Your Divorce, Your Children’s Well-being: A Practical Approach

One question I often get from parents in divorce litigation is how do I help my child through this process? One thing I want to be very clear about is there are court rules in place that preclude parents from discussing litigation with their children. You can't talk about, you know, what motion was filed or what a pleading said or that, you know, a hearing is coming up. In essence, a child should be blissfully unaware of what is happening with their parents marriage and in their divorce case. Thus, if a parent tells a child about divorce litigation, they can be sanctioned by the court and it can be a basis if it happens enough times for the court to take a child away from a parent. So be careful not to share details or anything about a divorce case with a child. If a child is struggling as a result of their parents getting divorced, one thing you might want to consider is having the child see a therapist. You can't do that unilaterally. You're going to have to communicate with the other parent and reach a consensus as to who is going to provide those therapeutic services, how the therapeutic services are going to occur, and who's going to pay for them. But therapy for a can be very beneficial if you have a child struggling with divorce. Common issues that parents can face during a custody battle include parental alienation, parallel parenting, and, you know, high conflict parenting styles. More specifically, parental alienation is where a parent talks to the children about the litigation or speaks negatively about the other parent if they're mad in an effort to poison that child against a parent. It's very, very detrimental to the child, causes emotional and traumatic damage to the child, and makes it very difficult for a child to thrive and succeed. When a parent does something like that. Parallel parenting is where parents don't work together to parent, but they have two different methodologies of solving a problem with a child. They don't communicate, they don't coordinate their efforts to support a child. One parent does it one way, the other parent does it the other. We often see this in discipline styles. When you have a parent who is trying to be more of a friend to a child than a parent, and they basically let them get away with anything. They don't have chores, they don't have to be accountable for the things that they do versus the other parent who has very clear guidelines and rules at their home. There's chores to be accomplished, homework has to be done before entertainment activities, sports or video games can be played. I find in my practice that when parents don't coordinate their efforts and they parallel parent the children suffer the consequences of that. Parenting plans can be incredibly beneficial tools to support children's needs Parenting plans provide clear guidance to parents as to how parenting will occur when child exchanges are to occur, what happens if the parent's going to be late to a child exchange, if a parent can't be available for a child custody period, who will watch the child and a circumstance where you know a parent has to work or has to be out of town on business or vacation, how child support will be paid and when. Typically, clear parenting agreements benefit the parties because everybody knows you know the guidelines of how things are going to work in their parenting scenario, what happens if there's problems occur, how the situation could be modified if modifications become necessary, and how to best support the children so that there's no conflict amongst the parents and they can thrive and succeed the best that they can. So high conflict parenting styles make it difficult for parties to communicate and coordinate in regard to their children to accomplish the children's best interest. We typically see this when a spouse is angry as a result of infidelity, or physical or verbal or sexual abuse in their relationship. The problem with taking those feelings out on the other parent is it can have ramifications for your children. Thus, and I know that it's not easy, but treating a divorce action as a business transaction is the best way to amicably resolve a divorce case, thus leaving the emotion out of it and trying to focus on the issues of the divorce more specifically division of assets, debts, etc. Custody, alimony, child support. Treating it as a business transaction will make the divorce process easier and typically less expensive because people aren't litigating their feelings.