It’s Time to Divorce. What about the impact on your children?
You have exhausted all efforts to stay together. You and your spouse agree on one thing and one thing only – it’s time to separate and file for divorce. But what about the impact on your children? How can you make it any easier for them? Is that even possible?
You can’t even stand to look at your spouse, much less work together to minimize the trauma your kids will feel when you divorce. Or can you? A collaborative divorce allows you the opportunity to learn how to begin parenting together at your best even though you will live apart from now on.
In a collaborative divorce, it is not only possible, but required that you and your spouse sit down together with a trained professional to work together on a parenting plan that is best for your children.
This is a drastic departure from going to the courthouse and testifying against your kids’ other parent, then leaving it up to the judge to make huge life decisions for your children – whom the judge has never met – about when you see your kids, how often, and for how long.
The collaborative divorce process facilitates constructive discussion between you and your spouse to help you focus on a long-term plan for your children. Working with a mental health professional and the rest of your collaborative divorce team, both parents will discuss a variety of ideas in order to create the best you have to offer your children after your divorce, such as where they will live, where they will attend school, which of you (or both of you) will make decisions about their medical care, their education, their futures.
It’s not easy. It’s not a quick fix proposition. But your children deserve to have the two people who love them the most and know them the best work together to figure out a plan for the best their lives can be after your divorce. Working with each other in a collaborative divorce process, your children will have the parents they deserve after divorce.
It has been said that children of divorced parents benefit from having the best of their parents living apart from each other, rather than living with the worst of their parents together. A collaborative divorce is an opportunity to invest your time, energy and resources to give your children the best of you apart.