What If My Spouse Won’t Cooperate in The Divorce Process?

No one wants to start a divorce—it’s one of the worse things that you can go through. But if you’re sure that’s what you want—what’s the alternative? Stay in an unhappy marriage for the rest of your life? That’s worse because it lasts forever. At least once the divorce is over, you start to heal and your life truly does get better.

Let me tell you about a couple I’m working with now, and, of course, their names are fictional. Mary came into our office a couple of months ago and said she wanted to start the paperwork for a divorce because she was sure that’s what she wanted. So we started the paperwork but we really needed cooperation from her husband in order to get through the process as fairly as possible, which is all that Mary wanted to do. So we drafted the paperwork in the hopes that they could get a written agreement which is what she wanted. She actually wanted out and wanted him to have the house, as she just wanted a clean break.

But Ben was really mad and didn’t want to cooperate; he didn’t want the divorce at all. However, once he saw the draft of the agreement, he realized that he was not going to be able to stop the process and that she was keeping her word, and agreed to cooperate. You certainly don’t have to give up anything to get the other side to work with you towards an equitable divorce. Usually once they realize that you’re serious and you want to do this as fairly as possible, they will start to go along and work with you. You get a lot more working together using mediation or another form of alternative dispute resolution than threats and litigation in court, at least that’s my experience founded on the results I’ve seen from my clients over the last 16 years. It’s also what Ed Sherman believes based on his book, “Make Any Divorce Better”.