this determination, the court will look for factors indicating whether the p...

Relationship Planning

Years ago when my spouse and I were planning to get married, we attended a workshop on pre-marriage planning. As part of the workshop we spent time discussing our values, personalities, and other things that go into making up who we each are. However, I think the most valuable thing we did was discu...

Attachment Theory

At a conference last week there was an interesting workshop on attachment theory, presented by Yuval Berger and Lisa Alexander from Vancouver, BC. While I have heard talks on attachment theory before, I thought they presented it in a particularly helpful way (as a lawyer I can get lost in psychologi...

Stages of Readiness for Divorce

Typically at the beginning of a divorce, the two spouses are at very different stages of readiness for the divorce process. There is usually one spouse that we characterize as the "Leavor". This is the one who has been contemplating the divorce for some time and is now letting the other spouse know...

Tips for Negotiating Relationships with Grandparents during a Divorce

Former corporate lawyer turned parenting blogger KJ Dell’Antonia recently wrote a great article about parenting and divorce. Often, not just the parents are negotiating the time they will spend with their children post-divorce but the grandparents as well. So, how do you navigate the murky waters of...
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