A break-up is rarely one problem. It is three problems arriving together, with different timetables, different people to deal with and different urgency. Handling them all at once, in the same conversation and in the heat of it, is the surest way to settle none of them.
- The law: which procedure, in which country, with what time limits and what documents. The only front where the timetable is not yours to set.
- The money: dividing assets, the home, joint debts, maintenance and, depending on the country, a compensatory payment. This is where most of the real cost sits.
- The children: where they live, how the time is shared, who decides what. Here an agreement always beats an imposed order, because you will have to keep talking for fifteen years.
What actually drives cost and duration
Not the procedure, but the disagreement. Every point settled amicably leaves the contested field for good and stops costing. Agreeing about the children while contesting the house is possible in most countries: nothing requires you to settle everything as a block.
The pages in this section
A rough patch, or a real problem?
Every couple goes through bad months. Some are going through something else. Seven questions to tell what passes from what settles in.
Shared custody calendar
Rhythm, start date, first names: the coming months’ calendar, counted, printable, exportable to a diary.
Getting help as a couple
Three jobs people confuse, a session described end to end, and coverage country by country.
Divorce
The ground for divorce rarely decides anything. Three other things do: the waiting period, the property regime, and where the children live.
After the break-up
A separation plays out on three fronts at once: the law, the money and the children. Dealing with them separately, in that order, stops one poisoning the other two.
Domestic violence
Almost everywhere there is now a fast protective route that does not require a criminal case. It is the first step that matters.
Breakups and loneliness
Romantic rejection activates the same brain circuits as physical pain. A breakup is not something willpower alone gets you through.
Childcare
It is the most structuring decision of the first three years: it sets the household budget, who goes back to work — usually the mother — and the rhythm of the whole family. And it has to be…
Rights
Law does not sit in one corner of the site: it turns up at every stage. This page gathers all of AffectionPlus's legal pages in one place, whichever section they live in.
Child custody and child support after separation
Parental responsibility, residence, contact, how support is calculated and for how long, arrears, moving abroad.
What to do early, and what people almost always do too late
- Gather the documents before the first meeting: bank statements, tax assessments, title deeds, the marriage contract, mortgage schedules. An hour of a lawyer's time spent chasing paperwork is an hour billed.
- Ask for a written fee agreement. Hourly, fixed or partly outcome-based: the final difference between two firms on the same case is considerable.
- Check legal aid and legal expenses insurance, often included in a household policy without the policyholder knowing.
- Plan for double housing, the item nobody budgets for and which frequently exceeds the legal fees.
- Sign nothing before the figures are done. An agreement signed quickly, with no valuation and no calculation of maintenance, is paid for over years.
And if the two countries are not the same
As soon as a couple holds two nationalities, or has lived in several countries, three questions come before all others: which court has jurisdiction, which law it will apply, and whether the decision will be recognised elsewhere. The answers do not necessarily coincide, and whoever files first often sets the frame for everything that follows. The country pages give, for each country covered, the procedure, the real timescales, the costs and the rules on recognition.