Posted on
choosing an attorneyI recommend you research and interview several divorce attorneys. This can help you develop and clarify some of your goals and interests and help confirm the choice of process you and your spouse want to use. It’s important to keep in mind that an attorney is only one member of what hopefully will be a team of professionals to help you on your “getting unmarried” journey. Child specialists, financial specialists specifically experienced in divorce planning, and possibly a coach should also be considered as a part of your team. My reason for suggesting these other professionals is simple. They each are experts in their respective fields. Attorneys are not really trained to be financial specialists nor are they trained to be therapists or child specialists. They are trained to be attorneys and are a much needed part of your divorce team. Divorce however, is more than a legal event. Getting unmarried is a financial, emotional, and relational event as well as a legal event. Think about it, if you were to have heart surgery would you choose a general practice physician? I doubt it. Getting unmarried is like having open-heart surgery on your life’s finances, your children and multiple relationships. You will, in my opinion, be better served by having a team of experts in their respective fields assisting you and your spouse on this journey. Now back to choosing an attorney. You want someone who supports you and the type of process you and your spouse want to use. You will both want someone who listens to you, someone who doesn’t necessarily tell you what you want to hear but rather someone who has the wherewithal and will honestly be a realistic advocate. If an attorney promises you specific outcomes in your divorce, I would encourage you to run the other way; don’t walk. A good divorce attorney knows there is no certainty of outcomes in the divorce arena. You want a problem solver not a problem maker. There are plenty of good problem solver types of attorneys around. Unfortunately, as in any profession, there are some problem makers as well. How do you find the problem solvers? In today’s wired world you can Google the attorneys name, check out their website, LinkedIn profile and Facebook pages. You can do all this before ever picking up the phone. If you do thorough research and interview several attorneys you should be able to distinguish between the problem solvers and problem makers. You may want to consider making an initial phone call to an attorney before scheduling an interview session. This can tell you how quickly they return calls and how connected you might feel towards them from your initial phone conversation. It will also save you and the attorney time if you decide not to set up a face-to-face interview after the phone call. When interviewing attorneys, ask how they will communicate with you. Some clients think their attorney and other professionals should be available for them around the clock.  Remember you are not their only client and they have a personal life and schedule as you do. Ask them if they will be communicating directly with you or will their assistant or paralegal. Ask them what you should expect in terms of them replying to your phone calls and/or emails. It’s better for both you and the attorney to have clear expectations up front to avoid disappointment later on. Traditionally, I believe most individuals begin the process of getting unmarried through contact with an attorney. Part of the reason for this is our culture including media has conditioned us to first approach divorce through the legal channel. While I certainly would not discourage anyone from beginning the divorce process through the legal avenue, there are other approaches. It may be through a marital counselor, therapist, financial professional, divorce coach or some other channel. While the majority of divorce cases still begin with attorneys on board, it is not unusual for a couple to begin the process with a child specialist, financial specialist, or divorce coach, brining the attorneys on board at a later time. This approach is dependent upon the comfort level of each spouse, their priorities, needs, and concerns. The point is the divorce process can begin in a number of avenues and does not necessarily have to always begin with the attorney. In my next and final post in this series I will offer some questions for you to consider when interviewing an attorney.
Posted on
choosing an attorneyChoosing an attorney to represent you in a divorce proceeding at first may sound fairly straightforward. Too often I see this critical step not being given the attention it deserves. Sometimes it is simply a friend, relative or co-worker who refers someone who they felt or heard was good. While everyone means well, I suggest they probably don’t know what your goals and interests are for your divorce. They don’t know if a particular attorney is a good fit for you. Sometimes a client will find the first attorney who tells them what they want to hear. This often is a big red flag. Ultimately, only you will be able to decide who the best fit may be for your circumstances. I hope this three part series of posts on the importance of choosing an attorney, issues to consider when choosing an attorney, and finally some questions to ask a divorce attorney, will provide you with some valuable insights. I believe choosing an attorney is the third most important decision you will make on your journey to get unmarried. Remember in The first post of “Getting Unmarried” the most important decision is deciding to get unmarried in the first place. In Part II, I wrote the second most important decision is to research and decide “How to get unmarried;” essentially deciding on the divorce process that you feel–and hopefully your spouse feels–will accomplish the goals you both want to achieve. The third most important decision I’ll cover in this first of a three part series will be on the importance of choosing an attorney for yourself and equally as important if not more important is who your spouse decides to hire as an attorney. But let’s put first things first.  In my way of thinking, you can’t begin to choose an attorney until you first, decide to get unmarried and, secondly, decide what type of divorce process you and your spouse want to use. Provided you have made these first two decisions, let’s make an assumption that both you and your spouse will want an attorney. If you have children from your marriage and or have significant assets and/or liabilities to ultimately allocate between you and your spouse in a property settlement, I strongly encourage everyone with these circumstances to be represented by an attorney. Let me disclose here, I am not an attorney. Too many do it yourself divorce packages often result in repeated appearances in court and end up being significantly more costly to the clients down the road. Leaving it to guesswork or not giving your property settlement the attention it deserves can be costly. Remember your marriage may not last forever but your property settlement will. If you have children let me share this quote by Neil Postman, an American writer and professor, with you. “Children are the living messages we send to a time we will not see.”  When children are involved they will be watching closely for the messages you and your spouse send to them about your divorce. They will live and carry those messages throughout their lifetime. For these reasons, give careful and thoughtful consideration to the process you choose for your divorce and the attorneys both you and your spouse end up hiring. In the second part of this series, I outline important issues to consider when choosing an attorney.
Posted on
My Pilates instructor, Maria Franklin, is a truly gifted holistic healer, committed to creating physical, emotional and spiritual strength and balance. During each class, Maria imparts nuggets of wisdom as we flex and twist.  Maria reminds us that “practice makes permanent” and that we are capable of stretching ourselves much further than we thought possible as long as we believe we can.  Stretching further and further is temporarily painful, but the strength and balance gained will last forever as long as we keep mindful, keep practicing and keep breathing. Maria recently shared this nugget as we learned a challenging new exercise:  “If you let go and relax, you can do it. If you clench, it won’t work.” She saw us instinctively tightening up in self-protection, as we were uncertain we were strong enough to safely do the exercise. She wanted us to trust ourselves more and release our muscles in spite of our fear of falling. She was right. Relaxing and releasing worked. We did not feel out of control, but became calmer and more confident of our abilities. As a neutral child specialist in Collaborative Team Practice, I know that members of families with whom I work are constantly being thrust into stressful new situations that will require them to painfully stretch in ways they might not have thought possible. It is the nature of divorce to be filled with uncertainty, and involuntary clenching of emotional muscles is a natural response to fear and anxiety. This can make a painful situation excruciating, and may hinder efforts at mastery of what lies ahead. In Collaborative Team Practice, you will find a team of professionals who are committed to helping families in crisis create stability, strength and balance while letting go of fear of the unknown future. We help people get unmarried in an environment of safety and respect. I have written before on the necessity of letting go to move on. Experience keeps sending me reminders of the importance of practicing and ultimately mastering what fear tells us is not possible. Get the support you need and deserve from a Collaborative team, focus on healthy resolutions for you and your children, keep breathing and believe in yourself. You can do it.
Posted on
Parent and ChildOne of my favorite people, and among the wisest of my friends, is my hair stylist, Gina. I always look forward to any time we have to chat while my newly foiled tresses take their color. Recently, we had such an opportunity. We were talking about my work as a Collaborative neutral child specialist, hearing the voices of children whose parents are getting unmarried or separated. Gina shared a story I hadn’t heard, and graciously consented to let me blog about it. Gina’s parents, like many other couples, went through some very rough patches in their marriage. Because they eventually committed to changing destructive patterns, and worked hard using appropriate community resources, they were able to turn things around in a healthy direction. But not while Gina was a child, after she was nearly grown. Gina told me that as the youngest child, she had grown up hearing her parents say they would not separate or get a divorce until she had graduated from high school. They may have believed this decision was in her best interests. But to Gina, this decision “on her behalf” made her feel responsible for the conflict and pain that existed in the home. She couldn’t change things on her own, and felt trapped. She believes that behavior patterns she was forced to normalize by growing up in an abusive family environment impacted her deeply, both as a child and an adult. She has worked very hard to establish healthy patterns for herself, has generously given back to the community, and devotedly raised a fine son. But because early social learning is so powerful in shaping us,  she knows she must always be mindful about her adult relationships. Just staying together when high conflict persists is not a protective factor for children. It is the high conflict itself that inflicts traumatic wounds. Children’s psyches absorb toxic emotional environments just as their bodies absorb lead, and with the same destructive consequences. The decision to separate or divorce should not be made lightly, especially when there are children involved. However, the important question must always be, what needs to be done to keep children out of harm’s way? For many struggling families, Collaborative Team Practice offers a way to end a high conflict marriage or partnership and begin a healthier pattern of co-parenting after separation or divorce. Children in high conflict families with whom I have met during their parents’ divorce have expressed relief to go home after school to homes that are not filled with stress, anger and anxiety. Please go to www.collaborativelaw.org for more information.
Posted on
The first post of “Getting Unmarried,” I talk about making the decision to get divorced. The first installment of “How to get divorced” focused on my thought process considering traditional litigation, mediation and briefly mentioning the do-it-yourself process.  In this post, I share with you what I learned about collaborative divorce, a term I had never heard of before. One day I received a letter from a family law attorney who was a member of the local chamber of commerce, where I also was a member.  She was marketing her services as a family law attorney and happened to be in the same area of the Minneapolis and St. Paul metro area.  I looked at her website where I first heard of the term collaborative divorce.  I was intrigued. This attorney, along with a life coach, was offering free workshops on divorce.  I signed up to attend the next available workshop.  In the meantime, I wanted to learn as much as I could about this new term (new to me), collaborative divorce. Collaborative divorce, I learned, was—in its most simple definition—divorce without court.  As I continued to learn more about collaborative divorce, it was a great deal more than just divorce without court. Each spouse has their own attorney. Other professionals, such as a financial specialist and a child specialist, act as neutrals and are employed as needed to assist the couple in reaching agreements about finances and co-parenting their children. Coaching services are available as needed to help the couple with communication challenges during the process, in order to promote better decision making. A coach also helps with developing a relationship plan the couple uses both during the process and post-divorce. What I really liked about collaborative divorce was the concept of both spouses and each of their attorneys signing what is called a Participation Agreement, committing that court or the threat of court is not an option to be considered in a collaborative divorce.  While everyone has the right to court processes even when we would sign an agreement stating otherwise, it was to be understood that if the spouses later elected to discontinue the collaborative divorce and go to court, the two attorneys would have to discontinue representing them, requiring both spouses to find new attorneys to represent them in court.  The attorneys who represented the spouses in the collaborative process would attempt to utilize the most economical and orderly means available to transfer each spouse’s information to the new attorneys. I learned the basic tenants of a collaborative divorce beyond the pledge not to go to court include:
  • Both spouses and attorneys would participate in good faith to reach agreements that considered the interests, concerns and needs of both spouses and their children, if any.
  • Each spouse would be required to fully disclose to each other all information that would be relevant to their circumstances.  This would include all financial information being disclosed to a financial neutral.
  • Everyone in a collaborative divorce is to mutually respect each other and communicate in a manner that conveys respect.  Communicating with respect greatly assists in the effort to reach agreements everyone can live with.
  • Emphasizes the needs of children.  This is critical, in my opinion, for divorcing couples with children.
  • The couple would retain control over the outcomes decided versus having someone else, knowing little about the family, making decisions for them.
Collaborative divorce sounded like exactly what I was looking for.  It most closely matched the goals I had set out to accomplish. For anyone who wants to learn more about collaborative divorce, I invite you to visit www.isfngroup.com and on the right menu bar select Collaborative Divorce Knowledge Kit.  This document provides more information about collaborative divorce, including a side-by-side comparison of a collaborative divorce and the more traditional court process.  Additional resources under about us on the right menu bar include a 20 minute video of real clients describing their experience with collaborative divorce and a link to Little Children Big Challenges-Divorce (help from Sesame Street for parents with children). In the next post of Getting Unmarried, I talk about discussing what I had learned with my spouse and choosing an attorney (my step three).
Posted on
MTI Automotive Egypt | JLR Family Day Event | Cars & CigarsNo matter when a divorce commences, it is practically inevitable that there will be at least one special event—a child’s birthday, a graduation, a holiday, a family reunion—that occurs during the divorce process. Determining how to celebrate such events can add stress to an already difficult situation. It is understandably the case that many divorcing parents are not ready, willing or able to jointly plan or celebrate a family event, and they should not feel pressured to do so.  Children will feel supported by parents who succeed in keeping them at the center and out of the middle, and that alone is a huge accomplishment.  Despite how parents feel about each other, their children should experience freedom to enjoy special events and celebrations planned by each parent. Parents should be supported and encouraged to coordinate and alternate the hosting of special events for their children with as much courtesy and good will as possible. But what about divorcing parents who are not in high conflict and are generally co-parenting well?  Sometimes parents can feel pressured by cultural expectations about what should happen in a divorce, e.g. divorcing parents should have separate birthday celebrations for their kids; divorcing parents should not jointly host a graduation party; soon to be ex-in-laws should not be invited to an extended family gathering at the other parent’s home. Many parents opt to redefine cultural expectations regarding divorce, especially those that would limit their ability to jointly and positively celebrate milestones, holidays and birthdays with and for their children.  These parents are able to create an environment in which their kids can relax and enjoy jointly celebrated events.  As a neutral child specialist in Collaborative Practice, I have learned that many children value whole family celebrations despite parents getting unmarried. Some parents have asked me if their kids may misperceive joint celebrations as a sign their parents are reuniting, but that is unlikely to happen if parents explain the situation clearly.  “We have always enjoyed celebrating special times together with you, and we will continue to do this once in a while.  This doesn’t mean we’re going to get married again, but it does mean we love being your mom and dad.” I will never forget the little boy who told me, “You know the twinkle in their eyes that parents get when their son comes down the stairs on Christmas morning?  I’m sad that both my parents won’t get to have that this year.”  When his divorcing parents heard their son’s words, it was an easy decision for them to celebrate Christmas morning together that year.
Posted on
In this upcoming series of posts I will outline what I think were the most important decisions I had to make when in 2008 I began the journey to end my thirty-year marriage.  It is my hope that readers of these posts will be able to reflect on their own circumstances and either find guidance, reassurance, or be prompted to reflect further on their own situation and realize they are not alone in this journey. In this first post, I will write about what to me was not only the most important decision but also the most difficult.  Decision point number one was to come to the realization that my thirty year marriage needed to come to an end and that I was the one to make it happen.  It took me an incredibly long time to reach this point.  I now realize that maybe our divorce or “getting unmarried,” as I will refer to it from here on, should have happened twenty years earlier.  As I reflect back over the years, I believe the process of my becoming unmarried did begin twenty years earlier and not in 2008 when I took the initial steps to end the marriage.  I suspect many, although not all, marriages begin to end much earlier than the time when one spouse takes that first step forward. You see, I had actually started thinking of getting unmarried twenty years earlier.  At one point I went so far as to talk with a family law attorney, engaged that attorney, and later decided not to proceed.  Four years prior to my legally beginning the end of my marriage, I began going to counseling on my own.  I pleaded with my spouse to come with me but to no avail.  I continued asking, but after her repeated unwillingness I stopped asking and continued on my own.  I had spent two years talking off and on with the pastor of my church about our marriage difficulties and that I was seriously thinking of ending the marriage.  I felt like there was nothing more I could do. I am sharing all this with you because for me, and I am sure for many others, I had to know that to move forward with “getting unmarried” I needed to answer the question, did I do all that I could, with an unequivocal yes.  I’m sure if you asked my former spouse today, she would say I could have done more.  In my mind I really felt as though I did all that I could do and that is what mattered to me.  Holding this feeling was and is comforting to me as I continue to move forward in this journey called life.  How would you answer, have I done all that I could? If you are considering  “getting unmarried” or maybe you have already made that decision I invite you to travel along with me on this journey, as this transition in life continues.  Watch for the next post of “Getting Unmarried” Part 2; How to get unmarried.  In Part II I will talk about decision point number two, deciding for yourself how you want to get unmarried.  How are you going to do it? Read Getting Unmarried Part II: How To Get Divorced here. 
Posted on

2201935912_69205e215a_zI had a familiar conversation recently, this time on the golf course.  As with life, golf is both precise and random: precise because there are exactly 18 holes to play, and random because a golfer never quite knows how the ball will fly from time to time nor with whom the starter will pair you up to play.  We were paired with two great golfers who both happened to be named Sean.

Sean #1 asked what I did for a living.  I gave him my elevator speech about being a Neutral Child Specialist in Collaborative Team Practice  and he said, “Wow, that sounds awesome…..it must be really hard work.”  My response is always that sometimes it’s hard work, but mostly it’s very rewarding to help families make the difficult transition from married to unmarried with less acrimony and stress for kids.  Sean got a faraway look in his eyes and said, “I can sure see that.”

What he was seeing in his mind’s eye, I can only imagine.  But often I will hear from young adults with whom I share my work that they wished Collaborative Team Practice had been available to their family when their parents were getting divorced.  I have yet to meet anyone who said, “Well, I for one am very grateful that my parents’ divorce was highly acrimonious and adversarial because it was so character-building for me.”

We can’t pretend that ending a marriage will be a pain-free proposition, especially if there are children involved.  Divorce is a life crisis for all family members.   Collaborative Team Practice is designed to help keep the crisis of divorce from ever becoming a trauma for a child, because there is a profound difference how each impacts the child’s resilience and sense of hope.

If you are a golfer, here’s another way to think about it.  Collaborative Team Practice is both precise and random:  precise because there is a structured, supportive format for the process and random because of unique family circumstances and unpredictable challenges that arise from time to time.   But the pairing of a family with a Collaborative team has great potential value.  Collaborative Team Practice helps parents keep their eye on the ball and the ball on the fairway, away from hazards and deep rough where it could easily get lost.

Posted on
ListeningAs a neutral child specialist, I value the opportunity to learn from the children with whom I work, all of whom have parents who are ending or have ended their marriage or partnership.  Parents add a neutral child specialist to their Collaborative team because they see the benefit of children having a voice and getting the support of a mental health professional during a very difficult time in their lives. I will never forget the very wise voice of a little girl who told me, “Deb, I’m not gonna tell my friends that my parents are getting divorced—that sounds too jaggedy.  I’m gonna tell them my parents are getting unmarried, because that means the same thing.”  How simple and how brilliant! It is true that our neural nets for the word “divorce”  include a lot of jagged associations that sound painful and scary to parents, and even more so to their children.  The term “unmarried” helps create a new and more hopeful neural net of associations during and after a divorce or break up. How different to a child’s ear to hear that her family is changing how it works rather than her family is broken?  To understand that parents will co-parent rather than have joint custody?   To believe that children will be kept at the center and not in the middle?   Listening to children’s voices helps keep a crisis in their lives from ever becoming a trauma—and that is priceless.