How to Keep a Business Alive After a Divorce

When entrepreneurial couples get divorced, there’s often at least one child that gets torn apart: the business they raised together.

Spouses who spent years building a company suddenly find themselves having to divide it up, and the negotiations can get nasty. One spouse may demand a bigger share of the company to soothe bad feelings from the divorce. Another may get defensive about the business’s finances and refuse to divulge details. And old resentments about how the business has been managed can bubble to the surface, making things even uglier.Both spouses can be left emotionally drained, and the business can end up neglected—or dissolved entirely.

In this excellent article from The Wall Street Journal Andrew Blackman writes about what marriage experts and entrepreneurs say couples can do to keep a business together, even when the owners no longer are.

Grandparents' Lives Shattered From Divorce

Grandparents take a largely unseen hit from divorce when they lose contact with the grandchild they love. Divorce can shatter grandparents' lives as much as the couple involved, because it can mean contact is suddenly blocked, and grandparents have no automatic right to be part of their grandchild's life.

This article from the Kent and Sussex Courier highlights the efforts Kent Family Mediation Services is making to help grandparents resume the contact they so badly want with family members.

How to Make Your Divorce as Expensive as Possible

The average cost of a divorce in California was most recently estimated to be $95,000 total — $47,500 per spouse. In Los Angeles County, the average length of a litigated divorce (i.e., a traditional, courtroom-based with an attorney representing each spouse) is 3-4 years.

Those statistics are not only insane, they are entirely unnecessary.

Still, couples choose to litigate their divorces every day.  In this excellent article Arianna Jeret offers 12 helpful tips for making sure your divorce is as lengthy and expensive as possible.

Winning - or Losing - the Custody Battle

In this blog posting, Joshua Katz, a divorce lawyer in New York, writes that "winning a custody battle is all about your lawyer’s presentation to the judge." Mr. Katz goes on to say that, as a litigator in child custody cases, his job is to "present my client to the judge in a positive way."

The question I ask is "why do parents, both of whom care deeply about their children and, hopefully, wish to foster a positive relationship between the child and the non-custodial parent, leave custody decisions to the courts?"

Divorce mediation allows you to stay in control. You have greater control over your decisions as the you and your partner − not the mediator, judge or lawyers − determine the outcome. Decisions stay where they belong: in your hands. After all, you know best the needs of your children and your plans for the future.

If you or someone you know could benefit from assistance in decision making during a divorce, contact Falmouth Mediation at 508-566-4159 for a free, no-obligation, private, confidential consultation. We will be happy to discuss the key details of your situation, address any concerns, and help you decide if divorce mediation would be beneficial.

Finding the Right Parenting Plan

A major benefit of mediation is that a couple can test out more than one parenting plan as they try to figure out what’s best for their child and family. The couple controls the timing and pacing of the mediation process. They can proceed as fast or slow as they deem necessary, until they are truly comfortable with the arrangements they’ve worked out.

In this excellent article, Susan Ingram contrasts that with a couple that is litigating their divorce. Their separate lawyers often take rigid and “hard” positions on the issues, including parenting. And their lawyers typically encourage little or no communication between the two of them. Certainly not the best circumstances for working through (and testing out) a viable parenting plan.