The mistakes that cost people most
Nine things not to do during a divorce. Several are the exact instincts that feel most protective at the time, which is why they keep happening.
Most damage in a divorce is not done by strategy. It is done in the first few weeks, by people acting on entirely reasonable instincts at a moment when the reasonable instinct is wrong.
These nine come up again and again. A few will feel obvious. The ones worth reading twice are the ones that feel like self-protection.
With money
Do not move joint funds without agreement. This is the big one, and it is the instinct that feels most like protecting yourself. Emptying or draining a joint account looks exactly like what it looks like, about fifteen states impose automatic financial restraints when a case begins (binding whoever filed straight away, and the other spouse once they are served), and it converts a neutral situation into one where you are explaining yourself. Those restraints are not a freeze on ordinary life: the bills and the necessities still get paid, and either of you can use marital money to hire a lawyer. It is the unusual spending they catch, and some states make you tell the other side days before you make it, so read the actual order that came with the summons. If something genuinely needs paying, document it or get agreement first. If it has already happened to you, there are things worth doing in the first 48 hours.
Do not make large purchases or take on new debt. A new car, a big renovation, a loan. It muddies the settlement and invites an argument about whether the money went to the household or to you. Boring is cheaper.
Do not hide accounts or income. It tends to surface, courts respond badly to it, and full disclosure is required of both of you regardless. Being the person whose disclosure was clean is worth more than anything concealment could protect.
One carve-out, because it is a different thing: if safety is a concern, having money your spouse cannot freeze or monitor is not asset-hiding, and it belongs in a conversation with an advocate rather than in this list. The safety resources page has the numbers.
In writing
Do not respond impulsively. The message you send at eleven at night, in the ten minutes after theirs arrives, is the one that gets printed and handed to a judge. Nothing in a divorce needs answering within the hour. Draft it, leave it, and send it in the morning or not at all.
Prefer writing over phone calls when things are tense. This sounds cold and is genuinely practical. Text and email strip out tone of voice, remove the pressure to respond instantly, and leave a record that protects both of you. Many attorneys recommend it from the beginning. If you have children, a co-parenting app does the same job and timestamps everything.
Do not post about it online. Not vague-posting, not venting in a private group, not a status update about how you are doing. Screenshots travel, private groups are not private, and anything you write can be read back to you in a room where it sounds much worse than you meant. The urge to be understood by an audience is real, and the audience for it is one trusted person, not a platform. And if you have already posted, do not delete it. Removing material once a case is expected causes a worse problem than the post did.
With your children
Do not put them in the middle. Not as messengers, not as sources of information about the other household, not as an audience for your frustration with their other parent. This is the one on the list most likely to do lasting harm, and it happens by accident, gradually, to people who love their kids. There is more on this in the guides about telling them and building a parenting plan.
With yourself
Do not ignore your health. Sleep, food, movement, medication, the appointments you keep postponing. This reads as a soft item on a hard list and it is not: every consequential decision ahead of you gets made by a person running on whatever you have left. Depleted people make worse choices about money and children, and they make them faster.
Do not rush into a new relationship. No judgment about timing, and this is not a moral point. Practically: it can complicate custody discussions, it reliably raises the temperature with your spouse, and it tends to postpone the part where you work out who you are on your own. If it happens, be deliberate about when children meet anyone, ideally by prior agreement. Dating again covers the timing question in full.
The pattern underneath
The wider version of the same question, including what matters far less than people fear, is what can actually be used against you.
Look at the list and a shape appears. Nearly every item is the fast version of something. Move the money now, reply now, post now, buy now, decide now.
Almost nothing in a divorce genuinely requires speed. The deadlines that are real are few, and the response to a petition does arrive on paper. Others do not announce themselves at all. If you are losing coverage through a spouse's employer plan, you have 60 days to notify the plan administrator yourself, and the plan will not learn of the divorce on its own: miss it and COBRA is gone entirely. That 60 days runs from the later of the divorce and the day the coverage actually stops, so if you think you are past it, call the plan rather than writing it off. Support, dissipation claims, and military benefit elections carry their own quiet clocks. Find out which ones apply to you, then stop worrying about the rest, because everything else that feels urgent is feeling, not schedule.
The single most useful habit is to put a night between an impulse and an action. It costs nothing, and it prevents most of this page.
If any item here is already behind you, tell your attorney rather than hoping it goes unnoticed. Nearly all of it is more manageable when raised early than when discovered later.