What is a "high conflict" divorce?

What is a "high conflict" divorce?

Divorces are "high conflict" when you and your spouse are arguing about everything; you're arguing about child custody, you're arguing about who's going to live in the house, you're going to argue about who's going to get the vacation home, the boat, you're arguing about who gets the silverware that Grandma gave you for your wedding, basically when there is high conflict involved in the divorce process. In some states there are community property laws, in other states there are not, so you have to, of course, address attorneys with these economic issues. But "high conflict" divorces are where people really need to punish or win above the other party. There's no desire to make things easy for anyone, and often that eminates from anger and a need to control the situation. In a divorce, the things you can control are your children and finances, so if you have tremendous anger and rage you're going to try to control everything, and you're going to end up in a "high conflict" divorce, where you probably can't sit in a room together without being angry with and nasty to each other. In fact, I see people who insist in sessions on calling each other Mr. and Mrs., even though they've been married for twenty years, because there's so much conflict and they're really trying to show their disdain each other.