You probably didn’t expect to be divorced or separated on Thanksgiving at this time in your life.  You probably feel like saying, “Gee, thanks for another #@*!! personal growth experience.”  Well, instead of staying at home feeling sorry for yourself and ordering pizza for Thanksgiving, here are some ideas to help you make it through the long holiday weekend.

The first thing you have to do is get into action.  Move your body and the head will follow.  Go for a walk or a jog.  Get to the gym and start losing that marriage fat.  Start a dance class or take tennis lessons.  Any activity is good that will get you moving.  Don’t think about it.  Just do it.  Force yourself.

The next thing to do is build a support network.  This can be your friends, relatives, religious leader, neighbor or therapist.  Join a support group.  Participate in online support groups.  It may seem to you that you are the only person in the world going through a divorce, but you are not alone.

Now, get outside of your troubles.  Find someone with problems bigger than yours and help them.  Volunteer to feed the homeless for Thanksgiving.  Visit a nursing home or a hospital.

Invite some friends over for a potluck supper.  Everything is attitude.  Stay positive and strong and have a great Thanksgiving.  Leave a comment if you have an activity or idea that helped you survive Thanksgiving when going through a divorce.

Timing is something you need to be aware of in a divorce.  Sometimes one person gets ahead of the other in the process.  One person is ready to negotiate an agreement and move on while the other person is a basket case and incapable of making legal and financial decisions.

People get out of synch in their timing because one person has been thinking about a divorce for a long time.  The decision to stay or go takes a lot of thought.

The Deceiver. The deceiver has one foot in the marriage and one foot out of the door.  But since they don’t know which way they are going to decide, they avoid the issue.  When the other spouse says “Is something wrong?”, the deceiver says “No, everything is fine.”

The Denier. Conversely, the spouse of the deceiver is the denier.  He or she is in a symbiotic relationship with the deceiver and an enabler.  The denier may notice little signs that the deceiver is thinking about leaving.  But the denier tells himself or herself that everything is fine.  Then the denier is caught by surprise when the deceiver announces he or she is leaving.  As a result, the denier is six months to a year psychologically and emotionally behind the deceiver in the divorce process.

The solution is for the deceiver to give the denier time to catch up.  Divorce is a process, not an event.  Don’t rush it.  Negotiate with patience, civility, understanding and compassion and you will get a better result.

A client asked me this morning if she could just write a letter to the judge telling her side of the story.  The answer is no.  The rules require certain formalities and a letter will usually be returned by the clerk or the judge with a polite note.

Our law comes from England where each cause of action had a formality which had to be pled specifically.  Today we have notice pleading which allows for more leeway, but there are still many vestiges  of formal pleading left.

For example, one of my partners, John Thyden, once filed a Motion to Crave Oyer in a lawsuit.

I happened to be talking to his opposing counsel about another case one day when the conversation strayed to my partner’s motion.  He told me that the lawyers in his firm had to look up “crave oyer” in Black’s Law Dictionary to see what it meant.

It means to demand to see a copy of the document being sued upon, like a contract, a promissory note or a deed.

From then on, said the attorney, Thyden was referred to at that law firm as the “Crave Oyer Lawyer”.

What a great idea.  A reader writes to the Philly.Com Daily News that she received a card in the mail announcing a friend’s divorce that included the new addresses for both parties.  If we could approach divorce the same way we do marriages, births and holidays, maybe it would take some of the stigma and sting out of it.

Uncontested divorces in Maryland are heard by a Family Law Master.  The Plaintiff needs to appear in court to testify.  The Defendant need only appear if it is what he or she wants to do.  Here’s a checklist of things you need for an uncontested divorce hearing:

• Report of Absolute Divorce or Annulment of Marriage (the Blue Form)
• Separation Agreement
• A Copy of Your Marriage Certificate
• Child Support Guidelines Worksheet
• Corroborating Witness and Witness Information Form
• Submission to Judgment

Interrogatories are written questions that must be answered under oath.  The number of interrogatories you can ask are limited in the three local jurisdictions.

• Maryland.  Thirty interrogatories.
• Virginia.  Thirty interrogatories.
• District of Columbia.  Forty interrogatories.

Responses are due in writing within a certain time period in compliance with the Court Rules.

• Maryland.  Thirty days from service plus three for mailing.
• Virginia.  Twenty days from service plus three for mailing.
• District of Columbia.  Thirty days from service plus three for mailing.

Rule No. 1.  It takes so little to do so much.

A friend of mine tells this story about one night when he was working as an assistant manager at a health club.  A young woman came in with a little girl.  She looked harried, probably from working all day, and now she was looking forward to a swim with her daughter.

“I’m sorry, ma’am , the manager said, “but the pool closes at 7:00 pm.”

“Oh,” said the woman, dejectedly, and turned to go.  Ordinarily, that would have been the end of it.  The result would be an unhappy customer.

But, as the mother was walking away, the manager said “Ma’am?”  As she turned, he said to her, “You have a beautiful little girl.”

She lit up with a great big smile and you could almost see the stress of the day melting from her as she squared her shoulders, lifted her head and stood up straight.  An unhappy customer was turned into a happy customer.

It takes so little to do so much.

We are all starved for recognition, acknowledgment and love.  So take two minutes and buy some flowers, pick up the clothes on the floor, empty the dishwasher or fill up your spouse’s car without telling them.  You get the idea.  Keeping Rule No. 1 in mind will reap large dividends for only a little effort.

First Wives World is running a contest to redefine divorce. Fill out the entry form by November 4, 2008, with your personal definition of divorce.  Readers vote on the best definition and winners will receive a $1000 (first prize), $500 (second prize) or $100 (third prize) gift card from SpaFinder.com.

divorce [di-vors’, -vors’]

n. 1. The legal termination of a marriage
2. A complete severance of connected things.
3. The reason my life is now 90lbs lighter!
4. The day I started downing pints of choco chunk ice cream between crying fits.

“Bigamy is having one wife/husband too many. Monogamy is the same.” –Oscar Wilde

Joe the Plumber stopped by to see me about his divorce today. “I worked all these years using my own blood, sweat and tears to build up my business. She wants part of it. And Barack Obama wants some of it.”

“Come on, Joe, it’s not that bad. Let’s look at it more carefully,” I say. “Obama’s tax plan provides a $3,000 tax credit for every new job you create, a reduction in taxes if you make less than $250,000 a year, and no capital gains if you sell your business.”

“It doesn’t sound so bad when you put it that way. But what about my wife? She never worked a day during our marriage,” says Joe.

“Your wife gave up her own career to raise your kids and make a home for you so that you were able to work so hard to build up your business. The law provides that the judge has to consider, among other factors, the contributions, monetary and nonmonetary, of each party.”

“So what you’re telling me,” says Joe, “is that I have two silent partners in my business – my lazy Uncle Sam and my wife.”

“That’s one way of looking at it, Joe,” I tell him. “Where are you going?”

As Joe leaves my office, he turns and says, “I’m going to see if my wife wants to buy my plumbing business.”