The Divorce Ends. The Relationship Doesn’t.
By: Leo Bezanis – Partner, Beermann LLP
Spend enough time online and you’ll see it:
“Divorce lawyers are crooks.”
“They drag things out.”
“They create the drama.”
I don’t dismiss those comments outright. Divorce is one of the most emotionally and financially disruptive experiences a person can go through. When people are hurting, it’s natural to look for someone to blame.
But in most cases, the conflict doesn’t begin in court.
It begins in the relationship itself.
Conflict Rarely Starts With the Filing
By the time someone walks into a divorce attorney’s office, tension has often been building for years. Resentment, mistrust, communication breakdown, parenting disagreements. The legal process doesn’t create those dynamics — it forces decisions around them.
And that can feel uncomfortable.
The Post-Divorce Phase No One Talks About
What surprises many people is this:
the divorce judgment doesn’t end the relationship.
If children are involved, former spouses will continue interacting for years. There are schedules, expenses, school decisions, holidays, and life events that keep both people in each other’s orbit.
That adjustment can be harder than the litigation itself.
Why Conflict Can Continue
Post-divorce tension is usually driven by human dynamics, not legal ones:
Unresolved emotional hurt
Different parenting styles
Difficulty redefining boundaries
Lingering resentment
A court order can create structure, but it can’t instantly change emotions.
What it can do is reduce ambiguity. And ambiguity is often what fuels ongoing conflict.
The Healthiest Shift
The people who move forward most successfully after divorce aren’t always the ones who got everything they wanted legally.
They’re the ones who eventually shift from
winning → stabilizing
punishing → planning
reacting → responding
That shift takes time. And it’s rarely linear.
Final Thought
If you’re in the post-divorce phase and things still feel tense or heavy, that doesn’t mean you’ve failed. It means you’re adjusting to a relationship that changed in a major way.
The marriage may be over.
But how you move forward from there still matters.
And for most people, the goal isn’t victory anymore.
It’s peace.
Clear answers. No noise. Just the law — made simple
