Before You Call a Lawyer: The Ultimate Pre-Divorce Checklist
9 November, 2025
If you’re feeling unhappy or misaligned in your marriage, you may be tempted to immediately contact a lawyer to help you sort through your thoughts and emotions and decide how to move forward.
This makes sense – it’s a really scary, lonely, and overwhelming place to be. You want the pain and discomfort to go away, and TV shows/movies tell us to hire a lawyer to be your “hero” and protect you from all the hard stuff.
But if you want to build a life that is rooted in your wholeness and reflects your authentic desires, then calling a lawyer is NOT your first step.
In this pre-divorce checklist, I break down the different steps to follow when you first start to feel “off” about your marriage, to ensure your ultimate divorce decision and the process that follows are calm, grounded, and aligned with your soul-led desires.
It’s time to stop ignoring what your body and heart are telling you, internalizing everything, and telling yourself that things are “fine,” “not that bad,” or “will work themselves out eventually.”
You need to acknowledge how you are honestly feeling about your life and marriage. Identify specifically what feels “off” and is causing these negative or challenging feelings within you.
Take some time to reflect on these questions:
- What’s working well?
- What’s NOT working well?
- What are your needs and expectations for a marriage and partner? Has your marriage and partner ever met those needs and expectations? Do you believe it’s possible that your needs and expectations will be met in the future?
- Are your personal goals and values truly aligned with your spouse’s? If not, are the misalignments resolvable, or are they dealbreakers? There’s a big difference between healthy compromise and self-abandonment, and your body will tell you where you’re at.
- When’s the last time you truly felt happy and fulfilled in your marriage? In life generally?
- How often do you think about divorce?
- What else is occurring in your life that could be contributing to these feelings about your marriage – struggles in your career, parenthood, other relationships, or personal life?
There are no “right” or “wrong” answers to these questions, and this isn’t about “fixing” what’s broken. It’s about shining a light on what’s really creating tension within your heart and soul.
It is not a lawyer’s role to lead you through the process of acknowledging your current situation and emotions. Instead, working with a divorce coach can help you gain clarity and provide a space that allows you to be completely honest with yourself.
In order to decide if you want to work on or end your relationship, you must get clear on who YOU are and what YOU want. It’s time to release the roles, identities, and expectations that you have collected and placed on yourself ever since childhood and return to your whole, authentic self.
Here are some reflection prompts to get you started:
- What are your true, soul-led, inner desires when it comes to marriage and life in general?
- What values determine how you ideally want to live your life?
- What people/places/situations make you feel most like yourself?
- What people/places/situations make you feel drained, irritable, or inauthentic?
- If you could “wave a magic wand,” what would your life look and feel like?
- Regardless of what anyone else says or thinks, what is your unique soul calling out for?
Similar to Step 1, a divorce coach can lead you through this self-reflection and give you a safe space to explore. A lawyer is not trained to help you answer questions like this. They are trained to solve problems based on what the law says, not guide you in the necessary soul-searching to make a big decision like getting a divorce.
So far, you’ve (1) shone a light on what’s creating tension and unhappiness, and (2) reconnected to your true, authentic desires for your life. Now, it’s time to uncover the old patterns and behaviors that have been running the show and keeping you in a loop of self-abandonment and misalignment.
Examples include:
- Limiting beliefs about what you’re capable of or what’s possible for you.
- Assumptions about what will happen in the future based on what’s happened in the past.
- Fear of the unknown, failure, or conflict.
- Your inner critic telling you that you aren’t “good/worthy/deserving/smart enough” to create a life that feels aligned with who you truly are.
A divorce coach can guide you in reframing and overcoming these kinds of obstructive patterns and behaviors. Once again, this type of work is not the responsibility or expertise of a lawyer. You’re still in the process of gaining embodied emotional clarity – an open, honest dialogue between your body, heart, and mind. Unless you want to rack up unnecessary fees, it’s still not quite time to call a lawyer.
Based on all the hard work you did with your coach in Steps 1-3, what next steps feel most aligned and supportive for you to step forward as your true, whole, authentic self?
What decisions or changes must be made? What additional support or information do you need in order to make those changes or decisions?
What will be your markers of “success” along the way, so you can track your progress and hold yourself accountable?
What obstacles will likely come up along the way, and how will you handle them?
the support you need at this stage is from a divorce coach, who you can lean on as a sounding board to brainstorm ideas, get super clear on your goals, and determine the best solutions for you to move forward. You’re not ready for the legal strategy from a lawyer yet.
If, after completing Steps 1-4, you ultimately decide that you want to stay in your marriage, then what are the next steps or changes you want to make to bring you back into alignment and wholeness?
If, after completing Steps 1-4, you ultimately decide that you want to end your marriage, it’s still not quite time to call a lawyer.
In order to be most effective and strategic in your consultations with lawyers, you should gather and organize some essential information about your finances. The information below contains basic, important, and relevant information for any lawyer to evaluate your legal rights, options, and strategies.
Here are some documents you should prepare copies of (ideally digitally) before your first consultation:
- Last 3 – 5 years of tax returns (including all statements and forms)
- Last 3 – 5 years of paystubs or earnings statements reflecting all income, deductions, and taxes
- Statements for all bank and credit card accounts for the last 12 – 24 months (to determine how much your lifestyle costs)
- If you have any investment accounts, retirement accounts/interests, business interests, deferred compensation, insurance, cryptocurrency, or any other financial assets, grab the most recent statement reflecting the current value
- If you have kids and set up any college savings accounts, get the most recent statement for each.
- If you owe any debts (credit cards, mortgage, vehicle loan, student loans, etc.), grab the most recent statement for each.
- Your estate-planning documents, if any exist
- Prenuptial and/or Postnuptial Agreements, if any exist
If you don’t have access to everything, try to gather as much as you possibly can, tell the lawyer what you don’t have access to, and the lawyer can request it from your spouse and/or issue subpoenas for the information later.
Instead of going into the consultation expecting the lawyer to lead the agenda, take an active role and prepare a list of questions you want to ask. This is YOUR life, and the consultation is YOUR time to ask as many questions as possible and determine if the lawyer is the best fit for your unique situation.
Once again, this is a situation where a divorce coach can guide you and ultimately help you save time and money. A coach can share examples or templates of the most helpful questions to ask at the consultation so you can get the necessary information to make the best decision for you. This includes general questions about the divorce process, the lawyer’s experience, communication style, expectations, and billing, as well as more specific questions that are tailored to your unique situation.
After the consultation, a divorce coach can also support you in making the ultimate decision of which lawyer to hire by asking you questions that are designed to determine if the lawyer is truly aligned with your personality and goals.
As you can see, there are several important, pre-divorce steps you should take BEFORE you call a lawyer. Most of these steps are about gaining emotional clarity and reconnecting to your truth FIRST, so you can make grounded and aligned decisions and lay a strong foundation for the divorce process, instead of making emotionally reactive choices that can ultimately cause you to rack up high fees and incur emotional damage in the divorce process.
As a divorce coach, I frequently guide my clients through these exact steps, as well as provide access to my vast referral database of lawyers and other divorce-related professionals, so my client can build a supportive team to help them navigate this big life transition. Investing the time in a divorce coach upfront can make a huge difference in the ultimate process and outcome. If you’re stuck in the “in between” place of feeling unhappy in your marriage and not sure what to do next, I’m here to support you. Book a free Discovery Call, and let’s find a way to help you move forward.
