One resource I would really like to find would be an attorney who is willing to judiciously use the law to slow down divorce proceedings as long as possible, and to use all of his finesse to compel reconciliation. My hunch is that, in general, once a divorce petition is filed, or even threatened, there is a lot of pressure to settle even if you don’t want a divorce. It seems to me there could be reasonable ways to use the law to make the partner wanting out have to work very hard to get a divorce and to spend much time reflecting about it.

My wife and I never got into the court system. My strategy was sort of like the MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction) strategy the U.S. seemed to have with Russia. Because I had told her so emphatically that I would not sign any voluntary dissolution, she knew her only way out was to pursue a full blown divorce action. That is totally unpredictable in financial cost, but my hope was that she would come to her senses before we both became bankrupt. Thankfully we reconciled before any papers were filed.