A Divorce Technique The place Everybody Wins

“I’m getting divorced—I would like an aggressive divorce lawyer.” “Very first thing to do is ensure you have a powerful divorce lawyer to struggle them.” “I’ve been via a divorce; don’t allow them to mess issues up any additional. Lawyer up!” Does any of this sound acquainted? They’re widespread forms of responses I see on social media and on-line boards when somebody proclaims their marriage is ending and seeks steerage on a divorce technique.

This type of recommendation and divorce technique usually leans towards an aggressive, win-at-all-costs strategy, steeped in tales about what catastrophe may end up in case you’re not combative sufficient. However whereas comprehensible within the face of every thing happening, this prevalent strategy could not all the time be probably the most helpful – not to mention healthiest – path to take.

A Win-Lose Divorce Technique Isn’t the Solely Approach to Go

As a household mediator who helps divorcing {couples} and oldsters navigate divorce and their co-parenting afterward, I discover a typical theme: the default tends in the direction of the adversarial. It’s you in opposition to them—a race to win or no less than to not lose.

Divorce is a whirlwind of highly effective feelings—anger, frustration, nervousness, unhappiness, concern, and grief. The method, and the transitions concerned, can appear overwhelming, and these emotions are a testomony to that. Acknowledging these feelings and their influence in your decision-making could be essential for thus many causes. Not least is how the alternatives you make now can affect your and your kids’s paths into the long run.

Many households come to me as a mediator in search of a substitute for litigation and the adversarial, win-lose negotiations that accompany the authorized course of. They wish to decrease the injury that comes from techniques seemingly designed to pit them in opposition to one another till options come both from exhaustion or as a result of you may’t afford the injury that comes from frequently arguing about who’s extra proper.

Is Lowering Battle Considered one of Your Objectives?

Contemplating a much less adversarial divorce course of can typically convey a way of reduction, realizing that more healthy choices can be found. Selecting such a path could be a extra optimistic possibility for you and your kids in the long run, decreasing stress and empowering you to have extra management over your future even when the present state of affairs could really feel past management.

It can be a primary step in altering the way you – the mother and father – work together with one another in the long run as you progress past no matter led to your resolution to divorce.

Right here’s the factor: adversarial processes are constructed round finality and competitors, not cooperation and suppleness. They aren’t centered on serving to each of you apply the talents you’ll have to cope with the inevitable modifications and future disagreements—to shift from battling issues out to working issues out.

As mother and father who turn into co-parents, there can be instances whenever you’ll nonetheless have to work collectively to determine issues out—however now throughout two houses as a substitute of 1. It’s not the attorneys who can be there when your sick baby must be picked up from college or when you need to work late. Your kids will nonetheless want you each.

A Mediator’s Three Inquiries to Assist You Set Your Path

I wish to share a number of inquiries to additionally take into account as you resolve how you can strategy your divorce and what sources you’ll interact to assist you thru it and past.

Consider these questions as a place to begin—including one other dimension past the adversarial—that will help you as you establish your subsequent steps. Even when parental cooperation feels out of attain proper now, these questions will help you make an preliminary “deposit” towards a extra cooperative future than you may presently envision.

1. Will the trail you select to your divorce set you as much as work collectively afterward any higher than whenever you began?
2. Will it create a basis for efficient co-parenting after the divorce is full and the attorneys and consultants are gone?

3. What sort of co-parenting relationship do your kids want from each of you and what steps—and sources—are you able to interact to make {that a} actuality?

By contemplating these questions, you’re already laying a basis for extra than simply getting via the divorce—you’re actively taking steps to form a more healthy future for your self and your kids.

 Erik M Feig is a dad or mum and household mediator and founding father of Feig Mediation Group in Bethesda Maryland. With a deal with serving to households comprehensively and cooperatively navigate divorce and post-divorce co-parenting—particularly mother and father of particular wants and neurodivergent kids—he serves households all through the US. To schedule a free session, he could be reached at erik@feigmediationgroup.com.