Divorce and Children: Helping Kids Deal With the EffectsRepublished with Permission © 2011 Nolo.
How to ease the pain of divorce for your children -- young and old.
Divorcing parents want to reduce the impact on their children, whether the children are young or already adults. The best way to do this is to recognize how the divorce is likely to affect your children, and then take steps to alleviate their pain and uncertainty.
How Divorce Affects Children
Researchers have filled volumes studying and analyzing the effect of divorce on children. Studies examining the children of divorce have found that most suffer a sense of loss that can manifest in many different ways, depending on the children's ages and unique personalities, as well as on how parents handle the divorce themselves.
Younger children may regress in areas such as sleeping and toilet training, or throw more tantrums. School-age and teenage children may show symptoms of depression, rebel against discipline, or change their eating and sleeping habits.
Recent research has shown that adult children of divorce have higher divorce rates than adults with parents in stable marriages -- and even those who remain married report they are have less trust for their spouses than people whose parents have remained married.
As a parent, you can take an active role in easing your children’s pain and reducing negative feelings and behaviors.
How to Help Your Children Cope with Divorce
The single most important way that you can help your kids during a divorce is to have a cooperative relationship with your ex and keep conflicts to a minimum. Especially if your kids are still young, it’s important to reassure them repeatedly that you both love them, that the divorce was not their fault, and that they will always have two parents. It’s also crucial to provide your kids with the practical information they’ll want to know, like who will be driving them to school and where they will sleep.
But the proof is in the pudding. To provide them with the assurances they need, you will have to be a model of maturity. Here are some tips on how to do this:
Process, don't vent. You don’t have to hide the fact that you are stressed or that the divorce brings up difficult feelings for you. It’s fine to talk about those things in general ways, without burdening the kids with the details. In fact, airing some of these feelings and encouraging the children to reciprocate by sharing their own feelings may help them lose some of the fear and anger they may harbor about the divorce.
Even years after the divorce, make sure you are available to listen to your kids express their feelings whenever they want to talk. As they grow and develop, they may need new information or want to express differing perspectives. Depending on their ages and personalities, you may need to encourage them to continue to talk about their feelings about the divorce.
Keep children out of the middle. If the children are teens or even adults when you divorce, be especially careful not to drag them into the fray by confiding too many details or enlisting them as negotiators in your divorce. Be sure to address any nagging issues directly with your ex-spouse -- either alone or with the help of a mediator -- rather than using the kids as messengers or sounding boards.
Keep free of venom. Don’t express bitterness towards your ex -- and don’t in any way imply that your former spouse isn’t a good parent or that your kids are wrong to want a relationship with their other parent. Instead, continue to support and foster their relationship in every way you can so that the kids can be free of guilt and ambivalence.
Establish new traditions. Remember that it isn’t only young children who may feel a sense of loss around holidays and special times. Many adult children become angry and confused about losing family rituals (even if they once groused about them). Be flexible in establishing new traditions, especially around holidays and celebrations of special events, such as birthdays. Be sensitive about incorporating new individuals into family groupings, and look for fun activities to help relieve stress and encourage building or rebuilding relationships.
Be vigilant. Divorce is stressful for kids of any age. Even if your child has generally had a positive spin on things, keep an eye out for rough patches. Arrange for counseling or encourage your children to seek help if you see serious signs of emotional fragility.
If Your Children Are Young
If you have young children, your post-separation life will involve coordination and cooperation as parents. It’s a good idea to anticipate parenting issues by spelling out guidelines and ground rules in a written parenting plan that goes beyond the cursory custody terms that might have been spelled out in a divorce agreement.
A parenting plan for young children of divorcing parents can cover:
- responsibility for medical and dental care
- the times your children spend with each of you
- holiday arrangements
- how to handle schooling, discipline, and extracurricular activities, and
- other specific issues that likely to come up, especially related to child-rearing.
If you and your ex-spouse are stuck about how to proceed with a parenting plan, consider using mediation to help work out the details. You can prepare for mediation by first assessing your children’s needs and considering how each of you can best meet them. This is especially important if you will use court-sponsored mediation, which usually limits the time available for working things out.
If Your Children Are Adults
Even adult children may face thorny issues when parents divorce, particularly concerning the changed relationship they will have with each parent. Just like younger kids, adult children often go through a sort of grieving process when their parents divorce -- complete with anger, confusion, and despair.
Foster sibling bonding. One unexpected phenomenon related to divorce is that it often brings adult children emotionally closer to one another, even if they were not close as younger children. Do what you can to foster such relationships -- and resist the temptation to view them as threatening or divisive. Realize that your children, with their shared past and experiences, are often natural sources of comfort and support for one another.
Encourage them to seek support from outsiders. The overwhelming emotion adult children report when they learn their parents are divorcing is loneliness. Support groups in which they can talk with those experiencing similar feelings may be especially helpful in easing this pain. A number of such groups operate online.
For more advice on helping your children deal with divorce -- before you file, during the divorce, and after -- get Nolo’s Essential Guide to Divorce, by Emily Doskow (Nolo).
Will Divorce Mediation Work for You?Republished with Permission © 2011 Nolo.
Learn when divorce mediation is likely to succeed -- and when it might not.
Even if you (or your spouse) don't feel ready to mediate, when you consider the financial and emotional costs of a contested divorce, you might want to give mediation a try. But before you do, consider your relationship with your spouse. You are most likely to have a successful mediation experience if all or most of the following statements are true.
The Decision to Divorce Is Mutual
Sometimes, the decision to divorce is mutual. Both spouses come to the conclusion, more or less at the same time, that the marriage is over. For other couples, the decision is more one-sided. One spouse decides that a divorce is necessary, while the other spouse is unprepared for, and perhaps opposed to, the idea of getting divorced.
When the decision to divorce is mutual, spouses usually find it easier to begin working together on a settlement in mediation than they would if one spouse initiates the divorce. Where one spouse makes the decision, it is natural for the other to resist cooperating with any requests to move along in the process, including a request to mediate. This usually changes with the passage of time, so factor timing into your assessment of your readiness. If the divorce was more one person's decision than the other's, more time may be needed before you begin mediating.
You Have No Desire to Reconcile
If you and your spouse have accepted (however reluctantly) the reality of your separation's being permanent, and if neither one of you has an overwhelming desire to reconcile, then the odds are that each of you has reached an emotional point in the divorce when mediation can be productive. This doesn't mean you must rule out the possibility of reconciliation. But you do have to be ready to focus on what happens if you and your spouse don't get back together.
You Want to Stay on Good Terms With Your Spouse
Spouses who want to remain on good terms with each other, either because they have children together or because of their own values, can use this motivation to get through the rough spots in negotiating and compromising during mediation. It is not essential to a good mediation, but it certainly helps.
Do you have a high level of animosity toward your spouse that could undermine mediation? If so, you might find it helpful to work with a counselor on ways to keep this animosity in check while you go ahead with mediation. Another option is to find a mediator who will conduct some or all of the mediation in separate meetings so that you don't have to deal directly with your spouse.
You Don't Blame Your Spouse for Your Separation
It's natural at times to blame your spouse for things that went wrong in your marriage or for the decision to divorce. But, if you feel that your spouse is entirely, or almost entirely, to blame, you might find it hard to enter into any agreement in mediation that your spouse considers acceptable.
Also, if you want your spouse to acknowledge and pay for his or her wrongdoing in some way, such as giving you the bulk of the marital property, mediation may not succeed, because your spouse may not be prepared to accept any blame, let alone pay for it in some tangible way. If your state's laws allow you to prove fault as a ground for the divorce, and you have the emotional and financial resources for it, maybe a contested divorce is the right approach for you.
You Understand the Financial Situation
Financial issues are a big part of any divorce. In order to negotiate a good financial settlement, you need to understand the financial reality with which you are working. The mediation process can help you get a better handle on your financial situation, but the more you know to start with, and the more comfortable you are talking about financial matters, the more confident you will be going into mediation and the fewer surprises you'll encounter. If you know very little about your joint finances and your spouse is very knowledgeable, you may feel at a disadvantage going into the mediation.
Your Spouse Has Not Lied to You About Anything Important
If your spouse has lied to you in the relationship, you may need to take a close look at whether or not you can trust your spouse to be truthful and sincere during the mediation. If your spouse has lied to you about an affair, you may understandably be afraid to believe anything your spouse tells you, especially if you only recently discovered the deceit. But this doesn't necessarily mean that your spouse will lie about other crucial aspects of the relationship, such as finances and property.
If your spouse has lied to you about property or finances, you have a different problem. It might not be wise for you to rely on the voluntary exchange of information. You may want to consult a lawyer about other ways to verify important facts independently. You may even need to ask the lawyer to conduct legal discovery of the facts and records to give you a complete financial picture before starting mediation and attempting to negotiate a settlement. It may also be important to work closely with a lawyer or financial adviser during mediation to develop settlement options that don't rely on your spouse to provide information in the future.
You Can Disagree With Your Spouse Without Saying or Doing Things You Later Regret
If this statement is true, you have the ability to stand up for yourself during a conflict with your spouse without losing control of your own behavior. You don't need to be perfect to have a good experience in mediation. After all, helping you communicate constructively is one of the mediator's main jobs. But, if your emotional reactions to your spouse are so strong that even attempting this seems impossible, then mediation may not be the right thing for you just now.
You Are Not Easily Intimidated by Your Spouse
In mediation, you will speak for yourself and negotiate your own agreement. If you find yourself easily intimidated in your spouse's presence, speaking up may be hard for you. Practicing in mediation, with the coaching and support of the mediator, can help you get better at this, but you'll need a minimum level of self-confidence just to start the process.
Physical Violence Is Not an Issue in Your Relationship
If physical violence is part of the relationship with your spouse, it may not be possible to keep the playing field level and tempers cool enough to negotiate an agreement directly in mediation.
Alcohol or Drug Abuse Is Not an Issue in Your Relationship
An alcohol or drug problem can impair someone's ability to think clearly and make sensible decisions. It can also lead to out-of-control behavior. This can undermine the success of any negotiation, whether it is conducted between lawyers or during mediation.
You Feel That Your Spouse Is a Good Parent
Mediation is usually considered one of the best ways for divorcing parents to negotiate agreements about their children. You can talk, parent to parent, about what is best for your children, rather than leaving the decisions up to strangers. Differences in parenting styles or the amount of time each of you spends with your children can be addressed in mediation.
However, if you and your spouse strongly disagree about the ability of one of you to take care of your children, you may not be able to negotiate an acceptable custody arrangement until that issue is fully evaluated. This is especially true if the problem you are concerned about is so serious as to constitute child abuse. If your disagreement about parenting issues is so pervasive that you cannot agree about how to proceed, you may need to get things started through the court. Even so, you might be able to use mediation to negotiate an agreement after the evaluation phase is completed. In fact, you may be required by the laws of your state to attend mediation in a court-sponsored program before a judge will even hear your case.
Will Collaborative Divorce Work for You?Republished with Permission © 2011 Nolo.
Collaborative divorce helps spouses work things out -- without a court fight.
When it’s time to divorce, spouses have important choices to make about how to proceed and what type of help they’ll ask for from others -- including lawyers, mediators, and other professionals. Some people will go on to a lengthy high-conflict divorce with attorneys representing each side, trying to get everything they possibly can. Others will easily agree on how to divide their property and share custody of their children, and might only need help in preparing the legal paperwork to get divorced. But many people fall in the middle, and for those folks, mediation and collaborative divorce can be great options. (This article is about collaborative divorce. To learn about mediation, see Nolo's Divorce Mediation Resource Center.)
Divorcing spouses may have different points of view on issues like property division, custody, or support. But this doesn’t mean that they have an actual dispute that has to be resolved by a third party. They may simply need help making the decisions together -- and perhaps advice about what’s best for them.
The Collaborative Process
Collaborative divorce (also called collaborative law, or collaborative practice) is a process in which you and your spouse negotiate an acceptable agreement with some professional help. You and your spouse each hire specially trained collaborative attorneys who advise and assist you in negotiating the settlement agreement. You meet separately with your own attorney and the four of you meet together on a regular basis, in “four-way” meetings. A collaborative divorce may also involve other professionals, such as child custody specialists or neutral accountants, who are committed to helping you settle your case without litigation.
Ordinarily, both spouses and their attorneys sign a “no court” agreement that requires the attorneys to withdraw from the case if a settlement is not reached and the case goes to court.
Eventually, you will have to have some contact with a domestic relations or family court to get legally divorced. Through collaboration, you can keep that contact brief and manageable. Once you reach agreement on all the issues, you’ll make the legal part of the divorce a simple, uncontested procedure that doesn’t require a trial or contentious hearings on points of evidence and pretrial maneuvers.
How Collaborative Divorce Helps
There are five ways that collaboration can cut down on the acrimony and expense of divorce, while giving you results that are at least as good as what you’d get in court. You and your spouse can:
- stabilize the situation through a temporary agreement
- exchange all necessary information voluntarily
- agree on legal procedures that minimize expense and streamline the process
- negotiate a settlement that works for you, and
- decide how to handle post-divorce decisions.
Whether you and your spouse use collaboration from the very beginning of the divorce process or only for part of it, you will save time and money. Perhaps just as important, you will more likely get through the divorce with your privacy and dignity reasonably intact.
For more information on collaborative divorce, and for help finding a collaborative lawyer in your area, see the International Academy of Collaborative Professionals, at
www.collaborativepractice.com.
Divorced Fathers: Birthdays and Holidays Republished with Permission © 2011 Nolo.
by Attorney Emily Doskow
Ten tips to help divorced dads deal with special occasions like birthdays and holidays.
If you're a dad sharing custody after a divorce, birthdays and holidays can be tough, especially in the early days. But fathers, take heart. As each year passes, you and your family will become more comfortable with the new family structure and will create new rituals and ways to enjoy special times together.
Some families choose to spend holidays all together, even after the divorce. Usually this doesn’t happen right away, but after a few years and time for healing, some parents are able to put aside their differences and enjoy time spent together with their kids. Some even blend in new partners and children.
First, after you and your wife separate, you should make a basic parenting agreement. Make sure your parenting agreement covers where the kids will spend birthdays and holidays and how the two of you will negotiate any changes. Without a plan, you leave a lot of room open for arguments with your ex -- and disappointments for your kids. Here are some other tips for making birthdays and holidays pleasant for everyone concerned.
1. Be Flexible
Where your children are concerned, the best present you can give your child is to head off conflict about special days like birthdays and holidays. The collaborative rule for you in this situation is adjust your agreements to fit your kids’ needs.
For example, if the kids express a strong desire to spend a holidays or birthday with your ex, understand the importance of allowing them to do just that, regardless of whose time it is “officially.”
2. Be Proactive and Plan Ahead
Always keep in mind that your new family arrangements require much more planning than when everyone was living under the same roof. One way to avoid disappointment is to communicate early and often with the children and your ex. Give your children’s mom plenty of time to think about your proposals and to respond. And keep in mind that pushiness usually produces more resistance than cooperation.
3. Be Kind and Generous
Especially during holidays, keep any bitterness you still feel over the divorce between you and your ex. If you can’t say anything nice, just smile. Avoid putting the children in the awkward position of taking sides. Be as generous as you can with your kids about their relationships with their ex and the rest of the family. Encourage them to talk about the gifts they received and activities they engaged in with other family members they see over the holidays. Let them know they can show happiness with both parents. Help your children shop for the other parent, as well as their siblings, grandparent, or stepparent.
4. Keep Your Word
Be particularly careful to follow through on whatever promises you make related to the holidays. It’s extra important to keep promises to your kids around holiday times -- the holidays are a big deal for kids.
5. Include the Kids In Your Planning
Whenever it’s reasonable, let your children help make the choices about when and where to celebrate the holidays, and with whom. However, before asking their opinions, make it clear that all plans must be cleared with everybody involved. This will help teach your kids to be part of the collaboration between you and your ex.
6. Create Two Holidays or Birthdays
Having two holiday or birthday celebrations for the children -- one at your house, one at Mom’s -- is often a positive solution for extended families. Just make sure that the plans you make are collaborative and that they are made well in advance. This arrangement reinforces for the kids that they have two homes and cements new family rituals and holiday customs.
7. Avoid the Indulgence Trap
Many divorced parents, especially dads, are still reeling from their personal hurt and guilt over the divorce. They may be overwhelmed by these feelings and respond to the children's pain with too much money or too many gifts. Try to stay away from this unhealthy dynamic with your kids.
8. Take Care of Yourself If You’re Alone
Holiday time can trigger a resurgence of memories and melancholy feelings, especially if you are surrounded by couples and families. As holidays or birthdays approach, if you know you’re not going to get to see your kids, be sure to make your own special plans for the day.
9. Build New Family Traditions
Divorced parents, especially dads, often make the mistake of trying to duplicate exactly the pre-divorce family traditions, but you’ll be much happier and more satisfied if you create your own traditions for your new family.
10. Nurture Your Blended Family at the Holidays
If you remarry or get into a committed relationship and your new partner has children, they will undoubtedly have their own ideas about how to celebrate holidays and birthdays. Discuss with your new partner ways that you can bring together the children from both sides of the family, and get all the kids involved with planning what you’ll do together and incorporating everyone’s traditions.
Birthdays and holidays are special times for you and your kids. Communicate clearly and stay calm and flexible, and your extended family will have something to celebrate.
To learn how to create a win-win parenting agreement, get Building a Parenting Agreement That Works: How to Put Your Kids First When Your Marriage Doesn't Last, by Mimi E. Lyster (Nolo).
