Should you wait until your children have grown up if you were contemplating divorce but are still amicable to one another?
Yes, and God bless you if you have the will and the devotion to your children to do it.
(Obviously a couple should not stay together “for the sake of the kids” if the marriage is a psychologically or emotionally toxic and/or a life-threatening one, and clearly my comments don’t apply to that kind of marriage)
No child likes to see his/her family broken, but 9 times out of 10 divorce makes life miserable for little kids (even if they don’t seem to show it), even when Mom and Dad are doing their best to take care of their little kids after divorce. Kids crave, they need Mom and Dad to live together peacefully in the same house. Without at least that, their lives will almost always be forever scarred.
If divorce is inevitable, but you can hold on and be decent to one another until the kids are grown and have moved out of the house to start their own independent lives, your children will thank you forever for giving them a two-parent home while their were dependent upon adults to shelter, support, and rear them into adults. They may acknowledge that life wasn’t perfect and that Mom’s and Dad’s relationship was a little frostier and more awkward than other kids’ parents’ relationships were, but the kids will be grateful you didn’t condemn them to the life of a minor child of divorce. They will have a greater respect for family and marriage. You will give them a better chance of their own marriages succeeding (not as good a chance as they’d have had if you had not divorced, but a better chance than if you divorce when they’re 5 and 7 years old).
Utah Family Law, LC | divorceutah.com | 801-466-9277