Divorce for Grownups

Divorce: reducing the impact on children

Divorce is always painful for children and there is no way to protect them from pain. But divorce does not have to injure children. That is something you can influence greatly.

Co-parenting after divorce

Co-parenting in divorce has become an increasingly attractive and sought after arrangement. In contrast to the conventional sole custody in which the mother typically has all the responsibility for the children and has the children with her most of the time, co-parenting emphasizes an equal or nearly equal role for fathers.

Myths about divorce: What your divorce lawyer doesn't tell you and what you don't know can hurt you

Every day divorcing people spend tens of thousands of dollars on their divorces unnecessarily. They also endure long unnecessary delays and suffer unnecessary humiliation and anger. Why all this suffering?

Divorce does not have to mean war

Divorce does not have to be a bitter war. Sadness, anger, fear of loss and loneliness are, perhaps, inevitable. But the bitterness that poisons communication between divorcing couples is more often the result not of the decision to divorce, but of the adversarial process still used by most people to get divorced.

Divorce should not mean going broke

A mediated divorce saves clients many thousands of dollars. In a typical adversarial divorce using lawyers you can expect to pay each lawyer an initial retainer of from $1500 to upwards of $10,000 just to begin the case.

You can achieve a good divorce

Because divorce is generally regarded as regrettable and socially undesirable, we tend to think of all divorce as bad and destructive. Certainly, most of us have known people who have had bad divorces. These are the ones in which couples do so much damage during the divorce that they are left unable to cooperate, still angry at each other and unable to adapt to post-divorce life because they are still destructively engaged with each other.

How you manage the beginning shapes the entire divorce

Most divorces are not decided mutually but are initiated by one of the partners who has reached the conclusion that the marriage cannot continue. This "initiator" has thought about the divorce for a long time, has had the opportunity to mourn the failure of the marriage and to begin to visualize a new life separate from the spouse. This partner is ready for the divorce and regards the losses associated with the divorce as outweighed by the advantages.

Litigation, mediation and the psychology of divorce

The adversary legal system has frequently been criticized by the mental health professions as poorly designed to meet the psychological needs of families. This article explores why that criticism is true.