Divorce Without Dishonor

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.

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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.

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.

It’s unfortunate, but you had to see this coming. Britney Spears lost custody of her sons this weekend. A court commissioner awarded sole physical and legal custody of Sean Preston, 2, and Jayden James, 1, to dad, Kevin Federline, after Spears refused to return the children to Federline at the end of a court-monitored visit. Police were called and the pop-wreck, as the tabloids are now referring to Spears, was hauled off to the hospital by paramedics summoned by police officers at the scene. Police said there was no threat to the children during the three-hour altercation. Federline had previously been awarded temporary custody of their children when Spears defied previous court orders.

While it’s difficult to draw parallels between the lives of Hollywood’s elite and we mere mortals, Spears’ custody problems and parental misbehavior certainly serve as a worse-case example of what not to do. Her children may not have been physically endangered, but what about the emotional damage she is causing by failing to behave as a responsible parent, failing to maintain their safety, failing to work with their father to support them emotionally, and failing to cooperate with the court?

Children are resilient and her children are quite young, but using your children as a pawn in your divorce, fighting over custody in your children’s presence, and failing to consider your children’s needs, only further destroy your children’s fragile sense of security and feelings of love. Lately, Britney Spears isn’t doing herself, or particularly her children, any favors with her outrageous behavior.

When you and your spouse decided to have a child, it was most likely a joyful time. From the moment of birth (and even before that), children steal your heart. You love them, care for them and protect them. You dedicate yourself to keeping your child safe, healthy and happy. Divorce shouldn’t change that.

When divorce becomes a battlefield, your children are the casualties. During divorce, parents must put aside their anger and emotions when making decisions about their children’s custody and support. They must separate their adult differences from the needs and welfare of their children and work together to make decisions that will support and provide for their children’s physical and emotional well-being. Therapist Rosalind Sedacca calls this child-centered divorce.

"When you create a child-centered divorce, your children win — on every level. Parents who make a concerted effort to sit down with each other and discuss the future well-being of their kids together, keep their perspective where it really belongs — on the children," says Sedacca in a recent article on the website Child-Centered Divorce. (Click here to read the entire article.)

Sedacca suggests divorcing parents ask themselves the following questions:

• What

  

A divorced mother herself, therapist Rosalind Sedacca, has created an excellent new website, Child-Centered Divorce, that I can highly recommend. Built on her own struggles guiding her children through divorce, Sedacca has created a website that can be a valuable resource for parents striving to help their children cope with divorce.

The goal of the website is to provide parents with a support network that addresses the problems parents face with their children during divorce. Articles address the issues concerning the emotional health and welfare of children going through divorce. Parents will find the articles engagingly written and particularly useful. In each article parents will find new understandings and helpful tips they can apply to their own circumstances.

Sedacca shares her highly qualified experience in regular articles on the website and also draws on the knowledge and experience of a variety of experts. Some recent topics include:

• Magical Thinking: When Children of Divorce Blame Themselves
• Children’s Emotional Needs During Divorce and Beyond
• When Children of Divorce Act Out — Caring Parents Step Up!
• Child-Centered Divorce Secrets

Child-Centered Divorce was created this summer by Rosalind Sedacca, a Certified Corporate Trainer, author, national speaker and workshop facilitator. She is the author of the helpful  new book How Do I Tell the Kids about the Divorce? A Create-a-Storybook Guide to Preparing Your Children - with Love! (see our October 29 post for a review).