Life After Divorce

After the divorce, the dynamics you have with your ex spouse changes a lot. However, if you share a child it's best to understand how you are going to pull through with the arrangements without putting your child through emotional trauma in the process.

Children tend to be very sensitive about conflict. Even before you filed divorce papers, your child probably already knew something was wrong. Children may have limited knowledge and experience in life but when it comes to soaking up the emotion around the house, they can be pretty good at it.

Since you'll probably end up talking about a lot of things about money and the children, it's best that you already prep yourself up with how to manage arguments with your ex after the divorce. Here are a few tips to help start you off:

Be clear about your needs.
Avoid ambiguous double entendres that are open for misinterpretation. Your choice of words play a huge part in whether you'll be successful in keeping the peace between you and your ex after the divorce. Especially if you have children involved, being clear about your needs without leaving your ex to guess about it will be very helpful. If you need more money for child support, you can tell your ex exactly that. Say something like "I'm going back to law school this coming school year. I'll need you to bump up child care to $700 a month starting fall."

Be honest with your feelings without playing the blame game.
Telling your spouse that you feel worried about where the money for your child's education will come from is perfectly alright. What's not alright is being extremely offensive about it. Sometimes couple's attitude about arguments make it a lot harder to figure things out after the divorce.

Know what you want to say before you say it.
Saying things in the heat of argument is one surefire way of saying things you don't really mean. Or at least you don't mean them to come out the way they did. Before you approach your ex about child support or any other pressing matters, organize your thoughts and get a hold of your emotions. Write down the point that you want to express if it helps.