Divorce Without Dishonor

Divorce used to be approached with whispered shame. In the 1940s divorce was scandalous; a divorced woman became a social pariah. In the 1970s divorce was more common but still the stuff of malicious neighborhood gossip. We viewed divorce with angst and regret, the movie Kramer vs Kramer typifying America’s response to divorce. Today, one out of every two marriages fails. No-fault divorces allow couples to separate without blame and finger pointing. Regret lingers, but divorce happens and life moves on.

Major changes have occurred in divorce law and social acceptance, but myths based on the past live on. Let’s debunk a few of the most prevalent myths.

• If I move out of our house, I’ll lose all rights to it.
  Your house is part of your communal property. It’s ownership will be considered fairly during property division. You retain your rights to your home even if you don’t live in it.
• Our house is in my spouse’s name, so he’ll get the house.
  It doesn’t matter whose name is on the title, your house is communal property. Generally, when you get married, assets you each bring to the marriage are considered jointly owned for the purpose of divorce, including the marital home.
• When it’s over, it’s over.
  Not exactly. You and your spouse can return to court to change portions of your divorce. Major changes in life circumstances like loss of a job, significant promotion, a spouse moving out-of-state, severe illness, children going to college etc. may necessitate a change in the original terms.
• If my spouse or I remarry, he won’t have to support our children.
  Your spouse will always be responsible for the support of his  children until they are legal age and sometimes beyond. The first family is primary in the eyes of the court and its needs come first in subsequent marriages.
• My spouse had an affair, so he won’t get anything.
  While the conduct of both parties is considered in the equitable distribution of property, it does not determine how assets will be divided. However, if one spouse spent large amounts of money on the affair, the other spouse may be credited with that dollar amount when assets are divided.
• Divorce is a mud-slinging battle.
  Life does not have to imitate art. Movies like War of the Roses often depict divorce as acrimonious and hateful. Divorce does not have to be a battlefield. Mediation uses a third party to guide divorcing spouses to agreement. Collaborative law recognizes the needs and difficulties of both parties. Lawyers who practice collaborative law help divorcing spouses work together to divide their lives and support their children in an atmosphere of cooperation.

Contact me to learn more about collaborative law and divorce without dishonor. 

There are three essential steps to ensuring a healthy divorce (see our August 18 and 28 posts). The final and most difficult step is the redefining of parental roles. You and your spouse must set aside your anger and disappointment with each other for the good of your children and learn to parent together.

In their anger and hurt, many divorcing parents try to push the other parent out of their children’s lives. This can be disastrous for your children. The two most important factors in ensuring your child’s successful adjustment after divorce are:

1. Frequent and continuing interaction with both parents, and
2. Parents’ ability to co-parent effectively.

You and your spouse must come to an agreement on sharing time with and responsibility for your children. You must respect your child’s right to be with his other parent and the other set of grandparents and relatives. You need to find ways for both families to attend school events, sporting activities, teachers meetings, share birthdays and holidays, etc.

The goal is to create a new family system. Though It starts with two families, each headed by a single parent; over time it may grow to accommodate remarriage and blended families. If you and your spouse can continue to act together in your children’s best interests, you and your children will be able to make a healthy adjustment to the divorce and any changes that come later.

What about the children? You must work with your former spouse to create a new family system that supports and gives stability to your children. Refrain from using your children as go-betweens. Forcing your child to choose between parents or placing him in the middle between two warring parents, both of whom the child loves, places unbearable stress on your child. Your child will always need both of his parents in his life.

Divorce can be one of the most devastating events in a person’s life, but it can also be a path to positive and healthy change. Three essential tasks must be completed to ensure a healthy divorce. We talked about letting go in our August 18 post, How to Accomplish a Healthy Divorce. Next you must develop new social ties.

Developing social ties is an ongoing process. It will take time to reestablish supportive relationships with your family and build a new social network that embraces your single status. During divorce, you may find some of your friends drifting away for a variety of reasons:

• Some of the friends you enjoyed as a couple will feel threatened by your single status and be uncomfortable including you in couples-oriented events.
• Some friends will take sides and you’ll lose those who side with your spouse.
• If you have children or a challenging job or live far from your family, you may find that by focusing on your immediate family you have grown distant from your parents, siblings and relatives.

As old social connections disintegrate, you may feel tremendously alone before new connections are firmly established. Social isolation can lead to depression. Do not allow yourself to use your children to fulfill your need for interaction and companionship. Confiding in your children — even teen or adult children — simply places another burden on them. They need you to be a parent. They are not equipped to deal with your adult emotions, particularly with regard to your spouse. To them, the person you are divorcing is a beloved parent. Listening to adult complaints and worries is exceedingly stressful to children. You need to share your concerns and feelings with other adults or a counselor.

You may have a raw emotional need to fill the void left by your spouse’s departure. You may crave the closeness, companionship and affection your spouse used to provide. Jumping into a serious romantic relationship before you have had a chance to grieve and heal will only lead to disaster.

Relationships immediately following a divorce are referred to as transition relationships. They serve as a bridge to carry you from married couple status to singledom and help you explore your new role. Casual relationships can help you build self-esteem and confidence as a single, but transitional relationships rarely provide the solid basis necessary for a strong new partnership. A hasty marriage will only result greater tragedy for you and your family. Give yourself time to analyze why your marriage failed and grieve for the loss.

Give yourself at least a year to rebuild your social network. You need a chance to explore dating, see what you really want from your new life, and determine what you need in a new partner for you and your children. Use this time to reconnect with siblings and relatives, call up old high school or college friends, look for single activities in your church, join a club or community center, work on a charitable event, volunteer. Place yourself where you are likely to meet other singles and see what develops.

What about the children? If you are able to stay in the same house or in the same community and school district, the majority of your children’s social network will remain intact. Changing school districts or moving to a new town means your children will also need to rebuild their social networks from the ground up. You can make this easier by encouraging their participation in sports and group activities to help them meet new people. If possible, arrange visits with old friends or make trips back to the old neighborhood.

Next time: Redefining parental roles.

It is a sorrowful situation when a marriage ends. No one typically has gotten married thinking that they will some day divorce their spouse, but when it happens, children can be protected.

We all agree that children are our legacy. Children look to us as role models and shapers of their future. Many children will actually  model the parental relationships that they see in their own adult relationships.  Sometimes in an effort to replace what they feel they did not get and sometimes in to mimic the relationships that they see themselves.

In the previous post, I spoke of one family legacy that carried divorce and problematic relationships into two generations. Now I want to speak of healing. When you consider and use family collaborative law to enact a divorce, not only do you "win" so to speak, but bridges are built that help children in ways that you may not see the wisdom of for many years to come, but there are clearly there.

Divorce is hard, there is a natural grieving process over the loss.  It is important however to maintain a focus on rebuilding both your new life through divorce and that of your child’s instead of destroying. There is nothing more heartbreaking than to see divorced spouses that hate each other so intensely that they can not be in the same room together, trash the other parent to the children, and cannot even participate in the child’s school events if the other parent will be there. It simply does not have to be like that.

Is it easy to reach a divorce through family collaboration. No! It is clearly hard work. But it will help you move faster and more easily into a new life that you can rebuild for you and your child. Does it require flexibility on your part? You bet! But you benefit and most of all your children benefit. You can break the chain of bad marriages in your family and protect your children from experiencing the grief that divorce brings. Family collaborative divorce is about choices - good choices for you and good choices for your kids.

A messy and contentious divorce hurts you and your children most.  There are alternatives that you should strongly consider if you have decided that there is simply no way to re-build your marriage.

Things happen in relationships, sometimes there are things that happen to you, that you simply never intended to have happen or to be a part of your future. When these things do and children are involved, it makes the situation even more difficult to deal with.

We’ve all seen and heard the horror stories and some of us have even experienced them first hand.  But there is an alternative to a difficult divorce and one that will leave permanent scars on children that will affect them in their ability to have relationships with others all the way into their own adult lives.

In the next several posts, I am going to talk about some of these situations and help you to understand what your options are.  First though let’s take a closer look at how divorce affects the immediate family.

I know personally of one situation where the couple stayed together in their marriage for 25+ years solely for the sake of the children. One spouse physically abused the other in front of the children on a regular basis. Finally a divorce was done, but only after the children were all young adults themselves. The viewpoint of the couple was that they were providing a better environment for the children than if they were divorced.  From this situation, here is what has happened to these four adult children.

The first child has been married three times and divorced twice. The second child married twice and divorced once, the third child married twice and divorced once, the fourth child married twice and divorced twice. In all cases, children from these second generation marriages experienced the strife of divorce and very difficult family and custody situations. It is apparent that the legacy of strife and difficulties from the parental relationship was carried into the second generation. Each of the children from the first marriage have had difficulties making and keeping long term committed relationships. They have not had a strong fundamental building block on which to model their own personal relationships.

The chain however can be broken and children do not need to suffer now with family collaborative law. In our next post, I will talk about how a divorce can move a relationship forward and help to prevent problems for your next generation.

Divorce can be one of the most devastating events in a person’s life. It can be acrimonious, ugly and hurtful; but it doesn’t need to be. Divorce can be a road to positive and healthy change. Collaborative divorce can offer an opportunity for a new and happier life.

To ensure a healthy divorce, you and your family must accomplish three essential tasks:

1. Let go
2. Develop new social ties
3. Redefine parental roles

Letting go is absolutely critical if you are to heal from the divorce and build a new and happy life. It can be hard to let go of the attachments built during marriage. You may yearn for the love, caring, comfort and loyalty your former spouse provided in your life. The process of uncoupling physically and emotionally can engender strong feelings of anger, resentment, hurt and frustration. The constant battling of these powerful but opposite emotions can create a debilitating feeling of ambivalence as your emotions seesaw between elation and depression. This ambivalence — the alternate longing for the comfortable and familiar opposed to the craving for the new and exciting — is normal.

It is harder to let go emotionally than physically. Some people still cling to their former spouse 5 and 10 years after the divorce. Without emotional detachment, it is not possible to develop new healthy relationships.

Men, in particular, have a difficult time letting go emotionally, particularly those who were dependent on their spouse or jealous. They may become very depressed and require professional help to recover from divorce. If after divorce you continue to feel anger and resentment, you may need help letting go. Passionate negative feelings, as much as positive feelings of love and caring, indicate that a strong emotional attachment remains.

What about the children? Children must also let go, not of their parents, but of the family structure. Letting go can be extremely difficult for children and they may fantasize about getting their parents back together. You have to help them accept the reality of two households, two sets of rules, two ways of doing things, but only one parent in each home. They will need repeated reassurance that they still have the love of both parents.

Next time: Developing new social ties.

For both parents and children, divorce is like a death. It is the death of the family unit. As with any death, family members will go through distinct stages of grief on their road to recovery. This is the final of four basic principles of divorce that we have been discussing since August 9, 2007 (see our previous posts).

Experts say divorce is the most traumatic life event that can occur, after the death of a parent or child. Divorce entails many losses, some obvious and some not. When you divorce you bury:

• hopes and dreams for the future
• the love and stability of a secure relationship
• your identity as a husband or wife
• for many, a comfortable lifestyle and secure financial future
• for some, home, school, church and the stability of a known community
• supportive relationships with friends and neighbors
• the affections of your spouse’s family

Recovery from divorce takes time and tremendous personal adjustment for you, your spouse, your children and your families. Each loss must be acknowledged, accepted and put to rest or replaced. It is generally two full years before you will feel the same level of emotional comfort you felt before the divorce. For many, this adjustment period is much longer. Recovery will be faster if you allow yourself (and your children) to grieve openly for all your losses. In letting go of the past you will need to cry, wallow in self pity, express anger, experience guilt — in effect, go through the five typical stages of grief that accompany death.

• Denial
• Anger
• Bargaining
• Depression
• Acceptance

You must allow yourself and your children to fully experience grief. You cannot deny your grief. You cannot ignore the pain and loneliness you feel or try to hide from them by jumping into a new relationship. Some parents run from their feelings by immersing themselves in their job, their children’s activities, social activities, volunteer work, alcohol or drugs. If you do not embrace your grief, you will not be able to start the healing process and rebuild a better, happier life.

Many couples decide not to divorce "because of the children." Parents fear the toll divorce will take on their children: the heartbreak of separation, the emotional strain, the loss of stability, the confusion, the guilt, the anger — all the emotions they are feeling. What they fail to realize is that staying in a constantly unhappy, angry home takes an even bigger toll on children. The fallacy of staying together for the sake of the children is the third of four basic principles of divorce that we have been discussing since August 9, 2007 (see our previous posts).

Staying together for the sake of the children simply does not work. Of course, no child wants his parents to get divorced. But no child wants to live in an unhappy home where his parents are forever fighting. Parental fighting is extremely stressful and damaging to children. Studies have shown time after time that it is far more damaging for children to live in an unhappy, loveless home filled with tension, anger, fighting, recriminations and manipulation than it is for them to cope with and recover from divorce. And if you think your children don’t know what’s going on, you’re wrong. Many children pray for their parents to divorce because the constant fighting is so emotionally devastating.

With divorce, there is an end to the agony. There is no denying that the transitions that occur as a result of divorce will be difficult for your children. But there is clear hope for a better future. Parents fail to see how much their own attitude affects their children. If they are happier, healthier, more confident, more competent after the divorce, the home they provide for their children will mirror these positive values and their children will thrive.

Children are amazingly resilient. They can and do adjust well to major changes in their home environment, particularly if both parents are able to maintain a cooperative relationship where their children are concerned. In the end, what is most important to children is not whether their parents remain married or get divorced, but that both parents continue to love them and be part of their lives.

Next time: Grieving for the Death of the Family.

Although the decision to divorce is rarely impulsive, both parties do not usually reach the decision to divorce at the same time. There is always someone who leaves and someone who is left. This is the second of four basic principles of divorce that we have been discussing since August 9, 2007 (see our previous posts).

The longer people are married, the more rigid they become in their roles and their expectations of each other. One spouse may gradually become uncomfortable or may begin to outgrow her role. Usually the change is private and internal at first. Communication in a deconstructing marriage is usually poor and the dissatisfied individual may not want to upset whatever tenuous balance exists, so doesn’t speak out. Feelings of dissatisfaction continue to build until they cannot be denied, often catching the other spouse unawares.

A couple may seesaw back and forth about divorce for months or even years: coming closer, moving away, contacting lawyers, entering marital counseling. The wife often fears she won’t be able to support herself. The man may fear losing the comfort of his family. As growing unhappiness permeates the marriage, one spouse will finally decide to initiate the divorce.

This creates two rolls:

• The one who is leaving who carries the burden of guilt for destroying the family, and
• The one who is left who suffers from shattered self-esteem and carries a great deal of anger and hurt.

Studies have shown that the one who is leaving generally recovers more quickly from the divorce. The one who is left tries to hang onto the relationship longer and retains his anger longer. This tremendous emotional imbalance makes it difficult for couples to talk amicably and sets the stage for adversarial legal battles.

Your divorce does not have to be adversarial. You can have a collaborative divorce.

• If you are initiating the divorce, do not expect your spouse to understand or agree with your reasons. Try to be patient with their hurt and anger. You need to give them time to catch up emotionally and assimilate the reality of your decision.
• If you are the one being left, you must realize that this is not a sudden decision on your spouse’s part. Long months or years of unhappiness will have led up to this moment. You cannot change her mind but must accept her decision. Perhaps you refused or failed to recognize signals that she was drawing away. You must let go of the relationship. One person cannot keep a marriage together; it takes two. Trying to hang onto your spouse will only prolong the agony and keep you from healing.

Next time: Staying together for the sake of the children does not work.

Divorce is the result of years of unhappiness. This is the first of four basic principles of divorce we’ll be discussing in our next few posts (see our last post for an overview). Most couples build slowly to divorce. They may not realize what is happening in the early stages. They just feel a pervasive unhappiness and hopelessness about their marriage that deepens over time.

Among the feelings that indicate problems in the marriage may be: confusion, disappointment, frustration, anger, rage, sadness, embarrassment, loneliness, hurt, regret or jealously. When they realize their growing dissatisfaction, one or both parties may try marital counseling. Often only one spouse will be willing to admit and work on the "problems" in the marriage. The other spouse may be in denial or may feel he is not at fault and therefore has no responsibility for "correcting" the problem. Things worsen when one spouse feels they are putting more into the marriage than the other.

Many couples live in misery for years before divorcing. A couple may struggle along, hopeful for improvement that never comes. Couples often stay together, prolonging their agony, because they:

• don’t want to hurt their children
• don’t want to disappoint their parents
• grew up in a divorced family
• don’t think they can make it on their own
• are afraid of being along
• thought things would get better

If you are unhappy in your marriage, the first step is to admit it to yourself and search for the underlying cause. Look at your feelings and try to understand what triggers them. Next you must share your feelings with your spouse. If you are concerned about his response, you might want to enlist the aid of a family therapist to serve as mediator and provide a safe, neutral setting for this discussion. It is essential that you understand why your relationship failed. Understanding will help you determine if you want to repair your relationship and whether that is even possible. If you choose to divorce, understanding what led you to that decision will keep you from bringing the same problems with you into your next relationship.

Next time: Spouses don’t reach the decision to divorce at the same time.