One of the strange things about divorce litigation is how important something can feel on Tuesday and how irrelevant it can become by Friday.
A nasty text message arrives. Someone is late for visitation. Money gets moved. A child misses an activity. A new boyfriend or girlfriend appears. Somebody posts something stupid on social media. Suddenly, the lawyers are emailing, screenshots are being collected, affidavits are being discussed, and everyone is preparing for battle.
Then life happens.
The tide comes in.
And the sandcastle everyone spent three days building disappears.
We see this all the time in divorce cases. People spend enormous amounts of emotional energy and legal fees building arguments around circumstances that are inherently temporary. Sometimes those issues absolutely need to be addressed. But other times, we are simply rebuilding sandcastles too close to the water.
Divorce Happens in a Moving Ocean
A contested divorce is not a photograph. It is a movie.
Children grow. Work schedules change. Financial circumstances improve or deteriorate. People start dating. Children enter different schools and different stages of development. Parents make mistakes. Sometimes people who behaved terribly at the beginning of a case settle down. Sometimes people who seemed reasonable become increasingly difficult.
The facts you built your case around six months ago may look very different by the time you reach the courthouse.
That is particularly true during the chaos of a high-conflict divorce. People are often operating under extraordinary stress, fear and uncertainty. They sometimes behave in ways that are inconsistent with who they were before the divorce and, hopefully, inconsistent with who they will become afterward.
That doesn’t mean bad behavior should be ignored.
It means we need to understand the difference between what matters today and what will matter when the tide goes back out.
Horizontal Litigation
I sometimes think about divorce litigation as moving either horizontally or vertically.
Horizontal litigation creates activity without much progress.
You fight about this weekend’s visitation. Then you fight about who pays a particular bill. Then you fight about Thanksgiving. Then somebody sends an ugly text message, and you fight about that. Then there is another disagreement about an extracurricular activity.
The case is incredibly busy, but nobody is getting anywhere.
You’re moving sideways.
And horizontal litigation can become expensive, both financially and emotionally. Worse, it can create its own momentum. Every disagreement becomes evidence. Every communication becomes an exhibit. Every problem becomes something that must be “won.”
Eventually, people can forget what they were actually trying to accomplish.
Go Vertical
Vertical litigation asks a different question:
Does this move us toward the future?
Sometimes going vertical means addressing an important temporary issue because the answer will stabilize the family and allow everyone to move forward.
Sometimes it means gathering the financial information necessary to value a business, understand retirement assets or identify the marital estate.
Sometimes it means developing a thoughtful parenting plan instead of winning an argument about one particular weekend.
And sometimes going vertical means doing absolutely nothing.
That may be one of the hardest lessons in divorce.
Not every bad text deserves a response. Not every parenting disagreement requires a motion. Not every accusation needs to be answered immediately. Not every hill needs an R+E flag planted on top of it.
The goal isn’t to win Wednesday.
The goal is to build a life that works when the case is over.
Build Something the Tide Can’t Take Away
There are certainly moments when lawyers need to fight. We are trial lawyers, and sometimes protecting a client or a child requires immediate and aggressive action.
But good divorce strategy is not measured by the number of battles fought.
It is measured by whether those battles advance the client’s larger objectives.
Custody. Financial stability. Protecting children. Preserving important assets. Creating workable boundaries. Getting through the legal process with enough emotional and financial resources left to begin the next chapter.
Those things are built on firmer ground.
So when the latest crisis arrives, before rebuilding another sandcastle, ask yourself a simple question:
Are we moving horizontally, or are we moving vertically?
Because divorce will have waves. Some will be small. Others will knock down almost everything you thought you had figured out.
You cannot stop the tide.
But you can decide where you build.
