By Neta, founder of SortMyDivorce · Updated
A letter arrives. It is three pages, written in a register you have never encountered, and it appears to be about your children and your house. This is how to work out what it actually says.
| Who wrote it | Your spouse's lawyer, acting on your spouse's instructions. It represents their client's position, not a neutral account and not a ruling. |
|---|---|
| Read it twice | Once when it arrives, once the next day. The first read is emotional; the second is the useful one. |
| What to extract | Proposals, requests, deadlines, and anything asserted as fact. |
| Where deadlines hide | Mid-paragraph, in ordinary prose. Rarely in a heading. |
| "Without prejudice" | Signals a settlement communication. What it protects differs sharply between Canada and the US — see the linked guides. |
| Tone is a choice | Aggressive framing is a tactic, not information. Separate it from the content. |
| If you are represented | Do not reply directly. Send it to your lawyer. |
| If you are not | Do not reply the same day, and get advice before responding to anything with a deadline. |
Keeping track of dates like these across a stack of letters is exactly what SortMyDivorce does — start a free trial, no card needed.
A letter from your spouse's lawyer is an advocate's document. It sets out their client's position in the way most favourable to their client. That is not a criticism — it is the job.
It is not neutral. Facts will be selected. Characterisations will lean one way. Silence on a point is not agreement, and mention of a point is not proof of it.
It is not a decision. Nothing in it has been ruled on by anyone. "Our client is entitled to" means "our client says they are entitled to."
It is not written only for you. Some letters are written partly for the file — to create a record of a request having been made, a warning having been given, an offer having been extended. That is why letters sometimes recite history you already know. It is not padding; it is record-building.
Reading it with those three in mind changes it from a verdict into a document.
Your mind will want to see certain things. Your emotions will land on one paragraph and stay there — usually the one that stings, which is rarely the one that matters.
So read each letter more than once. Print it out and read it on paper; you will catch things on paper that you slid past on a screen. The details that cost you most are the easiest to gloss over, precisely because the task is exhausting and you want it over.
Then pull out the three things that actually govern what happens next: the dates, what is being asked of you, and what has been said in reply. Track them somewhere outside your head. That is the whole discipline, and it is the one I wish I had started with.
The first read is not a real read. Your heart rate is up, you are looking for the sentence that confirms your worst expectation, and you will find something to be angry about whether or not it is the important part.
Read it once when it arrives. Put it down. Read it again the next day with a pen, and do the extraction below on the second pass. Almost everyone finds the letter says less than they thought, and that the part that matters was not the part they reacted to.
Take a blank page. Five headings. This takes fifteen minutes and it is the whole method.
1. Proposals. What are they actually offering or asking for, issue by issue? Write it in plain language, then write the exact sentence beside it. The wording matters enormously — "our client agrees", "our client is prepared to agree in principle", and "our client would be willing to consider" are three different things that all summarise as "they agreed."
2. Requests. What are they asking you to produce, do, or confirm? Documents, information, a decision, access to something. Be specific and note who it is addressed to.
3. Deadlines. Every date. See below — this is where people get hurt.
4. Assertions of fact. Statements about what happened, what was said, what you earn, what you did. List them. Mark each one true, false, or partly true. This list is the basis of your response and it is far more useful compiled than argued about in your head.
5. Everything else. Tone, characterisation, threats, background, throat-clearing. This is the largest category by volume and the least important by weight. Putting it in a box labelled "everything else" is not denial — it is triage.
Deadlines in legal correspondence are almost never in a heading. They appear mid-paragraph, in ordinary sentences, in the middle of a page of prose about something else:
"…we would be grateful for your client's response by 22 August, failing which we will have no alternative but to…"
That is a real date with a real consequence attached, sitting inside a subordinate clause on page two.
Some deadlines are hard: a court-imposed date, a rule-based response period, a statutory limit. Some are soft: a date the other side has chosen unilaterally to create pressure. You usually cannot tell which is which from the letter itself, and guessing is expensive in both directions — ignoring a hard deadline is damaging, and treating every soft deadline as binding hands the other side control of your pace.
So: extract every date, and ask your lawyer which are real. That is a two-line email, and it is one of the highest-value questions you will ask.
Then put them somewhere with an alert on it. A deadline that exists only inside a PDF in your email is a deadline you will miss.
If the letter is headed "without prejudice", it is a settlement communication — an attempt to resolve rather than a formal position on the record.
What that protects depends entirely on where you are, and the difference is larger than almost anyone expects:
In Canada, settlement privilege is a class privilege. It attaches on the substance of the communication rather than the label, extends to communications not marked "without prejudice", and has been held to reach completed settlement agreements. It also limits access, not merely admissibility.
In the United States, the label has no independent legal effect. The operative provision is Federal Rule of Evidence 408 or your state's analogue, which is an admissibility rule rather than a privilege, permits the evidence to be used for other purposes, and does not address pretrial discovery — so settlement communications can often be discovered even where they could not be admitted.
Both positions are set out properly, with sources, in the dedicated guides linked at the foot of this page. The practical point for reading a letter is the same in both countries: "without prejudice" tells you what the letter is for. It does not tell you the letter is unimportant, and it has nothing to do with whether the deadlines in it are real.
You may also see "without prejudice save as to costs". That is a deliberate signal that the writer intends to show the letter to a court later, when costs are decided, if you turn down what is in it. Treat those as significant and get advice on the response.
Our client — your spouse. Used to keep the temperature down; it does the opposite for most readers. We are instructed that — our client told us this. It is a report of an instruction, not an assertion by the lawyer that it is true. You will be aware that — often introducing something you were not aware of. We invite your client to — a request, phrased courteously, sometimes with a deadline attached. Failing which — the consequence clause. Read whatever follows carefully. We reserve our client's position — we are not agreeing and not arguing about it now. Disclosure — the financial information each side must produce. Terminology and mechanisms vary by jurisdiction. Undertaking — in Canadian practice, a lawyer's binding promise, often to produce a document. Note that this word means something quite different in the United States, where it generally refers to a bond or security. Open correspondence — the opposite of without prejudice; intended to be capable of being shown to a court. In principle — a significant qualifier. Agreement in principle is not agreement.
If you are represented: send it to your lawyer with your five-part extraction attached, and your questions numbered. Do not reply directly to the other side's lawyer. A direct reply from you can create a position you did not intend and cuts your own lawyer out of a document that will matter later.
If you are not represented: do not reply the same day. Do the extraction. Then get advice before responding to anything containing a deadline, a proposal, or a request for documents. Legal aid, a public legal information service, or a paid consultation for a single hour are all cheaper than a badly worded response.
Either way, record it. Date, source, what it proposes on each issue, in the exact words. Six letters from now you will want to know what round three said, and you will not remember.
Verification note. The vocabulary section describes conventional usage in family law correspondence. Usage varies between jurisdictions and between firms, and none of it is a statement of law. The "undertaking" entry in particular flags a genuine cross-border difference and is covered in a dedicated guide.
There is no general legal obligation to answer correspondence, but there can be real consequences to ignoring it — particularly where a deadline is genuine, where disclosure is being requested, or where a reasonable settlement proposal goes unanswered. Respond through your lawyer if you have one.
List them, mark each true, false or partly true, and give the list to your lawyer. Do not fire off a rebuttal. Advocates' letters routinely contain characterisations you will disagree with, and responding to all of them line by line is expensive and usually counterproductive. Your lawyer will tell you which need correcting on the record.
If you are represented, generally you should not — and in most jurisdictions their lawyer is restricted in dealing with you directly anyway. If you are unrepresented, you can, but be careful: they act for the other side, anything you say can be used, and they are not permitted to advise you.
Sometimes because the client instructed it. Sometimes because it is a negotiating posture. Occasionally because that is how a particular firm writes. Tone is a choice made by the writer and carries no legal weight. Extract the content and leave the adjectives.
Yes, but not at midnight and not alone if you can avoid it. Open it at a time you have chosen, with something to do afterwards. Letting it sit unopened for days is worse — deadlines run whether or not you have read the letter.
Last reviewed August 2026. Researched and written by Neta, founder of SortMyDivorce. I am not a lawyer and this is not legal advice — laws, fees and forms change, so please confirm current details with the official sources above or a local family lawyer.
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This guide is general information, not legal advice. Laws change and differ by jurisdiction — confirm specifics with a local family lawyer or your court's official website. If you use SortMyDivorce, your letters stay confidential — never shared, never sold.