How to prepare for divorce?

Haram police, I'm sorry, but well, divorce is halal. It's never a good choice. It's never something you do as something you like. It's never what you planned. It hurts and disrupts lives. But sometimes that's what you need to do. To save those who belong to you, to save your mental health - or even more than that.

The first thing we need to prepare ourselves for is to be strong and firm in our decision. Obviously it starts with istikhara. We need to recognise red flags and distinguish naivety from genuine positive expectations. Yes, we wait for the best, but if we have been forsaken multiple times, we need to look into the possibility that a certain behaviour is not the result of outer factors but is among the characteristics of our significant other.

It's hard to face these issues and it takes a lot of time and consideration. But once we have taken our decision we need to honour it as it is not a joke, it is a serious issue, based on a commitment to our heart, mind and soul.

The ideal scenario is if we go to ask for counselling when there's still hope. Unfortunately it either doesn't happen as we are conditioned not to ask for help and not to let anyone have a sneak peek into the marriage. If we still manage to ask for advice, it's possible that we get some "there you go, here comes nothing" sort of advice, like "tell your husband to do this and that", while the whole issue was about that you can't make him understand the facts. These events just discourage women from asking actual advices so at the end they will only turn to the authorities when they see no other solution. But that decision is their final.

This is very important to make ourselves clear in this matter. We will save a lot of time and effort for ourselves and others if we set clearly from the beginning that no, we don't want reconciliation. We are not here to make it better. We don't see as a solution the continuation of marriage, so any attempt into that direction could be suspended. We need to state it as firm as we are determined inside. They might try to talk to our feelings. They might try to mention everything that could break a woman's determination. They will mention children growing up without their father (not like the time so far they spent without their father was our fault in any way) or the number of years this marriage has been going on (and is still lacking basic feelings of trust and mutual respect). So yes, we still want to go on with the divorce.

We need to be familiar with our rights and the way Islamic courts work. If they have a lawyer, a Qadi, it's easy, as they have the right to dissolve a marriage.

If there's no Qadi, but they perform marriages, they are still entitled to perform divorces, but it could happen in a way as asking the husband to divorce his wife. That might be a problem because he could set up conditions - while the whole issue started from him not meeting basic conditions. This situation could change the whole outset, making the accuser a defendant and we don't want that. So to avoid this, we need to talk through every possibility with the authorities.

Many women have their husbands friends as their waliy. In this case it is rather controversial. It's good to know that we can choose another waliy anytime. We should just go to our present local masjid or to the one we trust the most and build a confidential partnership with the imam. It is very important to ensure that they will really be on our side during the process and if they feel they can't do it, we should try to find someone else.

I hope that following these steps will be useful in this difficult situation and it can become easier.