In the book "Should I Stay or Go", author Lee Raffel talks about a concept she developed called Controlled Separation. In a nutshell, you jointly negotiate a contract for separation that includes everything.

My W and I have tried everything else from counciling to MB to church and nothing seems to be working. Next weekend, she will be moving out and we will be starting this program.

Just curious if anyone else has tried this and if it helped? I am not hopeful for my marriage, but I think this could at least give each of us peace of mind that we will be OK on our own.

I tried to do this. We asked our MC to act as a sort of mediator for us to work out the terms of our separation. It worked for about 1 week... and in the end it just made things worse. I suppose it depends on how "mutual" you both feel the divorce and separation are.

My advice... you should outline with your spouse the HIGH LEVEL terms of the separation and then get lawyers. Part of the HIGH LEVEL terms need to be that YOU NEVER TALK ABOUT THE DIVORCE OR SEPARATION... that's what the lawyers are for.

Otherwise, you know what happens? Nothing ever gets documented, you spin your wheels, you waste a lot of time and money, and in the end, you make the divorce worse for yourself by having impicitly set levels of financial support for your spouse. But if you have that set as an upfront term and you each have lawyers off the bat, a controlled separation might work.

I don't know. I just got screwed over because it gave my WS more time to think about how she was going to screw me over.