We were deep in the holidays, a time of love, a time of sharing, a time for forgiveness. Heading home from work last week, I was brought up short by a stunning story of forgiveness that originated in the Twin Cities, and that begs the question, “What is really important to me?”
Recently, I’ve had to deal with questions such as, “Am I going to have to pay the capital gains on the property I was awarded?” or, “I don’t think it’s fair that I should have to pay more maintenance than $______,” or, “I want to know what she’s spending the child support on!” Mary Johnson, a Minneapolis mother, lost her son 20 years ago in a party fight that escalated into a murder. The man responsible, Oshea Israel, was sent to prison. In her StoryCorps interview with Oshea Israel, Mary talks about the change that happened when she visited Oshea in prison, a change which eventually allowed her to forgive him. She founded From Death to Life, an organization that supports mothers who have lost children to homicide, and encourages forgiveness between families of murderers and victims. I can’t help but wonder, when people complain about everything they’ve “lost” in their divorce, what they would say to Mary Johnson. And I wonder whether they’ll ever be able to forgive each other for fighting about the “stuff” and take the time to cherish their children. I think I know what Mary would tell them.
“It’s a little girl,” my friend Rick said, his voice shaking with excitement. “Everybody’s fine!” A little later he said, “You know what the best part of this is? I didn’t hear about it. I was there for it!” It was an especially poignant thing to say, because the new mother–his daughter–was just starting grade school when Rick and his wife divorced, and she and their little girl moved to the East Coast from the West Coast.
“I read to her,” he told me not long after we met. “I read to her every Tuesday night at seven. I give her Mom a lot of credit for that. Every Tuesday night at seven o’clock, I’d call her and I’d read books to her over the phone for an hour so she wouldn’t forget the sound of my voice. I worked it out with my boss, and I’d come in an hour early on Tuesday.”
“What did that do to your phone bill?”
“Are you kidding?” he said. “It’s the best money I’ve ever spent. The Summer she got married, I walked down the aisle with her, and then I went and sat next to her mother. And we were both crying!”
It made me wonder about some of the kids in the thousands of families that divorce each year in Minnesota who spend years waiting for the sound of a parent’s voice, or a card, or a hug. And I remember what Rick said when I asked him why he did it.
“I wanted her to know who she was, where she came from. I didn’t want her to wonder who she is. I never put a price on that!”
Apparently, it worked.
When someone mentions divorce, where does your mind go? Do the words “fight,” “bitter,” or “vicious” come up? How about terms like, “teamwork,” “goals,” or “considerate?” It’s interesting to an experienced divorce lawyer how often the expectations include the former terms, and how often, in Collaborative Divorce, the reality includes the latter concepts.
I was reminded of this recently when a client I represented in a Collaborative divorce five years ago sent me a note. I have always remembered him because of the great shift in his attitude toward his wife by the time the case was over. When we began his divorce, he stated in an early meeting that the couple’s property should be divided in his favor, since he had always earned more than his wife (which is NOT the way the law looks at it). The statement was not well-received, either by his wife OR her attorney.
The couple had been married more than 30 years. As the case drew to a close, it became obvious that her job at a prominent Minnesota corporation, her debt-free house, and the even division of their property and substantial retirement assets would provide for her just fine. The only question left was spousal maintenance. We often see a spouse who doesn’t need financial assistance waiving maintenance—in fact, often the couple mutually agree to take jurisdiction over maintenance away from the court altogether, for all time. When I asked whether she had given any thought to waiving maintenance, she glanced at her veteran lawyer, then shyly said she would waive it. In the next instant, we were all stunned to hear my nuts-and-bolts, cut-and-dried, professional engineer client say, in a voice of genuine warmth, “I don’t think you should do that. You never know. You might need it some day.”
Approaching the end of their marriage as a family-centered problem-solving exercise, rather than a combat, allowed this wife to give up a claim I would have assumed she would keep. And it allowed her husband to decline her offer, in the interest of her potential long-term welfare, a gesture no one would have predicted. Their mutual trust of each other, reaffirmed during their weeks of working together, ultimately allowed them both to make decisions that considered each other’s welfare as much as their own.