Depression and Divorce

Of all the emotions felt during divorce, depression is one of the worst. I don’t mean it’s the worst mentally or spiritually. I mean the worst on all levels, because it takes one away from the task at hand. Depression takes away one’s ability to make new friends, to seek out support from those who might be able to give it. The energy for career and for children’s needs seems to be yanked out of one. Depression destroys one’s ability to face these issues head on. A depressed person cannot formulate a plan or follow through on a plan for dealing with these issues.

Sadly, the task at hand is only a short term task. Anyone can get through it with the right plan.

Divorcing is a process that involves many levels of change. Finances change, suddenly you don’t have money to spend or the security of the retirement benefits that you had when you were married.

Your personal life is destroyed. Many times half of the social network that you had during marriage disappears. It’s alienation, disconnection, disorientation. Who can you count on? Who is there for you? Where do you turn to for help?

Even more difficult is the change to your parenting. The breadwinner now has to re-invent him or herself. During the marriage, one spouse, earning less, often put more time in taking care of the children, and the breadwinner could swoop in after work and have fun with the kids without the hassles.

Now the children have to be taken care of, but the importance of the breadwinner’s career is even more important to those children who now face a future with two separate households spending double the money than before. Where will the breadwinner find the time to spend with the children now, with work and caring for the children’s needs suddenly taking up so much time?

We lawyers need to spend just a little time in a role that goes beyond the legal issues and reaches to the divorcing client’s attitude toward the law and the facts of his or her case. We can help our clients get the right perspective.

But ultimately the person who is divorcing will have to decide how he or she will respond and react to the situation.

What should family law attorneys do when a client is having trouble dealing with the emotional trauma of a divorce? Is there anything that an attorney do to help?

Attorneys are in a difficult position in family law. Few who do not carry the weight of a lawyer’s responsibilities can understand the issues involved.

An attorney is not exactly a friend. Maintaining emotional distance is crucial to the practice of law. If you get too close to the issues you cannot give well-reasoned and dispassionate advice. Emotions affect your judgments. Emotions are reactions that tell you the kinds of thoughts you should have regarding a situation. Attorneys who get too close to the situation begin thinking like the client thinks, and that destroys the very thing that the client needs – a neutral perspective.

An attorney is not a therapist, either. Not exactly. Legal training does not prepare one to delve into the psyche of a client and sort out the psychological issues. Not only would doing this make the attorney more emotionally connected to the client, but it would confuse the client.

But after writing all this, I still claim that family law is a type of therapy. It is short-term, goal oriented therapy that focuses the client on more than just the law. It focuses the client on the future beyond the case.

The only way to do this is to adopt an attitude of care that helps the client sort the emotions that he or she is feeling and put them in perspective. The law is that perspective because it dictates what is and is not reasonable to expect. It also sets the boundaries between the newly divorced and, if children are involved, it sets out the rules for being two separate families.

With these rules and boundaries set out more or less clearly, the newly divorced can get on with their lives, confident is their expectations.

To make this happen, the attorney must not only make the law clear to the client, the attorney must also look for the emotions that get in the way of the client respecting and taking advantage of the law.

We see it over and over. After only a few cases, a family law attorney should be able to warn the client about the feelings he or she has and how those feelings will effect the case. Clients who are still listening to a manipulative spouse because of the terror that sudden loneliness causes is on the road to destruction. So are clients who cannot set up a plan for the future such as finding a good place to live when a house needs to be sold.