Wondering if Divorce is Right for You?

Remember when you had a great relationship and enough hopes for the future to marry?  These can be reasons not to divorce, along with concerns about children’s welfare and resilience and relationships with your spouse’s family and other ways you are entwined that are valuable to you. Discernment Counseling is a one to five session process of gaining clarity and confidence in your decision along with gaining understanding of how you and your spouse got to the point that divorce is an option.

Divorce: Supporting Your Child’s Relationship with Your Other Parent.

Divorce is a difficult and emotional process for both the spouses and the children involved. When parents decide to separate, it is important for them to recognize the impact it can have on their children, and to make an effort to support their relationship with the other parent.

Dating After Divorce: Blending Families

About six months after you met, you agreed it was time to meet each other’s children. You know it is not easy for children to allow a new adult into their lives so you want to be as careful as possible. You expect your ex-husband will not take it well that you are in a new relationship, however, you know it is better to tell him before you introduce the children to your new partner.

The Value of Curiosity – Especially in Divorce

When you stay open to the possibility that you do not necessarily know what your partner will say or do and you monitor your assumptions about them, you may be able to maintain a channel of communication that is less fraught with argument and disappointment.  You may still not like what he or she is wanting, but you will at least not like it from the standpoint of knowing that it is what they are actually want.

Will I Have to Pay Spousal Support?

We discussed using a Collaborative Divorce process where Julie is separately represented by a Collaboratively-trained attorney with prior experience on various spousal support outcomes. We could involve mutually agreed upon mental health coaches and/or neutral financial professionals to look at emotional concerns and property division settlement options. This would save them both the cost of hiring different experts to testify in court at $500 or more an hour, while also paying their litigation attorneys’ fees to cross-examine each expert, and waiting 90 days for the judge to make a ruling. And the ruling could be quite unfavorable.