Using Mediation to Keep Your Cool During Divorce and Beyond

While most divorcing parents try to make their split an amicable one, wading through the issues of parenting time, custody arrangements and child support can lead to turmoil for even the most well-intentioned of parents. The emotional issues that parents encounter during and after a divorce often require outside assistance, and while many will resort to litigation to get this outside assistance, the best way to maintain peace and civility during a divorce and beyond is to use a mediator.

Read Silvana Raso's posting on the The Huffington Post's Divorce blog.

Divorce and Financial Empowerment

Being financially empowered means making informed and effective decisions about the use and management of your money. Having the knowledge, skills and access to appropriate tools to effectively manage your finances, will help you and your family improve your long-term financial well-being.

But, if you are currently going through a divorce, your ability to make informed decisions about your financial future may be compromised, especially if you do not have a clear understanding of your finances.

One way towards empowerment during the divorce process is to seek the help of a divorce financial professional. A Certified Divorce Financial Analyst™ (CDFA), can become a valuable member of the divorce team, working closely with you and your mediator, to ensure that the proposed settlement works best for you and your family based on your particular financial situation. A CDFA™ can provide you with peace of mind knowing that all the different options were analyzed with respect to maximizing the available assets and minimizing any negative financial impact.

Read Diane Pappas' article on Divorce and Financial Empowerment on Insight Financial Strategists' blog.

Parental Conflict: How it Can Be Harmful for Children

It is common and normal for two parents to have different ideas, opinions, values, and priorities. Part of being successful in a relationship with another person is being able to use appropriate communication skills so that ideas and opinions can be expressed and received with respect and differences of opinion can be worked out using healthy conflict resolution strategies.

If parents do not communicate respectfully with each other and do not have a good strategy for resolving conflicts, the result is chronic, unresolved conflict between the parents. There is an ongoing hostile emotional tone between the parents that continues to erupt over time and in the same patterns.

Read how parental conflict is destructive for children psychologically when they witness their parents’ continuing, unresolved, hostile conflicts on Michelle Morris’ blog.

Before You Start the Divorce Process…

If you approach the divorce process with a mindset like:

“I only will accept X, Y and Z and nothing else.”

..then not only won’t you do well in the mediation or collaborative process, you will spend a significant amount of unnecessary funds in the litigation process, as well.

Yes, you should have a basic plan. Yes, you should have an understanding of your financial picture and where you want to be at the end of the divorce. But you also need to be flexible and able to compromise. You also need to hear what your mediator is telling you. If you think you’ll be the first to get something no one else gets – what lawyers refer to as “making new law”- then great for you. But remember, you may not be successful and whether you are or are not, it will cost you thousands of dollars to get there.

For everyone else, consider these tips from Lorraine Breitman’s blog:

From a Prominent Divorce in the Affluent Class, Lessons for All

Rich people may have more assets at stake, but any couple with a broken marriage have to consider the same issues in a divorce.

"For all but the wealthiest people, fees paid to lawyers, accountants, appraisers and other advisers can reduce what the spouse with less is fighting for. Jeffrey R. Cohen, a divorce lawyer at Cohen Goldstein, estimated that a cooperative divorce could cost 15 percent of the cost of one that dragged on or went to trial."

Read Paul Sullivan's article in the New York Times.