Many people will tell you that attempting to negotiate your divorce settlement by yourself is a total no-no. Based on the fact that there are too many emotions involved and the fact that you may also end up losing out on almost everything if you do not know what you are doing, they may be right about that. However, you can gain from negotiating directly with your spouse, especially if the two of you are still on talking terms, because since you both make the rules and arrive on an agreement together, you will most likely be more content with the agreement and you may arrive at a win-win situation, more so, you do not have to go through long court procedures that often create more bitterness and leave the children scarred if they get involved. To be able to carry out this negotiation successfully, however, here are a few factors that you should keep in mind.
The first most important factor one needs to remember is to check their feelings at the door of the negotiation room. There can be no successful negotiations if you start arguing the same way that you did in your marriage a hundred times. One should, therefore, be sure that they will be able to keep their feelings in check during the entire negotiations process if they are to attempt to do these negotiations directly.
One should also ensure that they check their financial position before engaging in the negotiations. Before negotiating, one needs to have a good understanding of their finances or even have a financial advisor explain it to them. If one lacks the proper understanding of one’s finances, one is advised to use a lawyer for the negotiations so as to avoid losing much more.
Flexibility is the third factor that one needs to consider. It is advisable that one should keep an open mind and even try to listen to the spouse’s ideas since the more options available for both of you, the higher the chances that you will be able to arrive at a workable agreement.
Finally, it is always important to have a strategy and a plan. It is important to establish exactly what one wants and come up with a plan and consequently a strategy to execute this plan. For example, a good strategy would be asking for something more than what you really want so that you have some bargaining space and also have something to give up so that it does not seem like you are always getting what you want out of the negotiations, everyone has to feel like they are winning.
To conclude, direct divorce negotiations are completely practical and can be successful if only one keeps the factors above in mind as this will help to prevent the negotiations from going sour.