The occasions nobody wrote the rules for
Every etiquette book ever published assumes one household. Weddings, graduations, funerals, holidays and birthdays all happen to divorced families too, and when they do there is nobody to ask — so people guess, at eleven at night, usually about something that is happening in a week.
These pages answer the questions people actually have, in the order they come up. They are written to one rule, which is not the etiquette-book rule:
The occasion is not the point. The person it is for is the point.
Almost all published advice on this optimizes for the appearance of a smooth day. That is the wrong target, and it produces genuinely bad advice — “keep the peace for one day” is how a child ends up managing two adults’ feelings at their own graduation.
Where the polite answer and the right answer come apart, these pages say so.
In this subject 3
The occasions
In this subject 3
- Wedding invitations when the parents are divorced — the wording for seven situations, including remarriage, estrangement and a parent who has died.
- Hosting the holidays when the family is divided — one holiday or two, who gets the day, whether to invite your ex, and the present arms race.
- Graduations — the tickets, the seating, the photograph that will exist forever, and the party afterwards.
- Birthdays across two households — the one that recurs eighteen times, where the pattern matters more than the day.
- Funerals and obituaries — whether the former spouse attends, what the obituary calls them, and who sits at the front.
The three things that come up on every one of them
The new partner
It arrives at every occasion and the answer is always about timing rather than principle. Early is a spotlight in the wrong direction; later, excluding them starts to look like control.
The rule that holds across all of these: nobody should be surprised at the door. Whatever is decided, everybody knows in advance.
Who pays, and who hosts
These are two questions and running them together is how occasions turn into arguments. Sort the money privately and in advance, and let the hosting be decided on who can do it without it becoming a statement.
The child as messenger
This is the one that does actual damage, and it is not the logistics. Children adapt to two houses, split days and awkward handovers remarkably well.
What they do not adapt to is carrying messages, refereeing, or being the audience for one parent’s feelings about the other. If you manage one thing at any of these occasions, manage that one.