Tips on how to have a positive divorce
- Create a manifesto: Craft a road map that serves as your moral compass through the ever-twisting divorce journey.
- Harness negative emotions: Divorce brings out some of the strongest emotions you will feel in your lifetime. Transform these raw feelings into positive power. We don't have to be victims.
- Prevent collateral damage: Divorce is so personal that it is easy to lose focus on the big picture. Explain divorce to your kids- The main complaint she gets when she interviews children is that no one has explained the divorce to them, or when someone did, the reasons did not sound authentic.
The divorce explanation you give your children may be the most important conversation you ever have with them. Your child is not your therapist - sharing your ongoing worries with your children may teach them chronic anxiety as a way of life. You must agree to put your children in a safety zone. Ordinary parenting is not enough; you must practice heroic parenting (going above and beyond the parenting you may be used to, despite your difficult relationship with your spouse). Which is more important: you being right", or your children being happy?
- Master transformative confrontation: It might start ugly but it doesn't have to stay that way. Avoid carnage in the courtroom, reinvigorate stale negotiations, and create a civility agreement. The most common emotion she sees in children of divorce is anger: being left by one or more parents, not being protected during the process, court fights over visitation or custody, and anger with themselves because they could not save their parents' marriage.
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Ideally the speech informing the children about breakup should be given by both of the parents together. Even if individually, this may be the most important discussion you will ever have with your children, so there is no such thing as too much preparation
Be sure to have individual conversations with each child alone. A conversation with a six-year-old obviously is very different from one with a twelve-year-old.
Regardless of how sophisticated your children may sound your children are not emotionally developed enough to know how to process harmful truths.
Truth, although essential to the trust you create with your children, does not include topics that malign their other parent or in any way hurt the children. The key question is: Is being right, or being honest, when it may do harm, more important than your child's happiness?
Don't dismiss your children's complaints about what is happening in their lives with their friends, siblings, school, or other activities. These complaints may be indications of deeper problems.
Don't criticize your children's emotions; they are very real. Don't tell them they should "get over" something.
Do not criticize, malign, or in any way speak poorly of your spouse or former spouse. Whatever negative qualities they are told another parent has, your child may believe they have too.
Create a "free-speech zone," which is a conversation with your children for one hour a week, the same time every week. In this "zone," your children have the opportunity and the right to say whatever is on their minds, without criticism or retaliation.
If you find you can't help but malign the other parent, give your children permission to use safety phrases, such as, "Please don't talk to me about that information," "Let's drop that subject," "I don't want to hear it," . Just because you are the parent doesn't mean you can trespass on their heart without their having the right to build a gate.
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When you do this, your children may take on all the feelings you are experiencing. Sharing your ongoing worries with your children may teach them chronic anxiety as a way of life.
Many schools have psychologists and social workers to help children of divorce. Find out what resources are available.
Give your children extra attention if you are bringing in a new relationship. Children of divorce often worry that they are going to lose the affection of their parent to the new person.
Rituals restore or promote a sense of order and predictability. Restore old traditions, making them resemble their former structure as much as possible; they are signposts of stability for the family.
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Both parents should stick as close to the plan as possible. This is true both for the parent hosting the visitation and the parent who, sending the children off, may have made promises about what would happen during the visitation.
What Plays at Home Stays at Home -- I recommend that you avoid questioning your children about what occurred during or how they felt about a visitation with the other parent. Often children are frightened that if they tell a parent they enjoyed their time with the other,
Don't require your children to keep secrets from the other parent. Consider how difficult it is for you as an adult to keep a secret. Think about children who fear that if they cannot keep a secret, they may lose the parent's love.
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Even in no-fault states, people believe that alleging bad behavior on the part of your spouse will help your financial outcome. This is not true, but very difficult for people to accept. For example, in a no-fault state adultery is not relevant although money spent on the third person would be.
- Have you approximated spousal maintenance with no termination date?
- Paying both lawyers?
- Is there an objective person who can help you take the emotion out of these calculations? Tell your attorney you want best-case, middle-range, and worst-case scenarios calculated.
- Do you know the ballpark figure for legal fees, including posttrial motions and costs like paralegals and court reporters? Ask your attorney to give you an estimate for trial. Your financial dispute may be less than the legal fees.
- Ask yourself if you are aligned with the principle that a negotiated settlement is better than a trial? Throwing the dice in court because you believe the judge will be sympathetic rarely results in doing better than negotiated offers or mediation.
- Do you believe that accepting a compromise is a show of weakness?
- Do you feel bullied by your attorney into a settlement?
- Do you believe that settling is a "selling out of principles"?
- Are you confident that your facts are accurate? Ask your attorney whether there are problems proving facts as you see them. In the end, it is really a matter of comparative pain between two dif?cult processes, trial and negotiation. In that comparison, negotiation will always be the least painful.
The majority of cases that go to trial are not about the financial bottom line, but about an emotional attachment to a perceived righ teous position. This attachment or tangling the emotions with the finances can adversely affect your clarity.
In most states child support is a percentage formula of net income. The case law often shows the average length of time for maintenance is about one third the length of the marriage unless it is a long term marriage and then it can be permanent.
Most jurisdictions have laws that at least provide that anything obtained after the marriage is a joint marital asset regardless of whose name it is in.
All jurisdictions provide for temporary support to the spouse with less funds during the pendency of the case. They also provide for attorneys fees to be paid by the spouse with more funds to their spouses attorney.
Has your attorney explained mediation to you? Have you requested mediation? That request can be made any time prior to trial. This is bene?cial at any point. You should have your financial picture fully intact before mediation.
In financial negotiations, you need to ask yourself, have you approximated the dollar amount that is in dispute that will result in a trial? For example, if you are $100,000 apart, have you calculated how much it will cost you and what you might lose at trial?
Also ask yourself:
After a few negotiation sessions ask your attorney to circulate a draft agreement that can be subject to comments and criticism by both sides. Some couples I see cannot agree just because they can't conceptualize what an agreement would look like. It is simply too much to mentally organize without a schematic.
Judge Michele Lowrance spent 20 years as a domestic relations and entertainment lawyer. A Domestic Relations Judge in the Circuit Court of Cook County since 1995, she authored Visitation Guidelines for Cook County and produced and chaired a statewide judicial conference on How to Tell if People Are Lying.
Lowrance was a regular weekly guest on Jonathan Brandmeir's Radio WLS program "Trust me, I'm a Lawyer." She also produced and hosted the Infinity Broadcasting talk radio show Your Health Matters for five years, interviewing guests including Deepak Chopra, Dr. Andrew Weil and Dr. John Grey.
She has made numerous guest TV appearances, and has appeared on American Justice with Bill Kurtis. She is a regular guest lecturer at Chicago Divorce University, the Chicago Bar Association, the University of Chicago and Northwestern University.
Lowrance, a child of divorce who was raised by her grandparents, is also divorced. She has devoted her professional life to helping those similarly situated.
For more information, visit thegoodkarmadivorce.com
>> Buy this book on Amazon: The Good Karma Divorce: Avoid Litigation, Turn Negative Emotions into Positive Actions, and Get On with the Rest of Your Life
Please join Michele for a Book Signing on Saturday February, 20th at Book Passage in Corte Madera at 7:00 p.m.
For more information, visit www.bookpassage.com
