Key takeaways
- You don’t need to make major financial decisions immediately after separation. Take time to process and seek proper legal advice.
- Arbitrary deadlines from your spouse often have no legal backing; buying reasonable time is within your rights.
- Divide decisions into two piles: urgent protective measures (changing your Will, securing assets) and big decisions that can wait.
- Making complex property and financial choices while in emotional turmoil rarely leads to good outcomes.
- Getting independent legal advice helps you separate what genuinely needs urgent attention from what can wait until you’re in a better position to decide.
You don’t have to make every major decision immediately after a relationship breakdown
When a relationship ends, you’re often under enormous pressure to make big decisions about property, finances, and your future, which is usually right when you’re least equipped to make them. The reality is that most major decisions about property settlement, financial arrangements, and your post-separation life don’t need to be made in the first days or weeks after separation.
Understanding which decisions require urgent attention and which can wait until you’re in a clearer headspace can protect both your interests and your well-being. This article explains how to manage decision-making pressure during early separation and identifies what truly needs immediate action versus what can be properly considered when you’re ready.
Need guidance on your next steps? Speak with our divorce & separation lawyers today and take the pressure off making rushed decisions.
The emotional reality of early separation
The first days and weeks of a relationship breakdown and separation can feel like you’re a kite caught in a hurricane. Your mind bounces back and forth between feeling shocked that you are facing the situation, shame about the parts of it that are public or will become so, and anger at how you have been treated and put in this predicament by your spouse.
Nighttime becomes an act of lying awake and running scenarios on loop in your head, and daytime is a time to attempt to cover the immense exhaustion and emotional pain you feel. You will probably lose your appetite and lose a little track of exactly what day it is. Put simply, there is a lot going on in your mind and in your reality. If you feel totally out of control, you’re certainly not alone in that experience.
Why spouses are often at different emotional stages
The trouble is, your spouse may well be in a different position. If they were the ones to call time on the relationship and effect the separation, they may be more emotionally advanced than you. Chances are they had been thinking about ‘the end’ for some time, and have already been through the shock, the shame, and the anger. They are more steeled in their position. It is why spouses often seem emotionless and aloof, while you’re dealing with the very real mental health impact of relationship breakdown.
For most couples, this means you have two spouses in totally different mindsets, experiencing a totally different array of emotions. One is seemingly wanting to ‘move on’ and get down to the business of dividing things and making decisions; the other is reeling from this new reality and struggling to even get dressed, let alone make big-ticket decisions about their post-separation existence. This translates to one spouse feeling ‘pressured’ by the other spouse to make decisions about how financial resources and other aspects of the separation will be implemented.
Why slowing down during divorce can protect your future
I’ve worked in family law for over 26 years, and I see this disconnection all the time. The person sitting across from me is seeing a lawyer for the first time. They are asking me to advise them on a list of complex questions, many raised by their former spouse, so that they can make important long-term decisions and tell their spouse about those decisions. Yet they’re barely keeping their head above water, let alone thinking clearly. I can see it on their face – they are often in shock, choking back tears, or not really taking in what I am saying to them. Their ‘fight or flight’ reaction to their situation has been triggered, and their brain is not primed to make decisions requiring complex reasoning. Sometimes I need to be frank and say, ‘I can see you’re not ready to make those big decisions right now’.
When we feel like the kite in the hurricane, we are barely able to go about daily life, let alone decide on life-changing things such as whether we are going to keep the family home, whether to keep working in a family business, or whether we should keep or split our superannuation. Those are important things, to be sure, but we cannot make wise decisions about them while we are running on adrenaline. These are decisions that require time to sit with all the evidence and advice, workshop the options, and come to a reasoned conclusion.
What to do if you’re feeling pressured to decide on financial or property orders
What does this mean if the above feels like you – that you’re feeling pressured to make a decision when the separation still feels so new? It means:
Buying (reasonable) time.
If your spouse is pressuring you to indicate whether you want to retain or sell your house, you don’t have to make that decision tomorrow, next week, or even next month. Often, the deadlines you’ve been given (‘you need to tell me by next week’) are arbitrary, with no legal backing under the Family Law Act at all.
You can simply say that you acknowledge that a decision will need to be made about that important subject, but that you are not in the right frame of mind to make it right now – and that you will instead be seeking professional help about that, and taking some time to consider that advice. Naturally, you cannot take a year to do that, but a period of time in which to let the dust settle, get legal and financial planning advice, get valuations, consider your various options, and workshop outcomes with your advisers, is not unreasonable.
Dividing decisions into two separate piles
Including the ‘important to do now/immediately’ pile, and the ‘I have time to get this big decision right’ pile. The ‘now/immediately’ pile comprises the things that you need to do to protect your position – they might be practical things like:
- Changing your Will or revoking your Power of Attorney;
- Protecting assets if they stand in the sole name of a spouse by, for example, registering a Caveat over the title of the family home or investment property;
- Protecting large sums of money in joint accounts or home loan offset facilities by moving them to safe locations, or changing the way bank accounts are operated, or
- Reducing exposure to credit card accounts.
These are all things that don’t take too much thinking about, and on which you can give your lawyer quick and clear instructions.
Give yourself time to make the big decisions
They are all about maintaining the status quo, while you deal with the second pile of issues. The second pile of ‘big decision’ issues you can put off to another day. You can come back to them in a month’s time, when you are feeling more in control and have a clearer picture of your post-separation life – it is then that you can talk to your lawyer about your objectives, examine the options, take legal advice, and come to a decision about what to do.
If you recognise and identify with the above feelings and pressure dynamic, take it from me – the best thing you can give yourself is thinking time. So pause, make your decisions on the things your lawyer tells you are in the ‘now/immediately’ pile, and then make a time with your lawyer to come back to the ‘big decision’ pile of issues.
Trust me, you’ll be far better placed to make those decisions on another day, when the storm has passed.
Need someone to help you sort through what’s urgent and what can wait? We work with people in exactly this position every day, and can help you navigate this difficult time.
Reach out, and we’ll help you take the pressure off.
