An Open Letter to Both Parents Before You Start This Process

This letter is for both of you. Whether you are the one who decided to leave, the one who didn't see it coming, the one who is relieved, or the one who is devastated, this is for you. Because whatever brought you to this point, you are now at the start of a process that will define the next several years of your lives and, more importantly, your children's lives.

We are not here to tell you how to feel. You are allowed to feel all of it: the anger, the grief, the fear, the relief, whatever it is. What we are asking is that you make a clear-eyed decision about how you act. Because there is a version of this that costs you both everything, and a version that doesn't.

What the Research Actually Shows About Children and Conflict

For decades, the question researchers asked was whether divorce itself harms children. The weight of later research points somewhere more useful: how parents handle the conflict matters at least as much as the separation itself.

Robert Emery, a clinical psychologist at the University of Virginia who has spent his career studying children's adjustment after separation, makes this case in The Truth About Children and Divorce (2004): most children are resilient and recover well from the transition, but ongoing conflict between their parents is one of the main things that gets in the way.

Paul Amato, a sociologist who reviewed dozens of studies on children and divorce, found that on average the differences between children of divorced and married parents are real but modest, and that conflict between parents is among the factors most strongly linked to how children fare. Joan Kelly and Robert Emery's 2003 review in Family Relations, "Children's Adjustment Following Divorce: Risk and Resilience Perspectives," reached a similar conclusion: most children of divorce do well, and exposure to their parents' conflict is one of the clearest risks.

This is not abstract. Children who grow up in high-conflict separations tend to show more anxiety, low mood, behavioural problems and difficulty at school, and the effects can follow them into their own adult relationships. The conflict you model now becomes the blueprint they carry forward.

What Prolonged Conflict Actually Costs

Set the emotional costs aside for a moment and look at the financial ones. A contested case that goes all the way to trial routinely costs each person tens of thousands of dollars in legal fees, in both Canada and the US, and more when there are experts, valuations or appeals. A negotiated or mediated settlement usually costs a fraction of that. These are not fees spread over a lifetime. They are due now, out of the same household that is already being split in two. Our guides to what divorce costs in Canada and what divorce costs in the US break this down by province and state.

And legal fees are only part of it. Contested separations take longer, often well over a year from start to resolution, as our guide to how long separation takes explains. During that time, both of you are consumed by the process. Work suffers. Parenting suffers. New relationships are harder to form. The cost in time and attention is real and largely invisible until you're out the other side.

What Vengeance Actually Gets You

We understand the impulse. If you've been betrayed, lied to, cheated on, or discarded after years of sacrifice, the desire to make the other person pay is human and understandable. We're not dismissing it.

But vengeance through the legal process is one of the least efficient forms of justice ever designed. Family courts are not there to assign blame or validate your experience. Judges are there to divide assets, determine support, and protect children. They have seen thousands of cases. Emotional testimony about who did what to whom moves them very little. What moves them is evidence, documentation, and how well each parent is demonstrating that they can cooperate in the interests of the children.

The parent who appears more willing to co-operate, more child-focused, and less combative often comes out better in custody arrangements and judicial discretion decisions. Trying to "win" by fighting harder often backfires in the courtroom, and always backfires on your children.

What Children Need from Both of You

Children consistently say the same few things helped: hearing from both parents, more than once, that the separation was not their fault; knowing that both parents still loved them; and not hearing either parent run down the other.

That last one matters more than most parents realise. Children don't simply hear criticism of the other parent as information about that parent. They hear it as criticism of themselves, because they are half of that person. When you call your co-parent irresponsible, a liar, or a bad person in front of your child, a part of your child hears that about themselves too.

What children need is not for the separation to not have happened. They need to know:

• Both parents still love them and always will.
• Neither parent is going anywhere.
• None of this is their fault.
• Their routines and sense of stability will be protected as much as possible.
• They are not expected to take sides or carry messages between parents.
• They are allowed to love both parents without guilt.

The Playbook: What to Do and What Not to Do

A Word on What "Winning" Actually Looks Like

Winning this process is not getting more than the other person. It is not humiliating them, exhausting them, or making them regret what happened. Those are not wins. They are prolonged losses for everyone, including you.

Winning looks like this: both adults move into separate lives with enough financial stability to actually build something. Children transition well, maintain strong relationships with both parents, and carry no additional psychological burden from the process. The separation is resolved in months rather than years. Legal fees are a fraction of what they could have been. And whatever relationship the two of you have going forward, as co-parents or as distant acquaintances, is functional rather than toxic.

That outcome is possible. It requires both of you to make a decision, not once but repeatedly, to choose the harder, more mature path when the easier one is to fight. Constance Ahrons, who followed divorced families over many years and wrote about them in The Good Divorce (1994), found that a substantial share of former couples, including some who separated painfully, went on to relationships she described as "cooperative colleagues" or even "perfect pals." It is not naive to aim for that. It is the most realistic path to everyone's long-term wellbeing.

You Don't Have to Like Each Other

This is worth saying clearly: cooperative co-parenting does not require you to be friends. It does not require you to pretend the hurt didn't happen. It does not require you to sit at the same table at family events or to be comfortable in each other's presence.

It requires you to treat the other parent with basic respect in front of your children. To show up to transitions on time. To follow the parenting plan. To communicate about the children's wellbeing. To not weaponise your kids.

That is the standard. It is not a high bar. And it is the single most protective thing you can do for your children right now.

You both brought these children into the world. You are permanently connected through them, regardless of what happens between you. The question is not whether you will have a relationship going forward. The question is what kind of relationship it will be, and what you are teaching your children about conflict, about respect, and about what adults do when things fall apart.

Choose the better version of this. For them. For yourselves. For the people you both want to be on the other side.

Where to start

• Agree how you will tell the children, and say it together. Our guide to talking to your kids about separation has wording by age.
• Pick one calm channel for communication about the children, and keep messages short and factual.
• Look at mediation first. What separation mediation is explains how it works and what it costs.
• Start on a parenting plan early. Routines written down are routines the children can rely on.
• Get support for yourself, so your children do not become it.

This guide is legal information, not legal advice, and it is written for a general audience across Canada and the United States. Family law is provincial and state-based and changes over time. Before you rely on anything here for your own situation, confirm it with a qualified family lawyer in your province or state. FairWell can connect you with one through the professional directory.