What Not To Do During a Divorce: A Mediator’s Guide to Avoiding Common Pitfalls

I’ve been helping couples navigate divorce for nearly 20 years now. And in that time, I’ve seen pretty much every mistake you can make. Some are small and easily corrected. Others? They’re the kind that keep me up at night because I know they didn’t have to happen.

Here’s what I’ve learned: most people going through divorce make the same mistakes. Not because they’re careless, but because they’re hurting. They’re angry. They’re scared. And when you’re in that emotional state, it’s incredibly easy to make decisions that seem right in the moment but cause damage that lasts for years.

I know this not just as a divorce mediator, but as someone who lived through it. I watched my parents’ divorce drag on for years. The last time I saw my father, I was 16, watching him argue with a judge over paying for my college. That’s not how your divorce has to go.

Don’t Hire a Divorce Attorney As Your First Move

Here’s what happens when you hire an attorney right out of the gate: your spouse hears about it and immediately feels attacked. So they hire their own attorney. Now you’ve got two professionals whose job is to fight. And fight they will.

Before you know it, you’re spending tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees for a divorce that could have been resolved peacefully in a few months through mediation. I’ve known couples who had to drain their retirement savings and borrow against all the equity in their home to pay their attorneys.

What to do instead: Start with mediation. You can always hire an attorney later if needed, but once you’ve spent six months and $50,000 on litigation, you can’t get that time or money back.

Don’t Make Major Decisions While You’re Angry

Anger is a terrible decision-maker. When you’re furious at your spouse, it’s tempting to make decisions designed to hurt them. To fight for something not because you want it, but because you know they want it. To refuse a reasonable offer because you’re determined to “win.”
Those decisions you make in anger? You’re going to have to live with them for the rest of your life. I had a client who spent hours of their attorney’s time fighting over a stapler. A stapler!

What to do instead: When you feel that surge of anger, take a step back. Sleep on big decisions. Talk to a therapist or divorce coach. Focus on what you actually want for your future, not on settling scores from your past.

Don’t Try to Hide Assets or Income

Someone always thinks, “If I just don’t mention that bank account…” But here’s what always happens: it gets discovered. And when it does, everything falls apart. Any trust that remained evaporates. Financial dishonesty during divorce creates problems that poison the entire process.
What to do instead: Full disclosure. Put everything on the table. When both of you know you’re looking at complete and accurate information, you can negotiate reasonably and confidently.

Don’t Involve Your Children in the Divorce

This one is personal for me. As a kid, I was dragged into my parents’ divorce in ways that were humiliating and painful, and it damaged my relationships with both of them in ways that never fully healed.

Your children are going through one of the most challenging experiences of their young lives. Yet I see parents share too much with the kids, complain about the other parent in front of them, ask them where they want to live, use them as messengers, or schedule parenting time to punish the other parent rather than what’s best for the kids.

What to do instead: Shield your children from the conflict. Never badmouth the other parent in front of them. Make decisions about parenting time and child support based solely on what’s best for your children, not on your feelings toward their other parent.

Don’t Air Your Grievances on Social Media

That angry post about your spouse? Your lawyer—or worse, your spouse’s lawyer—can and will use it against you. That photo of you partying while claiming you can’t afford child support? Evidence that undermines your credibility.

What to do instead: Stay off social media during your divorce. At minimum, don’t post anything about your spouse, your divorce, your finances, or your parenting. Assume anything you post will be seen and used in ways you didn’t intend.

Don’t Make Major Life Changes During the Divorce Process

You want to move to a new city, quit your job, buy a house, or jump into a new relationship. Stop. Not yet.

Significant life changes during your divorce complicate everything. If you quit your job, how do you calculate support? If you move from California to Texas, how do you share parenting time? Every significant change creates new issues to negotiate. Plus, you’re probably not in the best mental state to be making major life decisions right now.

What to do instead: Keep your life as stable as possible until your divorce is finalized. After that, you’ll have plenty of time to reinvent yourself. During the divorce, stability serves you well.

Don’t Neglect the Financial Details

Financial mistakes are among the costliest errors people make in divorce. I see it constantly because of my background in finance and specialized training from the Institute for Divorce Financial Analysis.

Someone agrees to take the house without understanding the actual cost of keeping it. They calculate the mortgage but forget about property taxes, insurance, maintenance, and repairs. A year later, they’re house poor and forced to sell at a loss.

Or someone agrees to split retirement accounts 50-50 without realizing one is a fully taxable traditional IRA and the other is a Roth IRA that’s tax-free—those aren’t actually equal. I worked with a New Jersey couple where this exact mistake would have cost one spouse over $40,000 in lost value if we hadn’t caught it.

Someone else agrees to keep their spouse’s name on the mortgage and title “temporarily” without understanding they’re still legally responsible for the debt. When the ex-spouse stops making payments, they’re the ones getting the default notices.

What to do instead: Treat the financial aspects of your divorce with the seriousness they deserve. This is one of the most significant financial transactions of your life. Work with professionals who understand the implications. Run the numbers. Think long-term, not just about what seems fair right now.

Don’t Drag Out the Process Unnecessarily

My parents’ divorce dragged on for years. I spent my high school years in suspended animation, watching them fight on long after they should have moved on.

Many divorces take forever because one or both spouses haven’t accepted that the marriage is over. They’re still trying to win. They’re still trying to punish. Every month your divorce continues is another month of legal fees, stress, and uncertainty for your children.

What to do instead: Accept that the marriage is ending and commit to moving forward. Focus on resolving practical issues rather than rehashing old arguments. Work with a mediator who can keep you focused on solutions. A reasonable settlement you both can live with is better than a perfect agreement that takes years to achieve.

Don’t Forget That You’re Writing Your Future

The way you handle your divorce sets the tone for everything that comes after. If you have children, you’ll be co-parenting for years—at Little League games, graduations, weddings, and births of grandchildren. The relationship you establish during your divorce is the foundation for all those future interactions.

My parents’ divorce turned them into people I didn’t recognize. The fighting and bitterness changed who they were. My father became so consumed with winning that he lost sight of everything else, including his relationship with me.

What to do instead: Approach your divorce as the first step in building your new life, not as the final battle of your old one. Make decisions you’ll be proud of years from now. Choose a process that allows both of you to maintain your dignity and move forward without destroying each other.

How Mediation Helps You Avoid These Pitfalls

The common thread running through all these mistakes is that they happen when people feel alone, overwhelmed, and unsure how to navigate the complexity of divorce. That’s precisely where mediation makes the difference.

We don’t require you to have everything figured out before you start. We actively guide you through each decision point, helping you understand the implications of your choices before you make them. When you’re feeling angry and want to make a decision you’ll regret, we help you step back and refocus on your actual goals. When financial complexity threatens to overwhelm you—whether it’s stock options, business valuations, or retirement account divisions—we cut through it with specialized financial expertise.

If your situation involves complicated compensation structures, equity shares, or business interests, having someone with an MBA in Finance and training from the Institute for Divorce Financial Analysis on your side means you’re not just guessing at what’s fair. We can model different scenarios, run the actual numbers, and help you see what your choices mean for your long-term financial security.

We don’t just help you resolve today’s issues. We help you think ahead about how changes in circumstances might affect your agreement down the road. What if one of you remarries? What if job situations change? What if the kids’ needs evolve? This future-focused planning means you’re building an agreement that gives you confidence moving forward, not just documenting a property split.

Every couple’s situation is unique. That’s why we don’t believe in cookie-cutter solutions. We develop a personalized approach tailored to your specific circumstances, your family dynamics, and your financial picture. The process we design for a California couple with stock options and startup equity looks different from the process we design for a New Jersey couple with a pension and a family business—because those situations are different and they deserve customized solutions.

The Path Forward

Every divorce begins with a choice. You can choose the path of litigation, anger, and destruction—the path my parents chose, the path that destroyed our family. Or you can choose to end your marriage with dignity and respect.

In litigation, you hand control to strangers who don’t know your family and apply rigid formulas that might not serve either of you well. You spend months or years fighting, draining your resources, and damaging relationships that need to survive for your children’s sake.

In mediation, you maintain control. You make informed decisions with expert guidance. You work cooperatively to find solutions that actually work for your situation. You preserve the resources you’ve worked so hard to build rather than spend them on conflict.

I became a divorce mediator because I saw firsthand what the wrong choices can do to a family. Your marriage may be ending, but your life isn’t. The decisions you make now will affect you, your children, and your financial security for years to come.

You don’t have to figure this out alone. You don’t have to make these mistakes. You can choose a peaceful path that helps you move forward with confidence, preserves essential relationships, and protects your financial future.

Choose wisely. Choose peacefully. Choose to move forward without destroying everything in the process.