Two cups on a table, one pushed slightly forward A drawn line illustration of a small round table seen from above with two cups on it. One cup sits near the far edge; the other has been pushed forward toward it. No people are shown.
For the friend, not the person divorcing

Somebody you love is getting divorced.

You do not need the right words. You need a few specific things to do, and a short list of things not to say. That is this page.

Most people freeze here. Not because they do not care, but because divorce feels like a subject where saying the wrong thing does real damage — so they say something vague, and then, embarrassed, they say less and less. Three weeks later the person who was surrounded is the person nobody has called.

The useful thing to know is that your friend is not evaluating your words. They are exhausted, running a household on half the capacity they had a month ago, and dealing with a process built for lawyers. What registers is whether you turned up. Almost nothing you say will be remembered. Everything you do will be.

Part oneThe first week: four things that beat anything you could say

Every one of these is specific, has a start and an end, and does not require them to ask.

Bring food that goes in the freezer

Not a restaurant meal for tonight — something in a container with a lid, that will still be there on the bad Tuesday three weeks from now. Leave it on the doorstep and text that it is there. Do not make them host you.

Take the children for three hours on a weekday

Weekends are covered by everyone. A Wednesday afternoon is not, and a Wednesday afternoon is when the phone calls to the court, the bank and the lawyer have to happen. Name the day yourself rather than asking when would suit.

Offer to drive, and then actually drive

First meeting with a lawyer, first appearance at the courthouse, the day they move boxes. Sitting in a car park for an hour is one of the most useful things a person can do for somebody in this. You do not have to come in.

Be the person who keeps the folder

Offer to hold a copy of anything important — scanned, in your email, somewhere that is not their house. People in the middle of this lose documents, and sometimes somebody else in the house has a reason to lose them.

Part twoSix things people say, and why each one lands badly

Not a list of forbidden phrases. The reason matters more than the wording, because the reason is what stops you reaching for the next version of the same thing.

I never liked them anyway.

It sounds like loyalty. It lands as a verdict on their judgment — they chose this person, often for years. And if they reconcile, or simply have to co-parent civilly for the next fifteen years, you have made yourself someone they cannot be honest with.

Everything happens for a reason.

This asks them to find the meaning in it while they are still inside it. That is work for later, if ever, and it is theirs to do. Right now it reads as an instruction to feel better on your schedule.

At least the kids are young enough that they won’t remember.

Any sentence beginning “at least” is a ranking of their pain against a worse version, and it invites them to defend how bad it is instead of being allowed to find it bad. This is also, as it happens, not true.

My cousin went through this and it was a nightmare — make sure you get a good lawyer.

A horror story is not information. It adds a fear they cannot act on tonight, and “get a good lawyer” is advice with no next step in it. If you know a specific name, give the name. Otherwise say nothing.

Let me know if you need anything.

The most common one, and it is well meant, but it moves the work onto the person with the least capacity. They now have to identify a need, judge whether it is too much to ask, and ask. Almost nobody does. Offer one specific thing instead, with a day attached.

You seem to be handling it really well.

Intended as praise, received as a standard to keep meeting. People who hear this stop reporting the bad days, because falling apart would now be a disappointment. “This is allowed to be as awful as it is” does the same job without the trap.

If you have already said one of these, it does not matter much. Turning up next week matters considerably more than getting the sentence right this week.

Part threeIf they ask you a legal or money question

They will. Usually something like whether they have to move out, or what it costs, or whether they can take half of something. You should not answer it — not because you might be wrong, though you might, but because a friend’s guess becomes a fact in somebody’s head at exactly the moment they cannot afford one.

The useful move is to point rather than answer. Everything below is free, has no account and nothing to sign up for, so sending it asks nothing of them.

The first thirty days →What to do first and what can genuinely wait. The right thing to send in week one. What it costs to file, in their state →All fifty states, every figure traced to the court’s own schedule with the date it was checked. Their state’s forms and deadlines →The actual form numbers, the deadlines, and the mistakes that get a case rejected. Can they afford it →For the question that is really behind most of the others. What happens to the house →Usually the largest thing either of them owns, and the decision with the least good information around it. Grief that has no funeral →For when they are not asking what to do. Send this one instead of the practical pages, not as well as. They are not the only one →If what they need is somebody who has been through it rather than somebody who loves them.

Part fourThe part almost everybody gets wrong

Support arrives all at once and then stops, and the hard part comes later.

A divorce is not an event. Depending on the state and whether it is contested, the legal part can run for many months and sometimes well past a year — and the worst weeks are rarely the first ones. The first weeks have adrenaline in them, and a lot of people paying attention. Month five has neither.

So do this now, before you close the page. Put three things in your calendar: one for six weeks from today, one for three months, one for six months. Each one says the same thing — text them, say nothing clever, ask what this week has been like. You will have forgotten why it is there. They will not have.

That single act puts you in a very small group: the people who were still there when it got boring.

Part fiveTwo things to hold back on, even though you want to

  1. Do not carry messages, and do not become the place information leaks. If you are also friendly with the other person, say so out loud and early, and then be scrupulous. What you repeat casually can end up in a filing. The most useful friend in a divorce is often the one who is visibly not a channel.

  2. Do not push them to be angrier than they are. There is a strong pull to help by taking a side hard, and it feels like support. But they may still love this person, or need to negotiate with them for years, or be nowhere near a settled view. Being the one person who does not require them to have a position yet is worth more than being the loudest ally.

If you are worried about their safety, this page is the wrong one

If anything you have seen or been told makes you think your friend is in danger — from the other person, or from themselves — stop reading practical checklists and act on that instead.

If someone is in immediate danger, call 911.

The National Domestic Violence Hotline is available 24 hours a day on 1‑800‑799‑7233, by texting START to 88788, or by chat at thehotline.org. You can call it about somebody else, to work out what to do, without them knowing.

If you are worried they may harm themselves, the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline can be reached by calling or texting 988 in the United States. You can also use it to get advice about how to help someone else.

If what they need is a protective order, how protective orders work explains the process without requiring them to have decided anything yet.

One honest thing. You cannot fix this, and the version of helping that tries to will exhaust you both. What you can do is be reliably present, be specific, and be uninterested in being told you helped. That is most of it.

And a small thing worth knowing: a lot of people arrive at this site because a friend sent them a link. If you send one, you do not need to write a paragraph around it. “Saw this, thought of you, no reply needed” is enough, and it is often the message people say they kept.

The Cusp is not a law firm and does not provide legal, financial, or clinical advice. Nothing on this page is advice about a specific situation, and the pages linked above are information rather than a substitute for a lawyer, a financial professional or a therapist. Crisis numbers on this page were checked against the organizations’ own published contact pages on 26 September 2026. How this site makes money is published in full, including the one arrangement that pays our founder rather than The Cusp.