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"We&amp;#039;re starting to get into the nitty-gritty, Peter and I. It&amp;#039;s time to decide who&amp;#039;s paying what and for how long and under what continuing circumstances for the duration of our kid&amp;#039;s childhood and possibly into their maturity as well. It&amp;#039;s daunting when you think about it. I&amp;#039;m terrified I&amp;#039;ll miss something and end up regretting the decisions I&amp;#039;m making somewhere down the line. I read a great article today about the dangers of being too nice in your divorce. It&amp;#039;s a good thing to try to keep your divorce as drama-free as possible, but if you settle for less or don&amp;#039;t ask the right questions just for fear of &amp;quot;rocking the boat&amp;quot;, you might end up in a bad situation financially, and the drama comes back ten-fold. It&amp;#039;s better to get it all documented, so there are no lingering issues or unplanned for surprises. As one of my readers so astutely put it, I need to get it all in writing, so I have a document to point at later if I need it. I&amp;#039;m sure there&amp;#039;s no way I can predict every single path my life could take from this point, or every financial emergency that might come down the pike, but I can cover myself for some of the more likely scenarios. Lawyer John Mayoue in the article above pointed out:  &amp;quot;The undercurrent of being amicable masks the cold reality that your spouse is not in the position to protect or promote your interests.&amp;quot; Ain&amp;#039;t that the truth. I don&amp;#039;t know why I keep expecting Peter to be considering my needs in all of this. He didn&amp;#039;t do it much when we were married, and has even less motivation to do it now. I&amp;#039;ve got to stop slipping back into that &amp;quot;Oh, Peter would never do that&amp;quot; mentality. The sad truth is, Peter has done a lot of things I never thought he&amp;#039;d do. And on top of that, he&amp;#039;s not making decisions about his future all alone. I have no idea how much influence Stacie has in those matters, if any, but it&amp;#039;s a good bet to say she&amp;#039;s not looking out for me, either. That leaves me (and a good lawyer) to do that. We can certainly try to keep this amicable, and I want to, but I can make sure I&amp;#039;m not being stupid for the sake of being nice.  Did you feel like you were &amp;quot;too nice&amp;quot; through your divorce process? Did you make costly mistakes because of it? "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.womansday.com/relationships/dating-marriage/a47210/amicable-shouldnt-mean-gullible/>