I remember having to phone my parents to let them know that my marriage was coming to an end. No one in my family was divorced or separated at that time, and I was mortified that I was going to be the first.
But my marriage had come to an end, I won’t go into the details as to why this happened, but I will say it was quite possibly the hardest thing I have ever had to deal with. I can still picture our children’s faces when we told them that ‘mummy and daddy would no longer be living together’. Trust me, this is not a conversation you want to have with your children. But unfortunately 1 in 2 of us have to.
However, it is amazing how resilient children are, most definitely more so than their parents!
How do you explain to a 7 and 4 year old that their parents will be living in separate homes and are no longer happy together. The question ‘why?’ and ‘what’s happened?’ kept coming up. Now, I believe it is wrong to point the finger of blame, especially when this could influence the children’s opinions, so our children were never made to feel like they were taking a side.
But once the decision is made then comes the small matter of agreeing about the children, when they will be with which parent and then the financial side of things. This is awful and certainly takes some time to agree on!
Then comes the first of special occasions without your wee ones. Waking up on Christmas morning without your children, no kiss and cuddle saying Happy New Year, not seeing their wee faces light up the morning of their birthday, or having to say bye halfway through their special day.
In amongst all this emotionally upsetting stuff you also must sort out the financial side of things too. This is not easy, we all know what happens when money is involved.
I was surrounded by amazing people, both friends and family. I could not have got through this without them. Work was great, at the time I was teaching. But looking back now I know I was really struggling emotionally; losing my temper very easily, my level of concentration was so much less than normal and finding it hard to deal with difficult situations (which happens regularly as a teacher!) all was helping to make day to day living very hard indeed.
I decided I wanted a divorce and started the process pretty quickly. But at no point did anyone say to me that I should get a Will in place. I dread to think what would’ve happened if I had died in that period between the separation and the ‘decree absolute’ arriving.
Another thing that I didn’t realise and should have sorted immediately was my protection for both me and my kids. To this day I can’t even remember what we had in place. But I do know it would not have been appropriate, particularly because we were getting divorced.
I have had a number of clients say to me “I am still not divorced yet, so I will get my Will all sorted once this has been finalised!” OMG no! This is totally not the right thing to be doing. If you want to make sure your soon to be divorced other half doesn’t benefit from what you now want to go to the children, or whoever you chose if no children are involved, then please please please make sure you get a Will in place. This can include, if necessary, an exclusion for your spouse with a letter explaining your reasoning for this.
My mission is to get this message out to as many people who are going through what I did and help them make sure they protect their loved ones as best they can.
Gill Hogg
Will Writer