There’s a popular song with a refrain that goes: “You never can say goodbye. No, no, no, you never can say goodbye.”

That’s what happens when after a divorce former spouses face each other in court again when one asks the judge to modify a court order about spousal or child support or both or the terms and conditions of custody and visitation.

Very few divorcing couples consider that long after their divorce, they may be still be paying for it in legal bills occasioned by modifications, which are court orders to change previous court orders.

These court actions, even when they come about for good-faith reasons, have a way of bringing out the worst in the party hauled back into court as the defendant or respondent in an action. The party must answer the allegation, which means more legal bills.

Modifications can become an expensive item that must be faced. One cannot appeal to eliminate child support, for example; however, one can appeal for a change in the amount due to changed circumstances. Courts entertain motions to modify spousal and child custody and support because of a change in circumstance in the lives of the either the custodial or the noncustodial parent, in the case of custody, or in the lives of the payor or the payee, in the case of alimony. Changed circumstances very often involve the reduced or increased income of one of the parties. Very often the custodial parent (usually the mother) seeks to modify the child support because of increases in the cost of living.

Sometimes couples can head off the need for court appearance by taking care in the language of separation agreements. For example, some separation agreements provide for automatic escalator clauses that eliminate the need for court-ordered modification.

Sometime former spouses see one another again in court when the custody and visitation routines break down, or when the custodial parent attempts to remove the child from easy visitation by the noncustodial parent.

Many divorcing couples do not realize that when the marriage is over the nonworking spouse (usually the stay-at-home mother) needs to obtain medical insurance. Two-career professional couples may be better positioned to face the insurance problem because each has the option of employer-paid insurance.

Uninterrupted medical insurance for children should always be negotiated. Normally the noncustodial parent (usually the father) receives this benefit as part of his employee group insurance plan.

Divorcing couples often negotiate health and dental insurance for dependent children as part of their separation agreement. They reach agreement so that dependents have continued and uninterrupted medical insurance coverage as a part of the final decree in a divorce. Sometimes this takes the form a Qualified Medical Child Support Order (QMCSO).

When children are insured by a noncustodial parent, the custodial parent should secure a plan description. A QMCSO must identify the participant, who is the employee spouse, and the name of those covered, who are the children; describe the coverage provided and the duration of the coverage; and state the name of each plan to which the order applies.

Some employers have forms by which a QMCSO can be executed. If not, a lawyer can draft one.

Like a QDRO, a QMCSO is incorporated into the marital settlement agreement, and it has the force of court order.

In some cases, this qualified order can be part of COBRA coverage that also protects the former wife. A nonemployee spouse in a terminated marriage is entitled to COBRA coverage at his or her own cost for up to thirty-six months. This is not easy for many divorcing couples. COBRA — Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act, a federal law that guarantees that all individuals who are covered by medical insurance have the right to continue coverage for a monthly fee if employment or marital status changes — is very expensive, and the time line for signing up must be religiously observed. The employee spouse must inform the health plan administrator within 60 days of the final judgment of the divorce for the nonemployee spouse to be covered. This notice sets in motion other steps, the time limits of which must be carefully observed. COBRA protects ex-spouses even after one of them remarries, for a fixed period of time, as well as employees who lose their positions.

Divorcing couples should realize they may be locked out of medical coverage if they are order or have pre-existing conditions.

It is best to negotiate a settlement that covers the premium, or at the least be prepared to make drastic reductions in the standard of living to cover the cost of private insurance, which is astronomical.

You may think it’s over when the judge signs the decree, and legally it is. However, there are what can be called housekeeping details, and it is best not to forget them.

If you divorced pro se, you should be particularly attentive to these details. You have to do them — or make sure they are done. These are the divorce housekeeping chores.

Some of these many not apply in all situations, and some may have happened before the judge signs the order or as part of what is called “the divorce process,” but all divorced people should make sure they are attended to. (Remember, God and the devil are both in the details).

A party who uses a lawyer may find his or her attorney as part of the divorce has already done some of these chores.

As part of a divorce (or its follow up), here are 10 must-do steps:

1. Read the decree and correct any mistakes.
2. Get certified copies of the divorce order.
3. Make new deed for real estate.
4. Transfer the titles of cars.
5. Update insurance coverage.
6. Update beneficiary designations and W-4 withholding.
7. Protect retirement rights.
8. Rewrite wills and trusts.
9. Confirm the separation of bank and credit accounts.
10. Follow through on name changes.

A number of jurisdictions offer summary or simplified divorces, which are ideal for couples who have been married a short time and are in agreement about everything about the divorce.

These actions streamline a divorce because they an uncontested and in many cases the couple file jointly and don’t even need to appear in court.

Many states offer simplified routines for uncontested divorce and a few offer summary procedures. While the fine print of the summary routines varies from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, basically the requirements are same. For a summary divorce, the couple

– usually cannot be married more than five years (although some jurisdictions allow for longer marriages);

– agree to waive any right to spousal support (any appeal of the dissolution);

– must be childless (although they may have children from previous marriages);

– may not own real property, separately or jointly;

– have neither significant assets (usually less than $25,000), nor significant debts (usually less than $15,000).

In a summary action, the spouses agree how they will divide what they own and what they owe, file the divorce forms in the local court, wait a few months and then request the final divorce decree from the court.

No simpler avenue to a divorce exists than a joint petition for uncontested divorce based on irretrievable breakdown. The divorcing spouses dissolve the marriage in a no-fault action. The joint petition requests court approval of an uncontested separation agreement.

In divorce, it does not get any simpler.

Sometimes people marry, only to realize almost immediately that they blundered in taking the plunge. May-December marriages, where an aging man tries to find a young woman to take care of him; impulse marriages after a get away in Las Vegas; rebound marriages when one person finds loneliness after divorce too heavy a burden — all may become what are called “short marriages” in the eyes of court, which in short order is called upon to put them asunder.

A short marriage is one where the financial affairs of the parties “do not become so commingled that they cannot easily be restored to premarital situation,” as one court put it. A short marriage, while it cannot be quantified in terms of years, is almost always a childless marriage. For want of rule of thumb, however, a short marriage is generally held to be five or fewer years. In some jurisdictions, if the parties have limited assets and have been married only a few years, a short marriage may easily be ended with a summary action, where both spouses jointly petition the courts to end the marriage.

Summary actions do not allow for alimony or appeal.

The dissolution of short marriages calls forth the image of King Solomon and his sword: a swift cut that attempts “the restoration of spouses to the economic position they occupied before the marriage.” Sometimes this may be as simple as allowing each partner to keep what he or she brought to the marriage and cutting everything marital in two. In fact, in 1988 Alaska case — Rose v. Rose– the court said of short marriage that is it analogous to a contractual “action in rescission.” When the marriage is without substantial marital property, the logic of action of rescission is easy to apply.

To be sure, ending a short marriage is not the same as an annulment, which ends a marriage that was flawed from the onset. Short marriages are lawful in every way. Under the right set of circumstances, however, they may be easier to end than a longer marriage, with property and assets.

The largest single cost of litigation is attorney fees. The cost of a litigated divorce can be eye popping. Sometimes the cost of litigation can be so great that the parties may not have sufficient funds to pay the lawyers until their assets are divided.

For the protection of both the lawyer and the client, most lawyers prefer to work with a contract between them and the client, with an up-front payment of a retainer fee. The lawyer works at an hourly rate. Typically, the total number of hours multiplied by the hourly rate is the lawyer’s fee. (This fee does not include attorney costs, such as copying costs, service fees, telephone charges, travel expenses, filing fees, expert witnesses.) When a lawyer is retained, the contract between lawyer and client spells out the terms of the arrangement, and it greatly reduces the chance of a misunderstanding.

Attorney fees can be reduced when the spouses do more of the work associated with a divorce. For example, when the couple cooperates with each other — for example, freely exchanging financial information needed in conjunction with the marital settlement agreement rather than forcing expensive discovery — legal costs can be held down. Uncontested actions also greatly reduce the amount of work a lawyer has to do.

Courts generally do not order the parties to pay each other’s legal fees; however, in some cases, jurisdictions by statute permit courts to award attorney fees in domestic relations cases. Courts, in deciding this, consider the financial positions of the parties, and the court has the discretion to order one party to pay all or some of the other party’s attorney fees if one spouse has the ability to pay and the other one does not. The conduct of the parties may be a consideration in awarding attorney’s fees in divorce actions, and the actions of parties who raise unnecessary issues or raise issues in bad faith may be sanctioned with attorney fees.

In general, divorce courts in the United States follow the American Rule, which means the winning side is not entitled to attorney fees because it won.

The burden of proof is on the party asking the court to make an attorney’s fee award.

After the initial shock that happens when a couple decide to end the marriage, very practical considerations come to the fore. One of the most important is the division of the marital estate. The couple, one way or another, must come up with hard numbers of what they own individually, as separate property, jointly as a couple, as well as what owe individually and together.

Depending upon the circumstances of the breakup, these numbers can be had by discovery, which is a very time consuming and expensive process whereby one party subpoenas the other requiring the production of records, or the couple can work together and assemble this records themselves.

The more wealth a couple has, the harder and more complicated the task becomes. Couples very often have everything they need to do this; however, frequently the records are not all in one place. Sometimes they are not up to date.

It may seem darkly comic, but a couple preparing to divorce needs the same financial records they would need if they were going to a financial planner to prepare for their so-called “golden years.” The same information is used to prepare a property settlement. On the asset side, this includes, but is not necessarily limited to, everything each owns individually as well as everything they own together; on the liability side, it includes, but is not necessarily limited do, everything each owes individually as well as everything they owe together. On the asset side, this means checking and savings accounts, mutual funds and money market accounts; real estate records, including the marital home and second homes and unimproved land; personal property, such as automobiles, furnishings, collections (art, stamp, coin); stocks, bonds, annuities, retirement plans, including pensions and profit sharing; accrued vacation time, medical savings accounts; other valuable personal property, life insurance and season tickets. On the debt side, this means records of credit cards, vehicle loans, mortgages and home equity loans, promissory notes, student loans and other debt.

It is a good idea for both spouses to have copies of all financial records — his, hers and theirs. Later in the divorce action, the assets and liabilities in these records will be classified as marital or separate — an important step in determining the size and eventual distribution of the marital estate. That cannot be done without the records, however.

Leverage factors are considerations made by each of the parties pertaining to disputed issues. Leverage factors can be both tactical and strategic, and in a nasty adversarial divorce, both come into play as ways of putting the other side on the defensive and extracting concessions.

Put simply, leverage factors are things one side controls that the other side wants. When the facts of a case point toward a particular legal outcome, that is called a legal leverage factor. Leverage factors come into play when the couple and their lawyers negotiate the marital property settlement.

When both sides have leverage factors, each can “horse trade,” swapping considerations like chips.

One veteran Pennsylvania divorce lawyer says that in a contested divorce, the strongest leverage factor, one to be answered from the onset of the action is, In whose interest is it to remain married longest? Answering this question can be a starting point at the onset of divorce negotiations because it creates leverage over the negotiations. If Rufus has Roxanne waiting in the wings, but Rhonda is prepared to remain married until Hades freezes solid, Rhonda has leverage over Rufus: he wants out; she’s prepared to make him wait. A person willing to wait has a bargaining tool that can be brought to bear in property negotiations, and Rhonda, coached by her lawyer, can use it to extract concessions from Rufus.

Of the 10 common fault grounds for divorce, adultery — the marital infidelity that happens when one spouse has sexual intercourse with a third party — carries with it the most legal baggage. Today, when all states offer some form of no-fault divorce, many lawyers advise against using adultery in divorce even when it is the case, even when it can be proven.

In the bad old days, judges used adultery to punish the guilty because it was the sole ground for divorce in some jurisdictions, and fault determined the terms and conditions of marital support and even in some cases the distribution of property. Today, judges may focus on the economic impact of adultery, such as the dissipation of marital assets on a paramour, but fault itself carries with it less importance than it did 30 or more years ago.

Adultery as grounds is not as common as it once was, but some believe that it can be useful in a property settlement negotiation or in a spousal support dispute. Judges still look with disfavor on adultery, and some lawyers believe that proof of adultery may sway a judge to a particular point of view.

Some angry spouses, particularly women (hell hath no fury like a women scorned) use adultery as a way of achieving a moral vindication. In this routine, the scorned spouse has the psychological satisfaction of saying, “Yes, the marriage failed, he was an unfaithful s.o.b., and that’s the reason.”

The difficulty here is that outside of her family and maybe some friends, moral vindication does not mean much. So many lawyers try to discourage angry spouses from such an approach.

One of the best reasons for not using adultery as a ground is that the allegation means that the divorce goes to trial, and that increases the cost of the whole dissolution dramatically. That’s where uncontested and no-fault divorce comes into play, opening the way for a marital dissolution that while not emotionally painless is at least less expensive. Furthermore, some believe that alleging adultery is scandalous or shameful, and reflects poorly on both marital partners, and so it might not be alleged. Some people also believe that only people who are dissatisfied at home stray in search of satisfaction away from home.

No one knows for sure of course, but probably as many marriages are wrecked by what someone does not do as by what someone does do. Anyone can see adultery assaults a marriage, but right up there, according to experts, is the failure to communicate. And very often, the failure to communicate happens passively — not by misunderstanding but by silence or inattention, a kind of erosion that undermines the couple without them even realizing it.

This erosion works insidiously. The couple, who once hung on each other’s every word, begin to take each other for granted. — a habit of mind that eats into the fundaments of the partnership. The acids of daily living together accumulate in the best of marriages, and somehow communicating and understanding, which are the alternating current that electrify a marriage and give it energy and vitality, stop happening.

After a while, couples who stop talking to each other also stop listening when they do. In time, the failure to communication — to talk about mundane and the sublime, the ordinary and the exceptional — leaves two people who cannot grasp each other’s point of view. In time, the marriage, which is a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts, devolves to the sum of its parts — two drifting strangers who have less and less in common. Thus, the failure to communicate it not an error of commission but omission.

Poor communication sometimes happens in ways more insidious than silence and inattention. Sometimes one spouse may think that he or she is communicating when the other spouse does not. Very often partners may have different narrative styles. For example, Rhonda begins a long and textured story about something important to her, and Rufus, tired after a long day of work, blurts out, “Brief me, Honey” or “Cut to the chase, will you?” It is a good bet that Rhonda will feel Rufus is not really listening to her, and worse, does not really care. “What’s the bottom line?” may be a good question in a business meeting, but it is one of the best ways to kill the rapport between spouses. Marriage is like a house. It needs maintenance. A couple who want to stay together talk together. They talk about things, anything and everything.

It is probably safe to say that a marriage cannot work without communication. Probably poor communication is an element in most failed marriages. That so often one spouse is blindsided when the other announces plans for a divorce demonstrates that two spouses can become strangers to one another under the same roof.

And it is a certainty that a marriage going on the rocks cannot be saved without communications, which means sincere talking and attentive listening.