You want your children to go to private school, so do you hire an attorney and battle it out in court or try to talk to each other? Depends on the process you use to go through your divorce. If you have an attorney, they will tell you not to talk to your Ex. My divorce happened about 30 years ago when my children were 7 and 10 years old. My ex and I each had attorneys and we fought it out in court. Not just once, buy many times, which is typical.
What did I gain from the court battle using attorneys and not trying to talk to him? The only thing I gained was guideline child support which I was entitled to any way, but didn’t know it. I will admit that I thought that my attorney was very nice and reasonable and his was horrible, but I gained nothing, and it certainly had nothing to do with my attorney being too nice. The big battle that I lost in court on was private school for our children; I lost, completely, and I believe that most people who battle that issue will also lose since the courts are funded from some of the same sources as the schools.
So did my children continue in private school? Yes, but only because my ex and I met for lunch on our own and worked out a reasonable deal—he wanted them to get a good education as much as I did, but neither of us could express it to each other because of the way the legal system works—you’re not supposed to talk to each other.
Now this blog is totally not to promote private schools. I believe in public schools and hope to see them improving, but at the time, we lived in a big city and the schools were just horrible. Since our children started school, they had always gone to private school, and I just wanted them to finish that, and so did my ex, and that’s what happened.
The point here is that it wasn’t through the legal system that I obtained results—it was through personal communication with my Ex! Wow, and yet it cost me bundles to take it to court and lose; in fact, it cost both of us a lot of money and wasted time.
