Divorce Without Dishonor

Choosing collaborative divorce over traditional litigation carries many benefits but may not be something your spouse has considered. The way you choose to end your marriage can have lasting consequences for you, your spouse, your extended family and, especially, your children. Collaborative divorce emphasizes cooperation and building positive communication skills that will allow you and your spouse to be effective co-parents after the divorce. By addressing the individual needs of each family member, collaborative divorce can help you and your spouse move successfully beyond divorce to build satisfying new lives. (For additional benefits of collaborative divorce, read our January 19, 2008 post.)

Once you and your spouse have decided to divorce, you will want to prepare carefully before discussing your desire for a collaborative divorce. Preparation will help you discuss the issues calmly, keeping negative emotions like rage and guilt to a minimum. The following these ideas can help you prepare to have a positive discussion with your spouse:

• Consider your ethical, religious, spiritual and philosophical values. Focus on those that you believe will most help you have this difficult discussion, such as honesty, respect and dignity.
• Think about the conversation you want to have. Write out different “scripts” that emphasize the values you have chosen to focus on. Writing will help you choose the words you want to use and help you create a proper tone for the discussion.  
• Practice what you want to say, out loud or mentally. Find a comfortable way to express yourself.

To be continued in our next post.

Once you and your spouse decide to end your marriage, you must decide HOW to do so. Even if the break up of your marriage has been acrimonious, even if you and your spouse seem to view life from polar opposites, even if you no longer share the same goals or values, you might both agree to the benefits of collaborative divorce for different reasons.

Some reasons divorcing couples choose collaborative divorce include:

• A desire to protect your children from the emotional storm of divorce.
• A desire for both parents to maintain close contact with their children after divorce.
• The opportunity to implement creative solutions to child custody that address your unique family needs.
• A desire to establish a viable working relationship with your ex-spouse that will allow you to parent your children cooperatively.
• A desire to maintain good relationships with extended family members after the divorce.
• A desire for privacy.
• The opportunity for careful financial and tax planning.
• The desire to maintain one’s dignity and look back on one’s behavior during divorce without regret.

Choosing collaborative divorce over traditional litigation carries many benefits but may not be something your spouse has considered. Once the decision is made to end your marriage, the way you end it will have lasting consequences for you, your spouse, your extended family and, especially, your children. Guided by a team of experienced professionals dedicated to the cooperative process, collaborative divorce allows you and your spouse to respect each other’s differences, meet the needs of each member of the family, and build a workable system of communication and negotiation that will allow for effective interaction after the divorce. To find out more about collaborative divorce, click the link. 

Next time: Talking to your spouse about collaborative divorce.

You may not have hordes of paparazzi camped outside your door trying to capture your every move and utterance, ready to broadcast it to the world, but you might as well when you get a divorce. In most states, anyone can sit in the courtroom and watch and listen to your divorce hearings and trial. In fact, there are usually other litigants and attorneys in the courtroom waiting for their turn to be called before the judge. Then there are the people who just enjoy the drama of court, who sit in the audience hoping for a juicy tidbit to share with friends.

The majority of states put courthouse records online where personal information from your divorce is available to casual web surfers, data collectors, identity thieves and the media. With some exceptions, anyone can go to your local courthouse and view your complete court divorce file. Every angry word, every ill-considered statement, every embarrassing accusation, even your private financial information – if it’s part of your court record, it’s available for all to see — and use. Even if you and your spouse settle before you go to trial, as many divorces do, all the information entered into the court record becomes part of the court file and is available for public scrutiny.

Because it takes place entirely outside the court system, collaborative divorce files can never become part of the public record. When an agreement is reached, your collaborative attorney needs to file only the barest minimum of information required by law to record your divorce. To the maximum degree permitted by law, your personal affairs and information are protected and remain private. Something to think about.

Collaborative divorce is a positive step toward a new beginning. Collaborative divorce discards the old adversarial precepts of divorce for a cooperative, problem-solving emphasis that provides you and your spouse with the skills and resources to make a healthy transition from being married to being single. Collaborative divorce does not focus on “winning,” “getting mine,” “hurting him/her,” ”keeping the children to myself,” or any of the other hurtful, divisive objectives of traditional litigation. Instead, collaborative divorce emphasizes shared values and priorities, building consensus, resolving differences, effective co-parenting and moving forward.

Collaborative divorce is a positive choice because:

• It helps you and your spouse clarify and reach consensus on personal and shared values, goals and priorities.
• It allows for creative solutions to conflicts and issues that are beyond the normal purview of the court.
• It gives you and your spouse the negotiating skills and practice to resolve differences without destructive conflict and sets a positive pattern for post-divorce interaction.
• It focuses on the needs of your children and improves your ability to co-parent after the divorce.
• It lays a foundation for future healthy communication and interaction that will allow you and your spouse to move ahead with your new lives and not be mired in the acrimony of the past.

Divorce is tough on kids, but it is the parents’ approach to divorce that determines how tough. “It is not divorce, per se, that emotionally scars children,” says Rosalind Sedacca, a well-known proponent of child-centered divorce, in a recent email. “It is the parents’ approach to divorce that determines the positive or negative impact on the kids.” 

The process of collaborative divorce, which focuses on meeting the needs of the whole family, particularly the children, in an atmosphere of support and cooperation, can minimize the distress and emotional turmoil that divorce can cause. In many instances, collaborative divorce can be a healthier, happier solution than “staying together for the sake of the children.” Children who have grown up in an emotionally cold or combative household will tell you that they wish their parents had separated years ago. They agree that they would have been happier with two parents living separate but satisfying lives than living in the middle of “a war zone,” as one teen put it.

I’m not suggesting that divorce is the answer to your marital problems. I always suggest counseling as a first effort where appropriate. No one, particularly parents, should end their marriage precipitously. But if your marriage cannot be repaired, collaborative divorce can allow both you and your children to move forward with your lives in a positive way. The process of collaborative divorce can establish a basis for cooperative parenting that will allow you and your spouse to work together in the best interests of your children. Your children will successfully manage the changes divorce creates in their living situation when they grow up knowing they are loved and supported by both parents.

Child custody battles leave only casualties, no winners. Britney Spears’ problems last weekend are only the most recent example (see our January 7 post). Children need the love, support and involvement of both parents while they’re growing up. Sure, there are cases when one parent may not be capable of effective parenting or when a parent may actually endanger a child, but most of the time it is the anger divorcing spouses have for each other that muddies the child custody waters. Collaborative divorce can help parents set aside unproductive personal emotions and focus on their children. With the help of the collaborative divorce team, a couple can create a child custody agreement that provides for their children’s physical, emotional and financial needs while allowing both parents to maintain a close relationship with their children.

When children are involved in a divorce, the collaborative divorce team will usually include a child specialist. The child specialist works privately with the children to provide them with their own voice in the collaborative process. The child specialist is not a psychotherapist but a sympathetic realist who will help your children deal with the changes and challenges divorce will bring to their lives.

In talking with your children, the child specialist will gain important insights that can affect your custody agreement. She may be able to offer creative solutions to custody arrangements that will meet both your children’s and your needs. Should the collaborative process break down, like all members of the collaborative team, the child specialist, whose work is confidential, is enjoined from testifying for or against either parent in a court proceeding.

A close friend died over the holidays and it struck me that we grieve for the loss of a marriage much like we do for the loss of a loved one. When I got divorced I went through the same phases of grief that you go through when someone close to you dies:

• Denial: This is not happening. It’s just a midlife crisis. We can work it out.
• Anger: What did I do to deserve this? How can he/she do this to me?
• Bargaining: If you stay, I’ll change. I’ll do anything if you’ll stay.
• Depression: I can’t bear this. How will I ever cope on my own?
• Acceptance: This is happening. I can do this and move on. I’m going to be okay.

When you get divorced, your marriage dies. Grieving for the loss of your spouse, your life together, unrealized hopes and dreams is normal and necessary. It helps to understand the emotional phases that you and your family will go through. It’s equally important to realize that each person will not proceed through these phases at the same rate. You or a family member may need professional help to successfully pass through each phase to achieve acceptance, but it is necessary to do so. Until you finish grieving for the loss of your marriage, you cannot begin to build a new life.

Collaborative divorce can help accelerate the grieving process so that you and your spouse can move forward with your lives more quickly.

Some people think that a collaborative divorce is for the weak or for those who don’t have the guts to duke it out it court. This could not be further from the truth. It truly takes courage to forego the traditional divorce facilitated by the court system and try something different. It takes a lot of guts for two people to decide that they don’t want to fight, and that they’d prefer to come together and dissolve a marriage themselves.

When you go to divorce court, a lawyer speaks for you. When you embark on a collaborative divorce, you get to speak for yourself. The two sides make their own decisions about how things will end, rather than leaving it up to a third party.

A judge is supposed to be impartial, but we are all human, and none of us is free from bias. Plus, there is always part of the story that gets left out or overlooked. If the two people involved in a marriage are the ones deciding the terms to end it, they at least come to the table an awareness of all that has past between them. Who better than the people involved to decide the next steps?

When you and your former partner opt for a collaborative divorce you are putting yourselves in control of the timing of the divorce process.

If you go to court you are most certainly not in charge. The attorneys set court dates and these dates are set to fit their schedules, not yours. If you need extra time to think about an issue or find that things are moving too quickly, you may not be able to stop things once they get going. On the flip side, if your divorce case gets put at the bottom of the pile for some reason, you could find that the process in dragging when you really want to get some closure and move on with your life.

In a collaborative divorce, the couple can decide how to proceed. It is up to you to decided when the petition for divorce is filed. The process moves forward when the two parties involved agree and there is not third party there to impose restrictions.

A divorce is already painful enough without the added pressure of having to go through it on someone else’s timetable. Both parties will feel much more empowered when they are the ones overseeing the process.

The Secret by Rhonda Byrne is the latest pop culture guide to life. Read and talked about by everyone from Ophra to my sister, The Secret is said to reveal the most powerful law of the universe, to offer a life-changing path to universal joy and peace. Without judging the mysticism of The Secret, I find value in the author’s idea that there are certain words we can say to each other that have the power to change our lives for the better.

“Thank you” are the two words Byrne believes can bring you “absolute joy and happiness.” In The Secret Scrolls she writes that the words “thank you” are “Two words that will create miracles in your life…. Gratitude is one of the easiest and most powerful ways to transform your life.”

Saying “thank you” is one of the oldest and most common of social courtesies. We thank the grocery cashier for handing us our change. We thank strangers for holding the door as we enter a building. We thank the waiter at our favorite eatery for bringing our food. We say “thank you” to total strangers countless times a day. It’s a rote response, the automatic acknowledgment of common courtesy.

Yet, how often do we thank the people who matter most in our lives? How often do we thank our spouse for their contributions to the family? When was the last time you thanked your spouse for cooking dinner? When was the last time you said “thank you” when your spouse brought home a paycheck or sent the child support payment? Have you ever thanked your spouse for driving the kids’ carpool? What about for mowing the lawn, seeing that there are clean clothes in the closet, reading to the kids, helping with their homework, etc. Every day we do hundreds of things that show our love and support for each other and our families but most go unrecognized. We take the everyday actions of family life for granted.

Perhaps it’s time we afforded our families the same courtesy we give to strangers every day of the week. Starting today, recognize the contributions your spouse makes to family life. Say “thank you” for all the little ways they show their love and support. Acknowledge their efforts and show them how much you appreciate what they do. Make a conscious effort to say “thank you” for the small contributions as well as the big ones. It will make a difference and, I believe, will change your life for the better.