It is essential to keep cool. If you get excited, you will get a similar reaction from your spouse and the battle will quickly escalate. Try to avoid this, as it is damaging. You may feel like letting off steam now but if you do, how will you cool things down when you want to settle and get on with your life?

Because emotions run high during a divorce, you need to apply extra caution to the way you interact with your spouse. This applies to communications done directly and those done indirectly, ie. through others (your attorney or a friend or family member).

Depending on how you behave, so your spouse will react. For example, it is best to avoid shouting, blaming and insulting exchanges. At worst, these behaviours can lead to an application for a Protection Order, the loss of unsupervised contact with your children. You may even find yourself facing criminal prosecution, even imprisonment.

It’s very difficult to persuade anybody at a later stage that you really are a nice, calm person who should have a normal relationship with your children and who deserves a good deal. To avoid this sort of consequence, start off as coolly as possible. To achieve this, try to avoid dealing directly with your spouse especially on contentious issues. Use an intermediary such as an attorney (not an aggressive one), a mediator or counsellor.