Spouses of selfish, intelligent, and manipulative people who want to avoid a messy legal and emotional battle are not telling the whole truth about what they want.
Implicit in what spouses of selfish, intelligent, and manipulative people who say they want to avoid a messy legal and emotional battle is also the desire for a fair resolution to the divorce without having to engage in a messy legal and emotional battle to get there.
One way to avoid a messy legal and emotional divorce battle with a selfish, intelligent, and manipulative spouse is to capitulate to what that selfish, intelligent, and manipulative spouse wants. It is getting what he/she wants that leads the selfish, intelligent, and manipulative spouse to behave in selfish and manipulative ways in the course of the divorce case.
Most people, however, don’t like the idea of being treated unfairly, especially by someone who is deliberately trying to treat him/her unfairly. If you are such a person, you have a difficult choice.
When dealing with a selfish, intelligent, and manipulative spouse in divorce, many decent, reasonable people give up the fight too soon; they can obtain a fair outcome (whether by settlement or by trial) if they can outlast their devious spouse. But sometimes the devious spouse is relentless and possessed of seemingly inexhaustible supplies of resolve and patience. If you cannot find it in yourself to keep fighting until you win, or if you determine that fighting until you win would result in a Pyrrhic victory, it may very well be that settling on your selfish, intelligent, and manipulative spouse’s terms is the wisest (though not the fairest or easiest to swallow) course of action.
Utah Family Law, LC | divorceutah.com | 801-466-9277
