Divorce Without Dishonor

Unlike court-ordered divorce decisions, collaborative divorce allows you and your spouse the flexibility to re-evaluate and adapt as your children’s needs change over time. Court-ordered decrees strive to set custody arrangements that will stand until children reach the age of majority and can make their own decisions. But children’s lives are not static. Custody and support arrangements and many other decisions you make when your children are 2 or 3 may not meet their needs when they are 7 or 8 and will certainly be outdated when your children enter the pre-teen and teen years. Your ability to be flexibility and to compromise with each other will allow you and your spouse to continue to do what is best for your children as they mature.

As your children grow and their needs change, you may have to change the way you allocate parental time, responsibilities and resources to meet their new needs. By establishing avenues of positive communication and cooperative problem-solving during the collaborative divorce process, you and your spouse will have the skills to work together and provide the necessary flexibility to effectively parent your children now and in the future.

Divorce can take a heavy emotional toll on your children. The turmoil and acrimony that accompany divorce can have life-long repercussions for your children, affecting their ability to make and maintain healthy adult relationships as they mature. More than 50% of children from divorced homes wind up in failed marriages. There is a correlation between living through divorce and the ability to commit to a relationship as an adult.

Collaborative divorce allows parents to exhibit positive role modeling for their children during and after divorce. You and your spouse can choose to model good communication  and effective problem solving for your children, instead of the contempt, destructive sarcasm, criticism and defensive behavior so common during divorce. Through collaborative divorce, you can teach your children to confront problems rationally and compromise to achieve fair solutions.

The collaborative process uses a team approach to help you and your spouse develop skills in active listening, rational thinking, anger management, creative problem solving, and effective communication. As you develop and practice these skills through the collaborative divorce process, you create a basis for continued positive interaction as you parent your children after divorce. You also model for your children positive, mature, adult behavior on which they can model their own future relationships.

You’re probably still paying Christmas bills, and tax time is already rolling around. Money — and how to save it — is on everyone’s mind. Divorce is expensive and protracted litigation can increase costs exponentially, leaving you and your spouse with staggering legal bills to contend with as you as you each struggle to begin a new phase of life. While collaborative divorce is not necessarily cheap — a lot depends on the complexity of the issues and the number of meetings required to resolve them — it does allow you to exert better control over your divorce costs.

By choosing collaborative divorce, you and your spouse make a commitment to spending your resources on your family and not on a contentious legal battle. You make a conscious decision to place the needs and support of your children above petty — and legally expensive — battling with your spouse.

Most often, children whose parents divorce face a future with significantly less financial security that children from intact marriages. It simply costs more to maintain two households than one. Funds for school trips, enriching activities, and college are often limited or non-existent. Collaborative divorce allows you and your spouse to design a child support arrangement that meets the needs of your specific family. You do not have to contend with arbitrarily imposed court requirements, but can work together to provide your children with maximum financial stability.

In a collaborative divorce, each spouse usually hires their own divorce coach to help them learn to communicate and negotiate more effectively. These coaches are an integral part of the collaborative divorce team. They teach life skills that will form the basis for your post-divorce relationship with your spouse. If you have children, the skills learned from your divorce coach can make co-parenting go more smoothly after the divorce.

Your divorce coach will provide you will skilled help in:

• Managing your emotions appropriately.
• Separating your thoughts from your feelings.
• Thinking through emotionally charged issues.
• Learning to talk about difficult problems in a businesslike manner.
• Setting short and long-term goals for yourself, your children and your co-parenting relationship.

Conflict management, creative problem-solving, negotiation and productive communication are among the valuable life skills you can learn with the help of your divorce coach. Your coach can help you identify bad habits and problem areas in your relationship with your spouse and learn to communicate more productively. Divorce coaches help you and your spouse focus more clearly on your individual goals and the positive changes that can come about as a result of your divorce.

Separations and divorces are messy affairs. The decision to end a marriage is usually fraught with strong and conflicting emotions. Often one party is unprepared and may feel blind-sided by the announcement that the marriage is ending. Sometimes the raw emotions of separation and divorce erupt into physical or emotional abuse. Before separating, you should have a plan to ensure your safety.

These steps, suggested by counselor Jo Ann Simmons, may help you cope with separation and its emotional turmoil:

• Set up a safe environment to live in. Don’t hesitate to get help for you and your children. Good sources of help are churches, counseling centers, hot lines and community crisis centers.
• Get spiritual support. Spiritual support can help you get through the many crises that lie ahead. It can inspire you and give you much needed hope.
• Ask for and accept the help of family and friends. You can’t do this alone. You will need as much help as you can get. Give your family and friends an opportunity to show their love.
• Get professional help. Enlist the aid of a therapist or counselor to help you get through this difficult time. You’ll need a guide to help you focus on the important things and not get bogged down in unproductive emotions.
• Take care of yourself. Exercise, eat right, get your rest. You need to take care of yourself so you can take care of your children.

When child custody becomes a battle, everyone loses. Innocent children pay the price when parents are pitted against each other. Children need the love of both parents and should never be asked to choose between the two most important people in their lives.

In my new book, Stop Fighting Over the Kids, Resolving Day-to-Day Custody Conflict in Divorce Situations, I show you how to work together to creatively solve child custody issues while working cooperatively to support your children. The book will debut soon on Amazon.com with an e-book version available in the near future. To receive advanced notification of the book’s availability on Amazon, please email my webmaster at: webmaster@mccordweb.com.

To protect your children, you and your spouse should ask yourselves:

• What’s best for our children now and for the future? Children’s needs change as they grow. Your custody arrangements should be flexible to accommodate future change.
• How can we minimize the physical, emotional and spiritual damage divorce inflicts on our children? Parents need the support, love and attention of both parents.
• What can we do to increase our children’s sense of security, well-being and self-esteem during the coming transitions? The changes caused by divorce will be upsetting to your children and he will need help and support navigating them successfully.

Guilt is a huge issue when you make the decision to divorce. You feel guilt that your marriage failed, that the family unit is disintegrating, that your children will suffer. The opportunities to experience guilt during divorce are endless, but you must overcome those feelings of guilt in order to start healing from divorce, says Dr. Paul Wanio in a recent article, Overcoming Guilt About the Divorce on the Child Centered Divorce website. Click here to read the complete article.

Your sense of guilt may be strongest where it involves your children. Dr. Wanio says it’s important to keep in mind the following:

• Nobody’s perfect and that’s OK.
• Everyone makes mistakes, even when they’re doing their best.
• Divorce is like death in that you and your children need to grieve for the losses divorce entails. Be there for your children, listen to them and try to be understanding. Let your children know it’s OK to have strong emotions and encourage them to talk about them.
• Negative comments made by your child may be an expression of distress, not criticism.  Blaming you is a coping mechanism.
• Accept that change never happens as quickly as you’d like it too. Be patient.

If your marriage fails, it’s important to protect yourself. Have an attorney draw up legal separation documents which should be signed before you move out. When you do move out, follow these helpful tips:

• If you’re renting, take your name off the lease so you won’t be liable for the rent on two places.
• Remove your name from all utilities (cable, phone, trash, electric, gas, water, sewer) so you won’t be liable for bills that accrue after you move out.
• Open a post office box and sign a change of address form to have your mail delivered there. You don’t want your spouse checking your personal mail.
• Cancel or freeze all joint credit accounts. You and your spouse remain equally liable for any charges that accrue until your divorce is finalized. You should each obtain credit cards in your own name.
• Make a copy of addresses, phone numbers, account numbers, etc. for all financial records, including tax records for the past 6 years.

You’ll find more helpful tips in the latest free online issue of the Divorce Without Dishonor newsletter. If you’re not a subscriber, click here to subscribe today.

If you’re a subscriber, look for the latest issue of the Divorce Without Dishonor newsletter in your inbox. If you haven’t subscribed yet, it’s easy. Just click this link and fill in your email information in the box in right-hand column.

In the current issue, you’ll find a fascinating article on how collaborative divorce benefits children. With 60% of American marriages ending in divorce and a third of them involving bitter conflict, often about child custody, collaborative divorce provides a much-needed positive solution. One million children will be involved in divorce this year. They are more likely to develop behavior problems, psychiatric illness and addictions. Children of divorce are 50% more likely to divorce than children from intact homes, perpetuating the cycle.

With its emphasis on children’s needs and focus on respectful communication and creative problem-solving between divorcing spouses, collaborative divorce offers real hope for breaking the cycle of divorce. Click here to read the full newsletter article.

In this issue of the Divorce Without Dishonor newsletter, you’ll also find helpful information on separating from your spouse and a tip sheet for moving out. Don’t miss your opportunity to receive our informative newsletter; sign up today.

My new book, Stop Fighting Over the Kids, Resolving Day-to-Day Custody Conflict in Divorce Situations, will be available soon on Amazon.com. An e-book version will also be available in the near future. To receive advanced notification of the book’s availability on Amazon, email my webmaster at: webmaster@mccordweb.com.

My own acrimonious divorce and bitter child custody battle led me to search for a better, less damaging way to end a marriage. In collaborative divorce I have found a way for partners to separate their lives without destroying them. Collaborative divorce emphasizes the well-being of each member of the family, with a special emphasis on the needs of the children. It allows for creative, outside-the-box solutions to custody issues that are tailored to the individual needs of each family.

Proceedings take place outside the courtroom, usually in a lawyer’s or counselor’s office,  in an atmosphere of support, problem-solving and conflict resolution. Collaborative divorce allows both parties to establish and practice effective communication habits that will allow them to parent cooperatively after divorce. Collaborative divorce recognizes and emphasizes the importance of both parents in their children’s lives and helps to structure child custody arrangements that meet the changing needs of the child, as well as the capabilities of the parents.

If your marriage is ending, I urge you and your spouse to consider collaborative divorce and stop fighting over the kids, for your sake and theirs.