by Emma Johnson
Maybe you’re just day dreaming, or perhaps you’ve slapped down a fat retainer with the meanest divorce lawyer in town. But any woman thinking of separating from her husband needs to plan ahead before she drops the D-bomb on the D-bag. Here are 10 steps to take:
- Make a plan to boost your income. Whether you have always worked full-time or you’ve been stay-at-home mom, the reality is that after divorce, families must muster the new financial realities and time to support two households. This means that your quality of life will decrease, and you need to make more money. How will you do that? Go back to school? Get a promotion? Start a new business, or take on freelance work on the side?
- Make a plan for where you will live. This may mean paying your current mortgage on your own, downsizing, or relocating to a new city. Your address is a critical element of your life: it affects where your kids go to school, proximity to family support and what your monthly finances will look like.
- Find out your credit score for free at AnnualCreditReport.com, and make a plan to boost it if it’s low. Just because your husband had a big salary and high credit score doesn’t automatically mean you do, too. This three-digit figure is the ticket to a new future, as it affects your ability to get an apartment, mortgage, car loan, and a job.
- Figure out where your emotional support will come from. Divorce can be one of the most stressful, horrible things a family can encounter. Who will be the wind beneath your wings? Do you have a few girlfriends you can lean on? A family member or twelve? Accept that one person isn’t enough (they’ll get sick of you). Start asking around for a good therapist.
- Park your emotions and figure out how many assets and how much money you are truly entitled to. By starting negotiations with a cool head, understanding what you are legally entitled to and bringing a bottom-line dollar figure in mind, you are more likely to prevail in any deal-making.
- Park your emotions and figure out what you truly believe is the best custody situation for your kids. Spite, anger and jealousy have no place in visitation negotiations.
- Take a deep breath and accept that you will lose some friend- and family-support. You will also gain friends. Life is changing. You are starting anew in all parts of your life.
- Accept that you will likely be poorer. Fair or not, women and their children are statistically poorer after divorce than when the woman is married. This is usually not true for men.
- Know that you can be richer. I often run into women whose careers and businesses flourished once they got out of stressful relationships with the wrong person. Happy people tend to be professionally successful.
- Decide that you will be happier. Whether the divorce is your decision or his, accept that the relationship was not working. Life does go on. Happiness comes again— if you welcome it it.
Emma Johnson blogs at WealthySingleMommy.com. She is a single mom to two preschoolers and a fulltime freelance business journalist in New York City.
I have separated from my husband and came back hoping he would treat me better like he promised, Its gotten worse I’m so embarrassed I really love him I have tried so many things I asked him could we be friends again he laughed and we were in a drive through he stated your a nurse but I can take that same women in drive through and have what we have he is just so mean and then does nice things and its like it keeps happening I’m so afraid to divorce him but I know its the right thing for me mental health.
I’m tired of being with my husband he finds no time to be with me or his kids. He only finds time to drink and be with his friends like a dead beat! What should I do?
I really needs help leaving my husband it very hard because I am so scared to be alone and I am very sick. Please help.
Really need help. Been married almost 20 years. Gave up my job when I got pregnant with my second child. Been a stay at home mum for almost 12 years now. Husband works. I want to leave the marriage and I believe the children will be better off with their father. I have no money or savings. What do I do and where do I go.
I’m in your same situation and it sucks not having no one to talk to.
Elope with me mi amor
So true. This article is very accurate. I left my husband and found that i had more than I did before.
I took away that I can be richer and happier. I own two houses. We are past raising kids. He is a second marriage after years of being single. We been married two years. He had a traumatic Brain Injury – I never truly knew how physco this made him and then he started drinking. I knew him 20 plus years. You just never really know somone til you are married. I can handle it, I don’t care what others think. I know for me I find peace with the idea I don’t have to endure this crazy train ride. Thanks I needed the reminder I will be happier.
Aw, this was an extremely good post. Taking a few minutes and actual effort to make a very good article… but what can I say… I procrastinate a whole lot and don’t manage to get anything done.
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