What to Expect Your First Post-Divorce Holiday Season
This year saw a lot of disease, death, and divorce. By April of 2020, divorce filings had already increased 34% in the United States. For some couples, pandemic friction involved more time spent at home, a few more fights, financial troubles, and the decision to call it quits. Is your family one that changed this year? If you are navigating your first post-divorce Holiday Season, meaning you are in the middle of a divorce and have already established separate homes and or your divorce became final recently, this time can be filled with a lot of strong emotions. You’ve never gone through a Christmas quite like this one. According to family experts, here’s what you can expect in the weeks to come:
#1 You are going to need to make compromises. In fact, you may need to make more compromises than you normally would. You and your ex-spouse are adults and you need to make sacrifices for your children. Children shouldn’t have to make sacrifices for their parents to enjoy the Holiday Season. Give up what you want and maybe even had planned, but don’t tell the children you’re doing it. This may include going to a holiday party alone so they can have their time with dad on December 22rd or ending your family’s gift giving early so you can split Christmas Day.
#2 Gift giving will be a lot different. Do everyone involved a favor and don’t make gift giving a competition. Collaborate with your former spouse about presents, so there isn’t a competition or resentment in regards to who gives the best gifts. Don’t undermine the other parent. Don’t try to “win” Christmas. Don’t give a gift you know the other parent won’t approve of. Family attorneys in Covington will tell you that all of these will come back to bite you!
#3 There will be plenty of opportunities to fight, but that doesn’t mean you should jump on the chance. Avoid a fight whenever possible. The best thing for the kids is to not have the parents fighting with each other, especially this time of year. Let’s say you disagree over the specifics of the visitation schedule. You might just have to say, “Okay, you can have Christmas Eve and Christmas Day this year, and I’ll make it up by having Easter and Thanksgiving.” Maybe one of you gets all of Christmas this year and the other parent gets the entire holiday next year. You don’t want to put the kids in the middle of a fight and have this be what they remember about what should be a happy day.
#4 You may want to contact family attorneys in Covington again in January. If you are having trouble with any of these or feel your parenting plan needs to be legally adjusted by a judge or moderator, family law attorneys in Covington, LA can help. When things are less hectic and emotions aren’t as high, you can sit down with an attorney and say “Here is what happened and I don’t want it to happen again.”
Your first Holiday Season after a divorce is probably going to be the worst. Believe it or not, you will be used to it and you and your ex-spouse will eventually learn to handle this season with ease. It’s true!