The Wall Street Journal-20080213-My Valentine-s Gift to You- How to Divorce the Right Way

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My Valentine's Gift to You: How to Divorce the Right Way

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Tomorrow is Valentine's Day, so I thought I would write about my divorce.

As you might imagine, the marriage wasn't what you'd call a rip- roaring success, though I did get a couple of great kids out of it. The divorce, on the other hand, has been fairly successful.

Ten years after our marriage broke up, my ex-wife and I aren't exactly friends. But we still have to make a lot of joint decisions -- and we make them without acrimony.

-- Splitting up. Being the precocious type, I married relatively young, had kids young and got divorced young. As friends have had the misfortune to follow suit, they have often turned to me for advice. None has managed to pull off what Molly and I did.

Divorce, it seems, is always messy. Yet most couples seem determined to make it even messier, both emotionally and financially. Indeed, at the time, I was advised to hire a good lawyer and duke it out. But I was already an emotional wreck, and the thought of thrashing out the details through dueling lawyers filled me with dread.

So Molly and I agreed to negotiate a settlement ourselves. Neither of us came to the marriage with much or received an inheritance or large gifts during our 11 years together, so it was a simple matter of dividing everything equally.

To that end, we valued the house, subtracted the mortgage and thereby calculated our current home equity. We toted up our bank accounts and taxable-account investments. We trimmed the value of retirement accounts to reflect the embedded tax bill.

Once we had a proposed settlement, we approached a local lawyer who, for $500, put it into legal language and helped us with the child- support calculations. Next, we each saw our own lawyer, who spent an hour going over the proposed settlement and suggesting tweaks. Each lawyer charged $200.

With settlement in hand, I refinanced what became my house. That freed up home equity that Molly then used to make a down payment on a house around the corner. Three months after she asked for a divorce, Molly moved out -- and we began our separate lives.

-- Making it work. Sound painless enough? Actually, it was the most wretched three months of my life.

But somehow, it worked -- and it has been working pretty well ever since. Indeed, if folks have children and they ask me for divorce advice, I generally offer five suggestions.

-- Avoid the legal arms race because it will hurt both of you. As you negotiate a settlement, every dollar of legal costs incurred likely means 50 cents out of your pocket. Trust me: There are cheaper ways to work through your anger.

-- Having the ex-spouse around the corner might seem uncomfortably close. But if you have children, it probably means you will see less of your former spouse. There are no awkward drop-offs and pickups. Instead, the kids just walk back and forth.

-- Maintain a reservoir of goodwill, because you'll need it. It will be your week with the kids, your boss will have other plans -- and you may need your ex-spouse to bail you out.

-- If your ex ends up with a little more money in the divorce or goes on to do well financially, don't let it eat away at you. In all likelihood, your children will be the ultimate beneficiaries.

-- Think of your relationship with your ex-spouse as a business relationship. Forget the bad blood. Ignore stuff that isn't your business. Instead, focus on the task at hand, which is raising the children.

Even at the best of times, that isn't easy. There are all kinds of issues that crop up, including discipline, teenage romances, disappointing report cards, curfews and college choices. Handling these things properly takes a lot of parental cooperation.

Molly and I are now involved in paying for our daughter's college education, which means forking over almost $50,000 a year. If either of us tried to come up with the money on our own, it would be a struggle. Between us, it's manageable -- and our daughter benefits. And isn't that the litmus test?