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What a Divorce Lawyer Would’ve Done Differently About His Own Divorce

I’m a divorce lawyer. I’m also a child of divorce. And I’m a divorcee.
 
That last one still stings a little — not because of any lingering heartbreak, but because I know better now. Or at least, I should have known better then.
 
Every day, I sit across from people navigating one of the most emotionally charged experiences of their lives, and I help them make rational decisions in deeply irrational circumstances. But when it was my turn? I made plenty of mistakes.
 
Here are some of the lessons I learned the hard way.

Don't Lead with an Unreasonable Position

When my marriage ended, I was just finishing law school. We didn’t have much between us — mostly debt. The debt was jointly incurred for both of our costs of living, a few trips, some nice-to-have spending. I thought it would be perfectly reasonable to split it, with her taking responsibility for a smaller portion.
 
What I failed to appreciate was that in my jurisdiction, debt isn’t divisible the way I imagined — particularly when it outweighs the assets and sits in one party’s name. My position, no matter how fair I thought it was at the time, almost certainly signaled something very different to her attorney: that I was a bully. After all, I was a law student. I should have known better. Instead of coming across as reasonable, it probably looked like I was trying to pull one over on her — wool over her eyes.
 
Here’s what I’ve learned since: advancing an unreasonable position out of the gate risks hurling you into a litigious cyclone that can be incredibly difficult to escape. Once that adversarial tone is set, everything that follows gets filtered through suspicion and hostility. Start reasonable. You’ll save yourself — and everyone involved — a lot of pain.

Don't Be an Asshole

One day, after a long stretch of helping clients work through their issues, I found myself bluntly telling one of them: “Stop being an asshole.”
And then it hit me. If I wanted to improve my own situation, maybe I ought to take my own advice.
 
It’s remarkable how easy it is to coach other people through their worst moments while simultaneously failing to apply the same wisdom to your own life. Divorce has a way of making us feel justified in our worst behavior. But justified and productive are rarely the same thing.

Focus on What You Can Control

There was a period where I spent an extraordinary amount of mental energy thinking about things that were entirely outside my control — what my son’s mom was thinking, what she was doing, who she was spending time with. The moment I stopped trying to control those things was the moment I started to feel sane again.
It sounds simple. It’s not. But when you internalize this — truly internalize it — you get your life back. The only person whose behavior you can influence is yourself.
 
Everything else is noise.

Don't Sweat the Petty Things (A Sock Story)

I’m a stickler for matching socks. That might sound trivial, but hear me out. Socks are one of those things where you could wear any two mismatches and nobody would really know. But then again, you could cut a lot of corners that nobody would notice. Matching socks signal to me that I care about some semblance of order — whether anyone else sees it or not.
 
So when you’re sharing parenting time and you send your kid off in perfectly matched socks only to get mismatched socks back… well, any hope of reuniting those pairs probably died the moment they left your house. Lost sock syndrome is only exacerbated by breaching the environment where the lonely counterparts live.
 
But here’s the thing: I can’t impart my sock values on his mom. And attempting to do so might just inspire her to send him in mismatched socks out of spite.
I would often share this story with clients and say: “If I had complained to a lawyer about the sock situation, my bill could probably buy 100 pairs of brand new socks.”
 
Pick your battles. And if the battle is about socks, you’ve already lost.

Language Matters

One of the most impactful changes I made — and one that probably served more to preserve my sanity than anything else — was changing the way I referred to my son’s mom.
 
She could be “Suzi.” She could be “Suzanne.” She could be “my ex.” She could be something far less polite. Or she could be “my son’s mom.”
 
Only one of those made it almost impossible for me to feel anything but cordial.
From that point on, she was my son’s mom. And I would correct anyone who referred to her differently. It completely changed my frame of thinking.
 
On that same note — the way you refer to the other parent in front of your children matters enormously. “Mom” or “Mommy” feels very different from “your mother” said through clenched teeth.
 
And you’d be surprised how much of a difference “my kids” versus “our kids” makes in your co-parenting communication. One word. Worlds apart in tone.

Treat the Other Parent Like a Business Partner

This reframe changed everything for me. When I started thinking of my son’s mom as a business partner, I became much kinder and more patient.
 
Think about it. You are in business together — the business of raising your kid. Unfortunately, you’ve already made the decision about who your partner is. You can’t change that now. But unlike most businesses, failure isn’t an option. Bankruptcy isn’t an option. Winding things down isn’t an option. The company needs to keep running — sustainably and healthily.
 
In a business, you wouldn’t constantly threaten litigation over every minor dispute. Can’t agree on the type of monitors to buy for staff? Disagree about where to have the Christmas party? You’d work it out. But somehow, in family law, people reach for the legal threat over the equivalent of office supplies and holiday parties.
 
Treat your co-parent with the same professionalism, patience, and pragmatism you’d bring to a business relationship. The “company” — your children — will be better for it.

Final Thoughts

I don’t share these lessons because I’ve figured it all out. I share them because I got a lot of things wrong, and I’ve had the uncommon vantage point of watching hundreds of other people navigate the same terrain.
 
The common thread in the cases that go well? The people involved choose — and it is a choice — to be reasonable, to let go of what doesn’t matter, and to remember that the person on the other side of the table is still someone who matters to their children.
 
If you’re going through it right now, give yourself grace. And maybe check your socks.

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What a Divorce Lawyer Would’ve Done Differently About His Own Divorce

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