Posted on 05/08/2005 12:05:08 PM PDT by Scenic Sounds
Today my kids will be creating a huge mess in the kitchen to make me breakfast. I'm guessing cinnamon French toast and fresh-squeezed orange juice. What's less clear is how long my son and daughter will honor the one real request that I and millions of other moms make every Mother's Day: "The only gift I want is for you to be good."
Not all mothers, however, will experience anything approaching the sort of warm feelings that Hallmark tries to capture. For moms who have undergone a tortuous divorce or are now involved in the expensive task of dismantling a marriage, a warm hug and homemade gift brightened with crayon-smudged flowers and pink hearts might not be enough to cheer them up. And it's no wonder.
Divorce can do much more than officially shred a marriage certificate. The dissolution can create emotional bleeding that may never heal among the parents and the children, who must somehow move on with their altered lives. And the financial impact can leave behind as much destruction as a mushroom cloud.
Which is why any mother, father or even childless couple contemplating divorce may want to consider a more innovative approach to dissolving a marriage.
The path less traveled is called the collaborative divorce process, which is growing in popularity across the country.
At first glance, the rules for this collaborative process may sound laughable for two people who long ago stopped sharing confidences, much less bathrooms.
If you sign on, you pledge not to go to court even if things don't appear to be going your way. You can't even stand up in the room with your spouse, pound on the conference table being shared by the lawyers and even threaten to do so. If you break your promise, you'll find yourself all alone. The professionals, who had been guiding you through each step in the divorce, will disappear as quickly as the candy inside a broken piñata.
You see, the key word in this approach is collaboration, which means you've got to check your howitzers at the door. The aim is to break up in a way that strives to take into account the highest priorities of each spouse and their children.
Mutual respect is crucial, and husband and wife are expected to be honest with each other. That means, for instance, that if one of them was having an affair, which led to the divorce, that needs to be revealed. And obviously, hiding assets or being less than candid when talks turn to money is a no-no.
At this point, you might be thinking, "Lady, this is a divorce, not some Zen exercise." Yes, it's true that some divorces would never have happened if couples had treated each other with respect and honesty throughout the marriage.
And, obviously, an embittered wife, who discovered her husband's infidelity, isn't going to be preoccupied with getting the cheater's emotional and financial needs met. Which is why the collaborative process relies heavily on a team of professionals who can keep the couple walking down the path to an equitable and emotionally healthy divorce while defusing the anger. If the couple can pull this off, they could increase their chances of not falling into the same trap again.
At first glance, the number of people necessary for this type of breakup might seem to rival Michael Jackson's entourage.
Husband and wife each have an attorney, but the lawyers work together and share all information. In addition, each spouse ideally has a divorce coach, who helps with emotional issues and gets the process moving when there are arguments.
And they share a neutral financial specialist, such as a certified public accountant, certified divorce financial analyst or certified financial planner, who sorts out the money issues. Also in the mix is a child specialist, who provides the kids with a voice during the process.
Having a therapist or psychologist help the kids is important because they can be so traumatized by the breakup and fearful of losing one or both parents' love that they will say whatever they think mom or dad wants to hear.
One of the big perks of going this route is that you and your spouse get to make decisions jointly, on such things as child support, custody and what to do with the house, instead of relinquishing that power to a judge. Another advantage is that it levels the playing field for a spouse who was dominated in the marriage or who knew little about the family's finances.
With so many helpers in this process, you might assume that the cost will be prohibitive. That's not necessarily so. Sure, the price tag will be higher than if you and your soon-to-be ex hashed out the divorce yourself. Doing that, of course, could hurt one of the spouses financially.
What's more, the emotional and professional needs of the husband and wife wouldn't necessarily be explored in a traditional divorce. Working collaboratively can be much cheaper than waging a contested divorce that requires the court's intervention. In contested divorces, court and legal costs can add up quickly. A couple of battling attorneys, for instance, might sit for hours in a courthouse waiting for their case to be called. Guess who pays for all that down time?
Cinda Jones, a certified financial planner at Divorce Financial Solutions in San Diego, says she's seen these collaborative cases cost between $5,000 and $20,000, depending upon their complexity. In comparison, the typical contested divorce costs roughly $20,000 nationwide, but the expenses are much higher in San Diego. "People will say, 'Yikes, that's a big investment,' but it could involve the biggest financial decisions they make in their whole lives," Jones says.
At the start, it's best for couples to contact a mental health professional who specializes in collaborative divorce to see if they would be candidates for the process. If they want to proceed, this initial contact can make recommendations on other team members. An entire team will rarely need to meet together. To cut costs, e-mail is frequently used among the parties to hash over issues.
If you're interested in learning more about collaborative divorce, visit the Web site of the International Academy of Collaborative Professionals, www.collaborativepractice.com. On the site, you can find a list of professionals across the country. You can locate professionals in San Diego by visiting the Web site of the Collaborative Family Law Group of San Diego at www.collaborativefamilylawsandiego.com or by calling (888) 837-0700.
Lynn O'Shaughnessy is the author of "The Retirement Bible" and "The Investing Bible." She can be reached at LynnOShaughnessy@cox.net.
It will still be torture on the kids. But it is all about the self-centered adults pleasure and desires these days.
How about putting the emphasis in "till death do us part"? While there are legitimate reasons why a person may desire to end a marriage, I think that way too many people get married with the idea that "if things don't work out" divorce is the solution. When that is in the spouses' mind, how can they be expected to work to make their marriage work?
Oh please, this just teaches men how to disrespect women even more. What perversion!
Oh my goodness. How thoughtless of me.
I forgot to add this link:
AmericanWomenSuck.Com
Feminists have created the environment for this backlash. Any man who signs a marriage contract with a modern Western Woman is nuts.
Sounds like too many professionals to me. $$$$ Coming from a broken home I have never understood how two people that hate each other can say they love their kids who are half of the person they hate. I promised myself when I got married, if things did not work out, I would not bad mouth their father or ask for child support. Kids can figure out who is carrying the weight. They don't need a parent to point out the others fault IMO.
JUST KIDDING!
"What God has brought together, let man not seperate".
So is militant fundamentalism.
TWO words......COVENANTAL MARRIAGE
Feminists?? Not all women are feminists ya know. Please go back to whatever women hating site you came from.
1. Act of working jointly
or
2. Act of cooperating traitorously with an enemy.
LOL!
I suspect the percent is near zero on FR
Yes, of course. I'm as far right as Robert Bork. My favorite President was and is Ronald W. Reagan.
But I am a radical anti-feminist. Feminist indoctrination has ruined American women and the institue of marriage.
The simple fact is that men are expected to sign a legal contract with a woman - a contract which statistically fails in more than 50% of instances. When it does fail, the man is expected to pay and pay. As a businessperson, I can think of no other place where a man is expected to sign a contract whereby if it fails - and now a majority of them do - he is required to lose his children and pay the other party regardless of fault. Men have been put into prison for refusing to pay off ex-wives.
I'm not an atheist. If I put up a link to an anti-feminist site and there are some other opinions expressed there, that doesn't mean I agree with ALL of them.
In fact, these two particular sites are to be taken with a grain of salt and a sense of humor... the AmericanWomenSuck.com site is supposedly written by "Vlad Tepes" (Vlad the Impaler), and is clearly a joke.
No, they are not.
But put one of the non-feminists into divorce court with an American husband and watch her do a perfectly competent job of destroying his life.
They are all full of this "men owe us" mentality.
In the workplace, we are supposed to consider women our equals - which they clearly are not.
But put these two equals in a divorce courtroom (man and woman) and see how unequal the outcomes are!
Men should not commit to a conventional marriage CONTRACT under such lopsided conditions.
His disciples say to him, If the case of the man is so with his wife, it is not good to marry.
I didn't promise myself that when I got married. But I made that promise to myself when I got divorced. There was no need for me to bad mouth my ex in front of my daughter - she's a bright kid, and she's figured out pretty much what kind of person her mother is.
Of course, when a child catches their parent lying over and over again, it's pretty easy. That, and the fact that mom visits only when it's convenient for her. I didn't ask for child support. I know my ex, and I know how she is about things like that. It's ordered by the court anyways - $100 a month, at least that was up until March of 2003 when I got sole custody. Judge bumped it up to $150 a month until she paid off her arrears - of course, we haven't seen a dime of it. Her mom's got a new car though, manicures and pedicures twice a month, hair color - all that necessary stuff.
I don't sweat it though - we get along pretty well without it. That, and if she ever takes it into her thick head to try and get custody back, there's the little matter of around $8,000 in back child support that she's never paid to deal with first. And yes - I'll slam her for every dime if it comes to it.
But I don't think it will. A couple days before I filed for sole custody (we had joint, and I had primary physical custody) she called me in tears, telling me that being a mom took too much away from her social life. Of course, being the helpful kind of guy that I am - I did what I could to alleviate that burden - and filed for sole custody. She never responded, never showed up in court.
It was never a matter of hating my ex - it was a matter of getting my daughter (and yes, myself) out of the hell that my ex was intent upon turning our home into. I fought with myself for a year before filing - trying and trying to get us into counseling, trying to make things better. But you can only bail the boat so long before you realize the other person doesn't have a bucket, but a brace and bit, and they're drilling holes all through the hull.
Anyway, that's my rant.
And these days, why should he have to? There are plenty of women of all ages and backgrounds who have no problem having sex with whoever wants them. And men who don't cook have ample frozen food alternatives these days. Women can have babies by a sperm donor. Men can get their parental rights terminated so they don't need to pay child support. Men and women just don't need each other these days, especially in a marriage. As for how children fare, well, that's another argument altogether.
Yep, considering the women here on FR are Conservative I bet you are right, LOL!
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