Divorce can be a messy process. Both sides can end up saying and/or doing things they later wish they hadn’t. To Divorce with Respect means handling your divorce in a way that “if your children were in the room”, you would not have regrets. Being your “best self” enables you to treat your spouse and yourself during the divorce that creates the fertile ground for you and your kids to have a positive path forward – despite this difficult time.
Divorce with Respect creates a new family dynamic that benefits you, your spouse, and your children for the rest of your lives.
Maintaining Respect for Your Spouse During the Divorce Process
How can you maintain a positive decorum when ending a marriage? It is not always easy and understandably may seem impossible.
In Collaborative Divorce, there are 3 unique pieces that create a path to make this easier:
- Coaches are mental health professionals that can provide each of you with tools to help work through the triggers you have with each other and to facilitate calming the emotions down. They are experts in communication and will help you explain more readily what you are thinking or feeling and help you hear what your spouse is thinking or feeling.
- Financial Neutrals are trained to help couples understand the financial puzzle. Sometimes it is as simple as having more information that allows you to maintain civility. It is scary to not know things like “Can I keep the house, or can I ever Retire?” If you have a real sense of what your financial pictures will look like after the divorce is completed, it helps you get through the emotional scariness by knowing that you are going to land on your feet at the very end. Uncertainty can cause both sides to lash out during a divorce. Collaborative Divorce is designed to allow you to address that uncertainty in a positive, respectful way.
- Child Specialists are mental health professionals that have expertise in working with children. They bring the “voice of the child” into the room. This allows for decisions to be made with the child’s best interest by having them the “Center” of everyone’s concerns, instead of being in the “Middle” of their parent’s discord.
Plus – you will have your own Family Law Attorney who has a goal that the Family, even if it is just the couple, is the focus. You will have an understanding of the “law” as it pertains to your situation and the allowance to make the decisions that resonate with each of you.
Litigation (Going to Court) is not a Respectful Process
Litigation is all about winning or losing. The role of the attorney is to make sure that you get the “best deal” without much consideration on how it might impact the other person or the family. In Collaborative Divorce, you and your spouse develop a final agreement that you both can “live with” and still maintain a family relationship. You will no longer be married, but you are still family through your children, and you may still want to have your “in-laws” as friends. Litigation tends to destroy these relationships, making future family events such as graduations and weddings very uncomfortable for you, your ex-spouse, and your children.
What does that restructured family relationship look like post-divorce?
Divorcing with Respect means that you can dance at your children’s wedding. Your children aren’t fearful that both mom and dad are going to be there or worried that that you or your ex are going to do something that disrupts the day. A respectful divorce is a restructuring of the family that builds a fertile foundation that you can build on to have a relationship and a friendship that goes beyond having been married.
Collaborative Divorce can be described by a line from a poem written by Rumi, a 17th Century Chinese poet.
” Out beyond ideas of Wrongdoing and Rightdoing there is a field. I’ll meet you there”