Growing up in Russia, I learned early that survival wasn’t about moving fastest. It was about moving smartest. Resources were scarce, systems were unpredictable, and the people who got where they wanted to go weren’t always the ones who moved first. They were the ones who read the situation clearly, chose their moment carefully, and acted with intention rather than urgency.

That lesson has followed me into every case I’ve ever handled.

The emotional pull toward resolution in a divorce — toward just being done — is one of the most powerful forces I see in this work. And it’s completely understandable. But in my experience, the impulse to move fast is also one of the most reliable ways to leave value on the table, make decisions you’ll regret, and turn a manageable situation into a much harder one.

Sometimes the most strategic thing you can do is wait.

Why everyone wants to move fast

Divorce is uncomfortable. It’s financially uncertain, emotionally exhausting, and logistically disruptive in ways that touch almost every part of your life. The desire to get to the other side of it — to have a number, an agreement, a plan — is completely natural.

But discomfort is not the same as urgency. And treating them as equivalent is where a lot of otherwise smart, capable people make decisions that don’t serve them.

I’ve seen clients push toward a settlement on terms that weren’t right for them simply because waiting felt unbearable. I’ve seen people accept the first reasonable-sounding offer because the process of evaluating alternatives felt like more conflict than they could handle. And I’ve seen those same clients, months or years later, reckon with the consequences of decisions that were made from exhaustion rather than strategy.

Moving fast in a divorce feels like progress. It isn’t always.

Think of it as a puzzle

One of the most useful ways I’ve found to help clients reframe their relationship with the process is to stop thinking of a divorce as a checklist and start thinking of it as a puzzle.

A puzzle has many pieces. Some of them connect to each other in ways that aren’t immediately obvious. The sequence in which you assemble it matters — start in the wrong place, and you’ll spend a lot of time forcing pieces together that don’t belong yet. But find the right anchor point, and the rest of the picture starts to emerge more naturally.

In a complex divorce, identifying that anchor — the right issue to resolve first, the right moment to make a move, the right piece to put down so the others can fall into place — is often the most valuable thing a good attorney does. It’s not about moving fast or moving slow. It’s about moving in the right order.

I worked with a couple not long ago who were divorcing but both wanted to remain in the family home. They had two children, no nearby family support, and a mortgage with an enviably low interest rate they were understandably reluctant to give up. The instinct of almost everyone around them was to force a resolution: sell the house, divide the proceeds, move on.

Instead, we paused. We looked at the full picture — the children’s schooling, both parents’ work schedules, the financial structure of the property — and proposed a temporary arrangement where they converted the home into a two-family configuration, divided their time with the children, and continued living there while we worked through the rest of the case.

It worked. Not because it was a permanent solution, but because it was the right move at the right moment. It bought time, reduced conflict, and let the more complex financial questions get resolved without the pressure of an artificial deadline.

Give them what they want

Here’s a piece of advice that surprises almost every client the first time I offer it: sometimes the best thing you can do is give the other side exactly what they’re fighting for.

Not because you’ve given up. Because you’ve read the situation clearly enough to know they don’t actually need it.

I had a case where the opposing party was fighting aggressively — emotionally, financially, legally — for a specific custody arrangement. Three days a week with the children. It was the hill they had chosen to die on, and they were prepared to spend considerable time and money defending it.

I watched the situation carefully. I looked at the person’s schedule, their lifestyle, their actual behavior with the children throughout the case. And I told my client: give it to them. Not because it was fair or unfair, but because I didn’t believe they were going to use it.

They didn’t. Not a single day.

My client gave up something that cost them nothing in practice, and in doing so, they freed up enormous legal and emotional resources to focus on the financial aspects of the case — where the real leverage was. Strategic generosity, when it’s based on a genuine read of the situation, is one of the most powerful tools available.

Waiting for the corridor

Divorces are long. And one of the things that experience teaches you is that life keeps moving during them. People meet new partners. Jobs change. Financial situations shift. Priorities that felt immovable six months ago quietly rearrange themselves.

I think of these moments as corridors — openings that appear not because of anything anyone did legally, but because life itself created space for a different kind of resolution. A client who was fighting for maintenance found a new partner and no longer needed it. A dispute over a piece of real estate dissolved when one party’s circumstances changed and the property stopped making sense for them. A custody battle that had been intractable for months settled in a week when one parent relocated for work.

You can’t manufacture these corridors. But you can be patient enough to let them appear. And you can have an attorney who recognizes them when they do.

When to move fast

Patience is not passivity, and waiting is not always the right answer. Part of what experience gives you is the ability to tell the difference.

Sometimes a financial window is closing. A bonus is about to be paid, and the timing of when it’s received matters enormously for how it’s treated in the settlement. A stock is at a high. An offer is on the table from an opposing party who is motivated right now in a way they won’t be in three months. A job situation is about to change in a way that will affect the support calculation significantly.

In those moments, I tell my clients: we move. Now.

The skill isn’t patience alone, and it isn’t urgency alone. It’s knowing which one the moment calls for. And that judgment — the ability to read a situation clearly and act at exactly the right time — is something I learned long before I ever set foot in a courtroom.

It started in Russia. And it has never stopped being useful.