Finding Middle Ground in Your Life and Divorce

Divorce is generally unpleasant. Oh sure, we all have that friend who sails through it with a smile on their face and a spring in their step, never exhibiting an outward moment of hesitation as they move through the divorce with an almost unicorn-like dignity and grace. Then there are the other 99.999 percent of us. I have been in the ugly tear-stained trenches of it all as my little one was ripped from my arms screaming for his Mommy. I have made some stupid mistakes, more than once. Sometimes I wonder if all the difficulties I have been through are the reason I am effective in this line of work. I promise I will not ask you to do something I haven't done before, and I really understand how you feel when you sit down in my office overwhelmed and in pain. Real, excruciating, pain that feels as if you have been punched in the gut. Not sleeping. Not eating. Feeling as if you are in a daze and as if all this is happening "to you" without any input, without any control. You...

The first thought that may come to your mind is irony perhaps. I do love irony, and it is generally not lost on me that I am a divorce attorney writing once again about love. My celebration of Valentine's Day on Friday the 13th is a bit less macabre that it sounds -- well, ever so slightly. After 21 years of being a divorce attorney, one would expect I might be a touch of a cynic. Well, you caught me. I love everything about love but Valentine's Day does it. It brings out the full-blown pessimist in me. Valentine's Day is the mandatory day for showing love and affection to those we hold dear, right? There are those cards, written by the finest Hallmark writers who somehow have crawled inside our very soul and poured out onto this $8.95 card just exactly how we love each other (How do they do this? It is magical.) Of course, they are so picked through by the end of January this may have you sending the one you purchased on February 12th at CVS, wishing your sweetheart a ha...

I have had the privilege and pleasure of representing some amazing people over the last 21 years who just could not make it work. Some really hardworking, big-hearted, intelligent, successful and beautiful people (inside and out) have been my clients. When you spend months and even years with people during a difficult time, there is a mutual admiration and friendship that sometimes lasts even after the divorce is over. I have a client who still brings doughnuts to my office 10 years later. I sometimes jokingly tell my clients that we have to approve of anyone they marry the next time around. Perhaps the strangest part of it all is that I have been asked several times to actually marry people. Seriously, your divorce lawyer? How is that ever a good idea? Look, I am a big believer in love, in second chances and in the whole until the end of time thing. My husband has actually officiated at two unsuccessful unions in the name of the authority vested in him as a... notary public. Roma...

Marriage Advice from a Divorce Lawyer It is amazing that despite the fact we spend most of our lives either searching for love and companionship or being in a relationship, this is the one thing we are never really taught how to do.  Expectations and patterns are determined by the successful (and not so successful) relationships we see as children, on television, and by trial and error.  By the time you walk through the front door of my office, it is often too late.  And divorce sucks.  It’s expensive and emotionally devastating.  In 20 years of experience practicing law, I have often wondered why so many relationships fail.  The complaints I have heard over the years have similarities in what was “missing.”  Even when there is an affair, it is usually a symptom rather than a cause.  Did these people know the things about their partner that now drives them out the door before they got married?  (Most of the time the answer is yes)....