By Neta, founder of SortMyDivorce · Updated
Whether your spouse is unrepresented or simply going around the lawyers, the messages arriving in your inbox need a rule — decided once, in advance, rather than message by message at eleven at night.
| Decide the rule first | Agree with your lawyer what gets forwarded and what you may answer, before the next message arrives. |
|---|---|
| Safe to answer | Logistics. Handover times, a school form, a delivery. |
| Not safe to answer | Anything about money, property, support or the terms of a settlement. |
| Why | A reply from you is a position, and it can be quoted back at you. |
| The trap | A long emotional message containing one real proposal or deadline buried in it. |
| Always | Keep everything, in order, with dates. |
| If it becomes abusive | That is a separate issue with its own remedies. Tell your lawyer. |
Keeping track of dates like these across a stack of letters is exactly what SortMyDivorce does — start a free trial, no card needed.
The single most useful thing here takes one email to your lawyer:
"My spouse is writing to me directly. What do you want me to forward, and what am I free to answer myself?"
Practice differs. Some lawyers want everything, because they would rather see the whole picture. Some want only substantive items, because forwarding is billable and volume is expensive. Some will want to write to the other side asking them to stop.
Whichever it is, having the rule in advance means you are not making a judgement call while upset.
Logistics, narrowly defined. Confirming a handover time. Answering whether the passport is at your house. Saying yes to a schedule swap you would have agreed to anyway.
Keep these short, factual and unemotional. Two lines. No context, no history, no explanation of why the last handover went badly.
A useful test: would you be comfortable with this message being read out later, in full, with no opportunity to explain it? If not, it is not a logistics message.
Anything about money, property, support or the terms of a settlement. However reasonable it sounds, and however much you want to correct something. A reply from you is a position. It can be quoted, and it will be quoted if it helps them.
Anything asking you to agree to something. Even informally. Even "just in principle."
Anything about the case itself — what you have told your lawyer, what your lawyer has advised, what you plan to do.
Accusations — see what can be used against you. A four-page message setting out your failures is not an invitation to a debate. Answering it produces an eight-page reply. Forward it and stop.
Anything sent at 11pm. Whether they sent it then or you are reading it then.
This is where people get hurt, and it is worth being deliberate about.
A message can be four pages of grievance with one paragraph that is a genuine offer, a genuine request for documents, or a genuine deadline. Because the surrounding material is so provoking, the real content is easy to miss — you dismiss the whole thing, and later find out that something in it mattered.
So run the same extraction you would run on a lawyer's letter, before deciding to ignore it:
1. Proposals — is anything actually being offered? 2. Requests — is anything being asked for? 3. Deadlines — is any date attached to anything? 4. Assertions of fact — what is being claimed that you may need to correct on the record? 5. Everything else — the rest.
That takes ten minutes and it means "I ignored it" is a decision rather than an accident.
Keep all of it. Not just the significant messages. Direct correspondence tends to be voluminous and repetitive, and its value later is often as a pattern rather than as any individual message.
Keep it in order, with dates. If it is spread across text, email, a co-parenting app and voicemail, pull it into one place periodically.
Do not edit or curate. A partial record is worse than none, because gaps are noticed and they undermine everything else you produce.
Log what you did in response. Forwarded to lawyer on X. Replied on Y confirming handover time only. No response. This matters if anyone later asks why you did or did not answer.
If arrangements change, record it factually the same day — what was arranged, what happened, what was said. Contemporaneous notes are worth substantially more than a reconstruction months later.
There is a point at which the volume or content stops being correspondence and becomes something else — messages at all hours, in overwhelming numbers, or that are threatening or abusive.
That is a separate issue with its own remedies, and it is not something to absorb quietly because you assume it is part of divorcing. Tell your lawyer, keep everything, and ask what options exist. There usually are some.
If you are ever in immediate danger, that is not a legal question in the first instance. Call your local emergency number.
If you share children, probably not entirely — some channel has to exist. What you can do is narrow it: one agreed channel, used for one purpose, checked at set times rather than continuously. Discuss with your lawyer, and consider a co-parenting app that keeps a record automatically.
That is not generally how agreement works, but do not test it — tell your lawyer, who can put a short line on the record if needed. Silence is safer than a reply you have not taken advice on, but it is safest when someone else has noted that silence is not consent.
They may well be. Forward it, say so to your lawyer, and let the correction be made properly. Conceding a point directly, in your own words, at speed, is how small concessions become large ones.
Yes, in anything you do send. Not for their benefit — because everything you write may be read by someone else later, and a calm, factual record is an asset. It also gives them nothing to work with.
Ask your lawyer before you do. The rules on recording differ by jurisdiction and the consequences of getting it wrong can be significant.
If you are in immediate danger, call 911. In Canada, ShelterSafe (sheltersafe.ca) maps every women’s shelter, each with its own 24/7 crisis line, and 9-8-8 answers by call or text if you are in emotional crisis. In the United States, the National Domestic Violence Hotline answers 24/7 at 1-800-799-7233 — or text START to 88788 if a call is not safe.
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 your court’s official website 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.