10 signs your spouse may be planning to divorce you

At this time of year, family lawyer Andrew Feldstein says he can drive through a neighbourhood and spot the homes where a divorce may be brewing. “You see someone outside on a cellphone, and it’s minus 5 and they’re not smoking,” says the Markham, Ont.-based lawyer. “I always say to my wife, I wonder what’s happening there.” Top 10 celebrity breakups of 2011 No, it’s not simply an obvious sign of an extramarital affair: “Often they’re talking to friends about their spouse.” It’s just one of a number of foreboding clues Mr. Feldstein has come to see as telling precursors to divorce. Many are tactics that take months to execute, but as January is one of the busiest times for divorce lawyers – Jan. 3, the first workday post-holiday, has become known in Britain as Divorce Day – they are tactics that may become all too real for newly jilted spouses in the coming weeks. Major red flags that are often overlooked during a season characterized by fresh beginnings include a spouse suddenly taking a greater interest in the kids’ activities or convincing their partner to do some major financial shuffling – all ways in which they may be trying to secure the most custody and the least costs possible. The pieces often don’t fall into place until the blindsided spouse’s first meeting with Mr. Feldstein after their husband or wife has initiated proceedings. “They feel typically sick to their stomach. When you go through the facts and you realize a lot of these happened in the last few months before separation, they look at you and say, ‘Did my spouse plan this?’ And I say, ‘There’s a high probability that they did.’ They feel duped.” Mr. Feldstein has compiled a list of behaviours he has seen in his practice at the Feldstein Family Law Group to share as a warning. “It’s important for people to understand these things if they’re happening,” says Mr. Feldstein. “And be realistic and have their eyes open so that they can’t be taken advantage of.” Sadly, many of these signs can mimic fresh starts, especially when one spouse starts to spend a lot more time with the kids, participating in sports with them or doing bedtime more often. Signed homework happens to be a handy physical record that the spouse was helping out regularly, for instance. “They make sure lots of people can see that they’re a superparent.” This happened to a friend of Lindsay Cross, who writes a column about parenting after divorce for the site Mommyish.com. Ms. Cross’s friend agreed to let her husband start taking their son to a new church instead of the one they’d visited for years. She chalked it up to a lesson in religious tolerance and exploration. Instead, he filed for divorce soon after and the new pastor and members of the congregation vouched for the husband’s commitment to his son. “That took a lot of deviousness, in my opinion,” she says. Another tell, as Mr. Feldstein puts it, is an unexplained family detente. If your spouse has been on the outs with members of her family and all of a sudden there’s peace, it could be that the sore point was you. And now your wife agrees with her family’s misgivings about you, says Mr. Feldstein. Bad news can also be a calculated attempt to stack the deck against a spouse. If your spouse says his successful business is doing poorly and he often mentions how much less he’s making, he could be setting up a narrative to explain why he owes you less when the divorce comes. “It’s all about managing the expectation of the spouse,” says Mr. Feldstein. Family law associate professor Natasha Bakht says it makes sense that people considering divorce are increasingly savvy about the law.