What To Do If You JUST Got Served Divorce Papers

Getting served divorce papers can feel like the final blow, but it doesn’t have to be the end of your marriage. If you’ve just received the filing, you are likely feeling panic, fear, and anger. In this video, we break down exactly what you need to do immediately to stay sane, protect yourself, and maximize your chances of saving your marriage.

Just because your spouse filed for divorce does not mean it is over. Divorce is an event, not the end of the story. We see couples save their marriages even after papers have been served.

In this video, we cover the 5 crucial steps to take right now:

Regulate Your Nervous System: Learn the "Box Breathing" technique (4-4-4-4). Set alarms for 8:00 a.m., Noon, and 6:00 p.m. to do this for 3 minutes. This resets your amygdala and stops the fight-or-flight response.

Process Your Emotions: Don't bottle it up. Write down every thought, fear, anger, and resentment on paper. Getting it out of your head helps it lose power over you.

Analyze Your Decision: Create a Pros and Cons list. Think beyond today... how will this divorce affect you in 10 months or 10 years? Consider the impact on your children, finances, and future.

Find the Right Lawyer: You need legal protection, but you must find a lawyer who isn't "vicious." Find someone who will defend you financially and regarding custody, but who also respects your desire to save the marriage and won't use your children as pawns.

Seek Expert Guidance: The average divorce costs $25,000–$30,000, plus the emotional cost. Consider investing that energy into saving the relationship instead. Marriage Helper has worked with over 25,000 clients and has a 70% success rate with our workshops.

Why You Should Watch: If you are asking, "My wife filed for divorce, what do I do?" or "My husband served me papers, is it over?" this video is your roadmap. We explain why filing is often a cry for help or a reaction to pain, rather than a final door closing.

Next Steps: If you want to know if your situation is salvageable, please fill out our application. We work with hundreds of clients personally every month to turn hopeless situations around.

If you're struggling in your marriage, don’t wait. Get our FREE resource: The 7 Steps to Rescue Your Marriage 👉 https://marriagehelper.com/free

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Chapters

• 0:00 Shock To Possibility: It’s Not Over
• 0:46 Calming The Brain With Box Breathing
• 2:50 Write It Out To Regain Control
• 4:19 Decide Your Why: Stay Or Go
• 5:14 Protect Yourself: Find The Right Lawyer
• 6:20 Negotiating Space For A Workshop
• 6:45 Why Work With Marriage Helper
• 8:06 Costs, Value, And Realistic Outcomes
• 10:13 Hope And Doing Everything You Can

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:00

You just got divorce papers. Maybe you were expecting it. Maybe you weren't. Either way, I'm going to give you five things that you need to do now in order to ensure that you don't do the wrong thing and that you do the best things possible in order to stay sane and hopefully even still be able to save your marriage. You might be thinking, save my marriage? I just got divorce papers. Doesn't that mean it's over? Absolutely not. Just because your spouse has filed for divorce doesn't mean anything is over. I know that that's hard to believe and hard to feel right now because it can feel very final. They want out. Why should I try and make them stay? Why should I still try and fight for this when my spouse doesn't even love me anymore? But the truth of the matter is divorce is just an event. Divorce and the divorce papers are not the end of your marriage. It's just something that's happened right now. And it's not something that can't be overcome. So many of the couples that we work with at Marriage Helper and in our marriage helper workshops and programs that we do, their spouse has filed for divorce. And guess what? We still see those marriages saved often. I've even seen people literally at the end of the workshops that we do. I'm pointing behind me because our workshop building is right up the hill behind this building from where I am. But I see people stand up at the end of workshops with their divorce papers. The spouse who filed for divorce stands up with those divorce papers and shredding them in front of the entire group. Y'all, this happens and it can happen for you as well. But here's what you need to know first when you just got served divorce papers. So the first thing I want you to do is get out your phone and I want you to set three alarms for 8 a.m. noon and 6 p.m. When these alarms go off, here's what I want you to do. I want you to do what I call box breathing. It's not just what I call it, it's what it is called. It's where you breathe in for four seconds, you hold it for four seconds, you breathe out for four seconds, and then you hold it out for four seconds and you do that again. I want you to do that for three minutes whenever your alarm goes off, 8 a.m., noon, 6 p.m. Here's why. Because when you do that kind of breathing, it actually resets your amygdala. And your amygdala is that part in your brain that really is triggered with that fight or flight response. And what studies have found is that when you do that box breathing for three minutes, it actually helps you become more resilient. Breathing helps to calm our nerves down, to calm our nervous system, and helps us to be able to better handle stressful situations. So for the next several days, three times a day, I want you doing box breathing. It's going to help you better emotionally process what's going on. Now, the next thing I want you to do is get out a sheet of paper. And on this sheet of paper, I want you to write everything. I want you to write your thoughts, your feelings, how angry you are, however unchristian-like it needs to be, put it out on paper. Your fears, your anger, every emotion that you feel, what you're scared of, all of it. Write it out. Why? Because when you can actually write these things down and get them out of your head and onto paper, they begin to lose their power. You can begin to process through all of these things better so that it doesn't take a hold of your emotions. And right now, your emotions are likely on fire. They are likely just going all over the place with all of the different worries, fears, resentments, expletives, everything you could think of is likely what you're dealing with right now internally. Get all of that stuff happening inside of you and put it on paper so that you can better deal with your emotions. And then, number three, I want you to really think about, take time and think about do you want to save your marriage? In fact, I want you to get another sheet of paper and I want you to write down all of the reasons that you want to stay. And maybe even write in another column the reasons that you want to go. Put the pros and cons down. But I want you to really think through not just right now, if you were to get a divorce, but how would this divorce affect you now, in 10 months, and in 10 years? I want you to think about your kids. I want you to think about your future. I want to think about your family, your friends, all of the things that will be affected by your divorce. Because right now, you get to choose if you want to fight for this marriage or not. Because as I said earlier, divorce is not the end of the story. It doesn't have to be. Especially the filing for divorce, you can still work to save your marriage. And we can help. But first, I want you to write everything down. I want you to commit to it and you to understand your why behind wanting to save it. And ultimately, if you decide that you don't want to make your marriage work, that's completely up to you. And I respect your choice. I just ask that you think through all of the things that are going to be affected that most people typically don't think through when they receive divorce papers. The fourth thing that I want you to do is find a good lawyer. Even though you want to save your marriage, or at least I hope you do, you still need to protect yourself legally and financially through this process. I encourage you to find a lawyer who isn't going to be brutally mean or vicious or malicious in how they deal with your spouse, but understands that you want to save your marriage and will keep that in mind as they also defend you, which is absolutely what needs to happen as well. We want to make sure in this process that your kids are not used as collateral or as pawns in the divorce process. They should be kept safe and safe from your arguing, safe from all of those things, but still, as long as everything is safe, they should still have access to both parents. So you need a lawyer who's going to make sure that you're getting, if you need child support, that you're getting that, different things like that, who's going to fight for you, make sure you're financially taken care of, but also make sure that you are being defended in the fact that you want to save your marriage. Many times we have couples coming through our workshop and their spouse agrees to come because of the divorce filing and proceeding. What I mean by that is the spouse who doesn't want the divorce and wants to save the marriage says, I'll give you something in the divorce if you come to this workshop with me and participate. And so we see several situations where that is actually a part of the process. So that may be something that you want to take into consideration as well. And then the fifth thing that I believe that you should do when your spouse has filed for divorce is consider working with our team. I know that's biased, and I am clearly a big advocate and cheerleader for what we do at Marriage Helper. But I have good reason. We have worked with over 25,000 clients in the past. I mean, that's only since 2012. And we've actually been doing the workshops that we do for 30 years. And so we don't even have all of the data of all the couples that we've worked with, but I've seen, I've seen the marriages changed, I've seen the lives transformed, and I know the good that happens when people begin to do the right thing. I just know that if you do what it takes and try to make your marriage work, that you're going to become a different person. We hear that all the time from our clients. I changed and I now have a better life. I have a better relationship with my kids. I have a better relationship with my spouse because of the work they did and because of what marriage helper was able to help walk with them through. And I would love to see that for you as well. And so if you want to see how we can help save your marriage from divorce, because we can and we do, then I encourage you to submit your application below. And you may be thinking, everything's up in the air right now. I don't even know how I could think about doing something to save my marriage. Okay, watch some more of our videos, get to know us more, get to trust us more. Because I believe that you'll find as you start learning the things that we teach and implement those principles that you'll see change within you. And I just want you to know there's more where that came from. So when you're ready, submit your application to work with us. We work with a hundred clients on a personal basis every single month. And we would love to see if it would work for us and for you for you to be one of those. So when you're ready, you can submit that application. And then the next step after submitting the application is booking a call with a real and caring person on our team so that we can know more about your story and assess how we can help you and answer your questions, see if it's a good fit for you, and see if it makes sense to continue to move forward. We've seen amazing results. Over 70% of marriages saved from our couples workshop program that we do. We would love to help you achieve those same results. And you also might be thinking, but isn't that gonna cost money? And the answer is yes, it is. And with everything you're already going through, with a divorce and finding a lawyer, you may think I just financially can't afford that right now. But let me ask you this: how much more expensive is it gonna be to go through the entire divorce process, which the average divorce is$25,000 to$30,000? And not only that, but now you have two households that are coming out of your house, out of your income when you're separated. There's two, a lot of payments become duplicate. And the longer that lasts, the more money you're paying for that. But not only that, there is an emotional cost to divorce for you, for your kids, absolutely, and for your marriage. All of those things should be taken into consideration. And I can guarantee you that when you go through what we do at Marriage Helper, that it will help you better be able to navigate this and hopefully not have to pay all of that in divorce because it will help you save your marriage. I believe it's worth it because I've seen it work for so many people. We would love to work with you if the timing is right. But remember, no matter what has happened in your marriage, there is always hope. At the end of the day, I think what so many people that I know have wanted to be able to say is I know that I did everything I could to try and save my marriage and ultimately save my family. And we can help you do that.