Having a therapist doesn't absolve you of thinking

If you wouldn’t go to your psychologist to interpret a sacred text, why would you assume that your clergyperson would have the expertise to solve a mental or relational issue? Well-meaning people have the best intentions, but we know the old saying about good intentions paving a certain road. Regardless of how strongly you hold your belief in God, and I hold mine strongly, you have to recognize the limits of human beings.

I’ve been to a lot of counselors, as a professional colleague and as a patient. I’ve seen many signs in waiting rooms that mention insurance reimbursement, upcoming presentations, and confidentiality pledges. But I would find it very strange—and I’m sure I would remember it—if I found a cedar chest near the door where counseling clients were to deposit their brains, common sense, and knowledge of themselves before visiting their therapist.

Seven more recommendations about counseling

1. Be very proactive in seeking a counselor for your children when you have even an inkling that it might be necessary.

2. Any counselor that will afford you more information than absolutely necessary is at least unprofessional and probably unethical.

3. Give your kids some space and let them develop a relationship with a counselor they can trust, completely outside your earshot.

4. The brain is an organ, no less important than the heart, the colon, or the skin.

5. At a minimum, counseling should be part of an exit strategy.

6. Often, the spouse that accuses the other of being mentally ill is as crazy as he or she believes the other is.

7. A marriage is not a competition to see who can be more verbally, physically, or emotionally abusive. Your having a condition does not make your spouse have to have one just to make things fair.

Mediator Matthew's three recommediations about counseling

1. Your children should have at least a twice-yearly checkup by a therapist.

2. Counseling also has implications for parenting. I recommend a yearly “parenting checkup” with a licensed counselor or psychologist.

3. Both of you should agree in advance to afford the children’s counselor the discretion to keep their conversations confidential and not reveal the children’s comments to either parent or anyone else, other than for mandatory reporting requirements for abuse or imminent harm. If your spouse balks at this, a huge red flag should fly up.

Five strategies about health care for kids of divorce

1.

Have a legitimate discussion about naturopathic and nontraditional medicine, as many of those treatments are covered by insurance but may be more effective and even cheaper in the long run.
2.

Choose your home based on its proximity to the hospitals and doctors that your health plan recognizes.
3.

Have enough agreement about the payment and types of medical services that there will not be an incentive to get sick at one parent’s house or the other’s.
4.

Agree on those medical (or otherwise physical) procedures that you do not want either parent to have performed on the children under any circumstances.
5.

Share the responsibility of dividing the responsibility of scheduling the children’s medical appointments and transporting them.

Leading by example, Part 2

Tell your kids, and more importantly, show them, that they have one primary job—to get as much education as they possibly can. One of the most important things I think parents can do for their children is to make education a priority. Even if you have not completed college yourselves, or even if you have far less education, by esteeming a university degree, you show your children that education is a priority. That could mean something as simple as a fourth-grade book report or a high school chemistry lab write-up. When your children know that school is important to you, regardless of how much you actually completed yourselves, you will encourage them to be good students and to devote themselves to their studies without your looking like hypocrites.

Inconsistent educational priorities

If your spouse places a higher priority on buying a new car than on funding a college education for your children, you have a big problem and so do your kids. Everyone has a financial goal—something to save up to purchase. It could be retirement, paying off a mortgage, or buying a boat. To determine which priorities are more noble, consider whether they would be good debt or bad debt if you borrowed the money to pay for them. School loans and mortgage loans are good debt. Credit cards, vehicle loans, and toy loans are not. If someone wants a luxury before they’ve saved for a necessity, you’re headed for a train wreck.

Capital gains taxes

Leave yourselves enough of a financial cushion so you don’t have to depend on the full value of your investments in case of an emergency, because they may not be completely convertible to cash. Use the tax code to keep money within your family. There is nothing sneaky or even unpatriotic about trying to pay the least amount of taxes allowable. Kim and Tony had to be careful about selling their vacant lots to raise cash, because that sale was going to cost them a bundle in capital gains taxes.

Consider the impact of capital gains taxes, or any recurring taxes, on any investment you make. If you don’t, you will inconsiderately, if unwittingly, force your family into a monetary jam. It’s important to understand that a future capital-gains tax obligation reduces the effective value of a property. I had to explain that to Julie when she and Larry were dividing property before their divorce.

Financial strategies, Tips #11-14

11.

Maintain a credit score of at least 720, preferably 750 or higher, with an excellent ability to borrow as needed.
12.

A zero-percent credit card is fine for emergencies or balance transfers, but don’t view it as a blank check that you can cash whenever you want.
13.

Consider the hit that each of you will experience when one or both of you files for bankruptcy, either before or during your marriage.
14.

Understand that certain debts cannot be discharged in bankruptcy, so be careful before you incur them.

Financial strategies, Tips #6-10

6.

Either fully commingle or clearly delineate the retirement benefits that either of you accumulated before your marriage.
7.

Monitor your investment accounts at least four times a year to see that their performance is consistent with your financial goals.
8.

Either segregate your finances or commingle them, but pick a team and play for them. Do not change the rules in the middle of the game.
9.

Promise your spouse and children that you will model punctuality by paying your bills on time.
10.

No matter how mad you are at your spouse, do not withhold finances except in a mental-health emergency.

Financial strategies, Tips #1-5

1.

Have an emergency savings account with at least six months of living expenses now or before you have children.
2.

Max out your Employee Stock Purchase Plan as long as you have at least a six-month emergency fund and diverse investments.
3.

A money crunch is the greatest source of stress most couples usually face.
4.

Agree that individual, extraordinary expenses will not be marital assets subject to division if you divorce. That agreement will go a long way toward stopping either of you from doing those things.
5.

Fund an equal Individual Retirement Account for each spouse or make it easy to transfer funds between them.

Your home should not be a battlefield

If you make your house into a warzone, don’t be surprised if your children go AWOL. Herb and Marni constantly put the children in the middle of their fighting and one-upmanship. On any given day, the kids were ticked off at one parent or the other, and they constantly commiserated with one while badmouthing the other. Which parent was good and which was evil varied with every day of the week. Each new sunrise was a fresh start at either criticizing or validating the parent of the day.

Children as allies, Tips #1-5

1.

The children should not be used as allies of either parent against the other. All of Troy and Norma’s four children were allies of one parent or the other. When the kids are pressured to take sides, the strategy tends to backfire on the parent who initially benefits. It threw Troy and Norma family into turmoil and disarray.
2.

You have no right to engage in a power play, maximizing your competitive advantage over your spouse while ruining his or her credibility in your children’s eyes and alienating him from the other parent. As the insecure Gwen had totally spoiled her adult (in age, not maturity) sons to gain their affection, she alienated her own partner, Shawn, by assembling such an army against him that he could not even enjoy peace in his own home.
3.

Acknowledge that you won’t be able to be fully objective about your children and they won’t be able to do so about you. The parental bond, particularly between a child and his or her same-gender parent, takes a lot to sever. Warren’s bright children had mostly figured out that he was a schmuck who wanted to control his family members more than love them. They took his cues from time to time and tried to guilt Lynne, as Warren also did, into coming home early from her self-chosen separation.
4.

Your children should not have to consider your needs, but you must keep theirs at the forefront of your minds. Neither Jan nor Alvin asked Carmen to be an advocate, but kids are always sensitive to their parents’ needs and feelings, even when their concern is either unnecessary or misplaced. As Carmen’s 13th birthday approached, several months after her parents’ divorce, she worried that her party would either exclude Dad or make Mom uncomfortable.
5.

Do not ask your children to choose between their loyalties to you and those to your spouse. Jonas, the preteen son of Veronica and Guy, wanted, in his words, “to move into my brother’s trunk if my parents get a divorce.”

Three tips for shielding your kids from your stuff

Have all even moderately contentious discussions conversations with lawyers, mediators, professionals, friends, and family members outside the presence and earshot of the children.

Your children do not need to know your lawyer’s name, the nature of the conflict, or how to contact him or her.

Think twice—no, think ten times—about discussing anything sensitive via email.

Boundaries

Establish some professional boundaries that keep work issues at work and home issues at home. We live in a world that hardly lacks for connectivity. Even my mother, one of the last people I knew to get a cell phone, finally broke down and acquired a Blackberry this month. She even knows how to use it! With the advent of the internet, text messages, online chat, and e-mail, we are never out of reach. We ought to do a better job of separating our work and home lives because conflict doesn’t always know how to stay where you put it. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been sitting in a family dinner with my mom and stepdad and the home phone rings with a work call they absolutely have to take because it’s from one of their factories. They do a pretty good job of balancing work life with home life, but they can do better and so can most of us, including me. Your children will know they are your priority at home and your co-workers will be assured that they have your full attention at the office.

Four age-appropriate recommendations

Any childcare provider should be at least 13 years old and at least five years older than the oldest child being cared for.

I say to give your kids their own cell phones at age 13, as it’s a good way to communicate that also gives the parents independence from each other.

Teach your children how to plan a celebration for Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, and each parent’s birthday, and be sure you have one for each holiday.

Determine the age at which you believe your children should be allowed to travel by plane alone or with their siblings.

Nicer, quicker, cheaper

The main advantages of mediation, for those who may be unfamiliar with the process, are that it is nicer, quicker, and cheaper than a litigated divorce or even most lawyer-facilitated divorces. Mediation with a law-trained mediator, however, provides many of the benefits of having a lawyer with far less cost.

Mediation results in an agreement with which both spouses comply 90% of the time. It is not unusual to have spouses sharing a couch in mediation. I call those people "couch sharers." When a mediation includes couch sharers, there is a tone of civility that would never be present in a lawyer's office, which probably doesn't even have a couch.

Mediation also takes far less time than the typical mediated divorce. It is typical for me to complete a mediation in under two weeks, or two months at the very longest. Often, they are completed within a month. From mediation, the parties can take their mediation report directly to the courthouse, where it will be filed with the court and become a binding order.

Perhaps the greatest benefit of mediation is its low cost. Our fees are $1900 for a standard process from start to finish, and $2900 for a somewhat more comprehensive process that some people need but most do not. Either of these fees is less than 1/4 of what even an initial retainer would be (combined for two attorneys, each representing one spouse). And they call it an initial retainer for a reason; it almost always gets used up and needs to be replenished with -- you guessed it -- more of your money. Mediation keeps money where it belongs, in your family.

Time for a change -- a shift in how we think about divorce

I sat with a wonderful family last Thursday. Mom and Dad were the nicest couple -- vital, gregarious, and, above all, kind to each other and to their children. I then met with the children, a teenage girl and a primary-school boy. The kids were traumatized not only by the thought of divorce but also by the fact that they had visited a therapist who was far less than helpful and, in fact, had made things worse. My challenge that hour was to help the kids see that the divorce could be just "a word" but not a life-wrecking cataclysm.

I asked the kids whether they had any questions about the divorce, and they stumped me. "Why are Mom and Dad divorcing?" they asked. I saw that one coming a mile away, because Mom and Dad, by all outside accounts, appeared to be a loving couple who was as far away from divorce as possible. But I didn't have the answer to the kids' question, so here's how I punted. I asked them whether there was any possible answer that would satisfy them and make them say "Oh, OK, great idea."

"No, I guess not," they replied.

"Well, if that's the case, I guess we can just trust that Mom and Dad made the best decision they could for your family and that they would never try to hurt either one of you on purpose." They admitted that was true, and so we then proceeded to brainstorm ways that the divorce was actually good for them. Mom and Dad wouldn't fight as much, they reasoned. We'll get double the Christmas presents, the son brought up. We'll have two bedrooms, the daughter mentioned. They found a silver lining in the cloud of divorce, and they realized, if only for their own family, that divorce doesn't have to be a disaster.

Bringing attention to mediation as the preferred dispute resolution model

Why does divorce have to be such a disaster? As a child of divorce, I wish my parents had used the services of a child-centered mediator. Then, someone might have told them that there was no real point in fighting about money and businesses and home equity. All of those material trivialities aren't worth fracturing a family over.

When my clients do some self-help reading and find the statistic that reveals that 38% of children are still depressed five years after a divorce, I have to stop them to ask "How many of those divorces do you think used mediation?" Probably none, depending on how old those statistics are. Mediated divorces get things done more nicely, more quickly, and less expensively. It's just not even a close call.

Kids tend to compare their own experience to the only other things they know, which are their friends' families' divorces. But most of those, if not all, probably did not use mediation, either. Let's make it a goal that in the next five years, we'll give kids a reason to feel hope after their parents' divorce -- that because they used mediation, families could remain intact even when marriages did not.