Rebuilding Your Life Post-Divorce
22nd May, 2025
After going through a divorce, you may experience feelings of loneliness, exhaustion, sadness and anxiety about the future. These feelings may be intense, but it is completely normal to feel this way.
This article will explore how to rebuild your life after a divorce; covering financial planning, rebuilding your confidence and navigating emotional healing. It will highlight the important legal steps that you will follow with assistance from a divorce solicitor to finalise the transition.
Experiencing a divorce and navigating the divorce process can leave you feeling confused, angry, sad and exhausted. You might feel like you have lost your sense of identity, confidence and security. However, despite no longer being in the relationship that you envisioned lasting forever, you have the potential to rebuild your life and follow a different pathway with support and guidance.
There are several things to consider when rebuilding your life after divorce, and they may seem like huge tasks to tackle by yourself, but a divorce solicitor will be able to help you with this and work towards a new chapter in your life.
Financial Planning
The thought of financial planning as an individual can be extremely daunting. Financial independence is entirely different to what you might have been used to for many years of your life.
Money and assets
Assessing your pre-existing finances is an important step because it allows you to gain an overview of the money you currently have, which can help you create a budget for moving forward. Your household income is likely to decrease, so ensuring you have enough money to cover important payments like your mortgage or rent, utility bills and food shopping, is a priority.
Selling property
Questions around divorce and mortgages are commonly asked as part of the process. It is highly likely that you will encounter big changes to your daily life, such as your living arrangements, after going through a divorce. Selling your house after a divorce can be a complex process, and it is important that you understand who gets to sell the house, when the right time to sell is and what a suitable asking price is.
Regardless of whether you sell the home or if one spouse purchases the other spouse’s share, the decision on who sells the house and who keeps the money from the sale depends on the divorce settlement agreement or any order that the Court has made. Considering the money you will or will not receive from the sale of your house is a crucial aspect of financial planning.
Organising pensions
Understanding what happens to your pension when you divorce is important because it can help you plan your finances for the future.
Pension assets are often neglected in divorce cases because the focus tends to be on tangible or ‘visible’ assets, like houses or money in bank accounts and since pension assets are the only resource available to meet financial needs in retirement, they must be considered as part of the divorce settlement.
Child maintenance
If you have children, child maintenance must be considered when planning your finances after a divorce. Child maintenance covers how your child’s living costs will be paid when one of the parents does not live with the child. It is important to consider this when planning financially, depending on whether you are the ‘paying parent’ or the ‘receiving parent’, so you can ensure you have sufficient funds to care for your child.
Rebuilding Confidence
It is normal to lack confidence after a divorce, and you may feel a range of strong emotions, like sadness, anger or frustration.
Rebuilding your confidence after a divorce may come in a variety of forms. You may decide to acknowledge and accept your own emotions to help you move on through journalling or practise mindfulness and self-care, through exercise, reading or doing something else you enjoy, to rebuild your confidence back up.
Surrounding yourself with a strong support network of family and friends can help. Talking to people you trust can help you get any thoughts, feelings or emotions out into the open and take the weight off your shoulders. Your support network can also accompany you when you do certain tasks, like exercising, so you don’t have to face everything alone.
Rebuilding your confidence after a divorce takes time and there is no quick fix. Working on yourself consistently and surrounding yourself with people you are comfortable with can help rebuild the confidence you have lost during the divorce process.
Even if it feels like your confidence will never return, being patient and trusting in the process is the best thing you can do.
Navigating Emotional Healing
As a result of losing your confidence after a divorce, you may experience emotional burnout or anxiety about the future. It is normal to feel different emotions as you navigate a divorce, but emotional healing is important and is something that will come with time.
As well as practising self-care, you may seek professional support from a therapist or a support group – either in person sessions or online forums – where you can discuss your feelings with a specialist divorce therapist or with people who have experienced divorce themselves. Both methods can help reduce stress after divorce. A divorce solicitor can direct you to professionals who can help.
Supporting children through a divorce while you are healing yourself can be difficult, but it is important to be as open and honest as possible with your children. Talking to your children and understanding their emotions during a new experience and a change of their routine can help them understand what the divorce means for them, but it also reminds you that you are not alone.
Emotional healing can help you clear your mindset, which will have a positive impact on how you rebuild your life after a divorce.
Finalising a Divorce
A divorce is a lengthy process and usually takes between 6 to 12 months to finalise. To finalise your divorce and end your marriage, you must apply for either a Final Order or a Decree Absolute (if the court issued your divorce application before 6th April 2022). Then, you must wait at least 43 days (6 weeks and 1 day) after the date of the Conditional Order or Decree Nisi before you can apply to end your marriage.
You can apply for a Final Order as a sole applicant, even if you started the process with your spouse. A divorce solicitor will be able to advise you about when to apply for the Final Order if a financial settlement has not been agreed.
During this time, working with a divorce solicitor means you get the right legal advice throughout the process to ensure you get the outcome you desire.
Ward Hadaway can help you through a divorce
At Ward Hadaway, our team of expert divorce solicitors have extensive experience working with clients through their divorce and offer their kindness and compassion during a difficult time.
If you are looking for legal advice and support during your divorce, we are here to help you.
Please note that this briefing is designed to be informative, not advisory and represents our understanding of English law and practice as at the date indicated. We would always recommend that you should seek specific guidance on any particular legal issue.
This page may contain links that direct you to third party websites. We have no control over and are not responsible for the content, use by you or availability of those third party websites, for any products or services you buy through those sites or for the treatment of any personal information you provide to the third party.
