There is no question that your divorce is one of the most emotional times of your life and you need to try to figure out a way to bring some emotional order to your life. You’ve got to understand that from a judge’s point of view, a court’s point of view, this is essentially an economic decision. It’s a business deal and the emotions are generally left out of it in court. People come in, and frankly have been victims of some terrible behavior and it’s hard for them to understand how the courts are not going to recognize that in some way in their settlement and it’s probably one of the most difficult things for some people to absorb.

Once they absorb it they are much better able to focus on the important issues like how much is it going to cost me to live, where do I want to live, what kind of area do I want my kids to live in, what kind of associations do I want to have, do I want them to have, and really move forward in their lives. I can’t tell you how many times that we, we tell clients the court system is not going to make a frog into a prince or a frog into a princess. It’s, they expect that their spouse is going to often act differently because he or she is represented by a lawyer but it’s really not the case.

Some people want to get back into the dating world really quickly and we really have to talk to them about how good that is for them and how good that is for their kids. One of the questions that arises often is, is when do I introduce my children to my new significant other. Sometimes parents do it because they’re not so sure how to deal with the significant other and they kind of need company. Sometimes they want to show the other spouse that they’ve got somebody. Those aren’t the right reasons.

It’s important to wait. It’s important for the parent to see the person they’re dating as somebody who they’re in a stable relationship with because it is very, very hard for kids to see their parents move on in the first place and even harder for kids to see their parents move on from one partner to another partner to another partner and I’m not even really talking about whether the person sleeps over or doesn’t sleep over, but the issue of just having a new person in that child’s life.