Christmas has been and gone – a time where we should all have been full of cheer and John Lewis style love and warmth. However, for a lot of people the festive period was anticipated with dread. That dread would have taken many forms and for many it may have involved coming to terms with the loss of someone special in their lives, who was of course sorely missed during the Christmas festivities. For others, it may have been illness or financial problems that tarnished their otherwise stable and relatively happy lives.
However, for many married people, D-Day is unfortunately, looming. Christmas is traditional; celebrating the birth of Christ, the shopping, the spending, the eating and the drinking. In family law there has evolved another tradition, post-Christmas and New Tear. Matrimonial experts have dubbed this tradition D-Day – or Divorce Day – because traditionally the most divorce petitions of the year are filed on the Monday of the first full week in January.
I certainly agree with the statistics. Without fail, I witness a surge in new divorce clients in January every year. So why the hike in people wanting “out” in January? I think a lot can be attributed to the stress of playing happy families during the festive holiday period and couples being closeted together for days on end in either their own homes or with family members they would rather give their right arm, not to be with.
Understandably, this feeling of unhappiness with the marriage does not happen out of the blue on Christmas Day as a cracker is being pulled over a festive sprout. It is usually the case that all such marriages have already been teetering on the brink for months previous, but that during the holiday period couples have had that extra time to reflect and crystallize their thoughts. In addition, New Year’s resolutions are bound and many make what must be one of the hardest emotional decisions of all, to break free. It could be said that only the stampede for the start of the John Lewis sale is greater than the surge to file for divorce in early January; so if you are teetering on the brink and want to avoid the crowds, feel free to contact Paula Murphy or Helen Phillips for a no obligation chat about the divorce process and the costs involved.
