When a person notices that a friend or someone in their family is going through a general type of life experience they have also gone through, like a divorce, one of their first inclinations might be to provide advice based on their own experience. So, one thing divorcing individuals may get a lot of over the course of their divorce is advice from friends and family members who have gone through a divorce.
Such advice can sometimes be of great help. Other times though, such advice could create a confusing situation or not have the intended result. One reason for why well-meaning advice from a divorced friend or family member might not always be a good fit for a divorcing individual is that the circumstances of divorces vary massively, from the personalities and interconnections of the people involved, to the situation that led to the divorce, to the key areas of concerns a given divorcing individual has in their efforts to move on following a split. So, something that worked well for one individual in regards to a divorce won’t necessarily work well for another.
This is among the things divorcing individuals should keep in mind when they receive advice from divorced friends and family. When deciding whether to follow such advice, a divorcing individual may want to carefully think about their particular situation and whether the advice their friend/family member gave them makes sense given the specifics of their situation.
Another key thing for divorcing individuals to be very careful about when comes to the advice they receive from individuals who have gone through a divorce is when the advice touches on legal issues, such as child custody or matters regarding marital property. As with other things regarding a divorce, what the legal matters of a divorce are like can vary vastly from one divorce to another. And the legal issues of a divorce are ones in which every detail can matter and in which even errors that seem relatively small can have consequences big in scope. So, for legal issues in a divorce, it is best to stick to advice from skilled divorce lawyers, no matter how well-meaning a divorced friend/family member is.
Source: The Huffington Post, “The Truth About Divorce Advice,” Bill Flanigin. July 13, 2016
