Getting Divorced? It's Time for Change

What do you think of when you think of divorce? For most people, the words that come to mind are—ugly, unpleasant, expensive, stressful, scary, emotional, painful, etc. By changing the way we think about divorce, we will change the way we do divorce—and we will do it better.

MY STORY

Like many of you, I have my own story that helps me know the truth of why just changing our thinking about divorce can help us go through it more gracefully. My divorce wasn't as bad as some you hear about, but it was still difficult emotionally and financially. For most people going through a divorce, there is a period of what I call "personal insanity." That's the cycle that feels like a wild and crazy roller coaster ride, where one minute you think the ride is over and you're ready to get off, and you've just about caught your breath, and the next minute you're back in the loops and curves, screaming your lungs out.

I wasn't prepared for that roller coaster ride or my crazy and fearful thinking during that time, and I definitely wasn't very good at protecting my children from my personal insanity during all the chaos. To this day, I have regrets about the way I handled myself at times. My intention was always to put my children's needs first, but that didn't always happen. I did it better at some times than at others. If I'd known then what I know now, I would have done it better (hopefully!), and my children would have been spared some of my ups and downs. I hope this information will help you do it better. If you can at least recognize that it is a crazy time, then you can be intentional about when and how you choose to release and act upon those crazy feelings. Ideally, you will save it for when the children are not around.

As I write this, I'm reminded of the first time I tried to quit smoking after smoking for fifteen years. What a shocking experience! Like the roller coaster ride of divorce, I was not prepared for how hard it would be. I had not informed myself about what to expect. I thought I could just get up one day and decide not to smoke. Boy, was I wrong. It didn't work that way. I felt like I'd lost my best friend. I thought I was going crazy. I cried. After a few days, I gave up. If you've ever tried to break an addiction, I'm sure you can relate to this.

Soon after I educated myself about what to expect and made a plan, I was eventually able to succeed. It was still hard, but I was able to do it because I knew what to expect and had a plan to follow when things got tough. It's the same idea here. Informing yourself about the process and your choices and making a plan for yourself will help you do it better. It will still be hard, but it will be nothing compared to the experience of moving forward blindly.

Following my separation and divorce, I found myself in the same situation as many divorced women. My standard of living took a dive, and I needed to make more money. I had been home with my children until they started school and had worked only part-time. I had taught high school, but I didn't want to go back to teaching. So I began to look at graduate school programs. I wanted to do something that would allow me to make a decent income so I could support my children and myself and that would also give me the freedom I needed to be available to them.

For some reason, law school seemed to be a fit for what I was looking for. That in itself was amazing to me, because I had worked for lawyers, had been married to a lawyer, and had even been known to say, "I would never want to be a lawyer!" But there was a voice in my head that kept pushing me to check it out. I thought that maybe if I were a lawyer, I could help people through their divorces in a more graceful and positive way, and perhaps doing so would even heal some of my wounds.

I perceived a huge need for compassionate and psychologically savvy lawyers to help people deal with the unpredictability and emotional intensity of the divorce process. So that's what I did. I applied to one school only. I figured if I got in, then it was meant to be. If not, then I needed to move on to something else.

I was accepted and started law school at the age of thirty-seven, with two young children at home, ages ten and seven. Once I started taking family law classes, I knew this was the area that most interested me. Family law was a critical area where change was needed and also where I felt I could make a difference. After reading case after case, it was profoundly clear that "the law" did not address the real needs of families when they were in crisis, whether it was divorce, custody, support, domestic violence, or parental termination. It was also profoundly clear that the legal system simply was not designed to deal with the intensely emotional and psychological issues of families in crisis. I knew there had to be a better way.

IT'S TIME FOR CHANGE

What we know for sure is that divorce impacts our society in many ways. The negative consequences of divorce are well known and documented, and the toll this takes on families is too complicated even to measure. I believe that if people knew better, they would do better. I believe people would not do the things I've seen them do to each other, to their children, and in the presence of their children if they truly understood the long-term damaging effects of their behavior.

One of the problems is that our legal system provides a legal solution to something that is only partially a legal problem. Ending a marriage is a complicated process. The legal piece is the easy part. Dealing with the emotional, financial, and social ramifications are the bigger pieces. Recognizing this truth is the first step.

We will change the way we do divorce when we change the way we think about divorce and realize there is a great deal more involved than getting the judge's signature on a final divorce decree.

Raising people's awareness will also raise their consciousness, and this means that change can happen because they will no longer buy into the current system. They will understand the value of doing it differently. And then the legal system will just be a piece of the process, rather than the driving force.

Statistics show that nearly half of all first marriages end in divorce. That's 50 percent. If it's not you, it's someone you know. Isn't it time we figure out how to stop waging divorce wars and figure out how to end marriages more peacefully? Think about the difference just this thought process could make!

We cringe when we hear that someone we know is separated and divorcing. We think, "Poor thing," or "Sure glad it isn't me!" It's like the person has just been diagnosed with a terminal illness. As a whole, we are about as comfortable talking about divorce as we are talking about illness or dying. This avoidance of openly discussing divorce topics needs to change. The fact that people aren't comfortable talking about divorce (or are embarrassed by their personal situations) keeps them from getting the information they need.

Fortunately, a change is already underway across the United States and the world. People are hearing about more peaceful options like mediation and collaborative divorce. As positive as this is, the change has been excruciatingly slow. Yet, with the current state of the economy, I believe people are seeking out more efficient and cheaper ways to divorce. Prolonged court battles are a luxury few can afford anymore.

One important key to make this change happen more quickly is for people to become familiar with this information BEFORE they seek out legal representation. Unfortunately, too many lawyers benefit from the status quo of divorce. If you're motivated to change the status quo, and you want to be part of the change, you need information to make that happen. The information in this book will enable you to be proactive about your own situation and make your own process better.

Does this sound too good to be true? It's not. It's simply a matter of becoming informed, looking before you leap, and making the best plan for you and your family. Because divorce is such an emotional event, too often people just stumble blindly through it. They don't think through the actions they are taking. The truth is that when you're going through this major life transition, it's often difficult to think at all. That's why people end up in such messy divorce situations—because they haven't been able to act apart from their emotions and to be intentional enough about what they want.

Consider the rest of this book as your first legal consultation. It's a lot cheaper than the real consultation and will set you up to think carefully through your options so you can make better decisions and have a more successful divorce experience.

At the end of each chapter, I will ask you questions about your own situation. Get a notebook or journal ready and work through these questions as you go through the book. Answer each question as thoroughly and in as much detail as possible. This is important because it will help you to clarify your own feelings and beliefs, and also to have a better understanding of your own situation. You will gain insights from writing out your answers that you won't get from just sitting and thinking about them.

What's going to help you the most is to have a clear, honest picture of where you are right now, to have a clear understanding of your options right now, and then to begin to formulate a plan to get you from where you are to where you want to go. Having a clear vision of your choices and then of how you want to go through your process will make a tremendous difference in your experience.

Here's the Nutshell Version in three steps of how you can change the conventional approach to divorcing and do it better. The rest of this book will show you the way:

1. Decide what you want your life to look like a year from now and then five years from now. I call this the Big Picture view.

2. Become informed about your process choices and how they work, and decide which one is best for your situation and circumstances.

3. Choose the most skilled professionals who can advise and support you through the process you choose and help you achieve your overall goals.

And now, read on to learn about the specific problems and challenges with the way we currently do divorce and about some new and innovative ways of divorcing and resolving conflict that will make a difference in your life and make the world a better place.

Defining the Problem: The Way We DO Divorce

In the legal world, dissolving a marriage is not unlike dissolving a business partnership. There are assets and debts to be divided. However, in a marriage there are also emotional and psychological issues that need to be addressed. And then there are the children.

Here's the problem: our court system was developed in England over the last 500 years and involves a process primarily designed to deal with the resolution of one time issues between people who are typically not related and who are not likely to have any ongoing contact. Does that sound like any family you know? Historically, the courts have dealt mostly with criminal, property, and financial issues. It's only been in the last thirty years or so that a surge of family law cases have entered the court system.

The trouble is that family law is different. The courts were never designed to resolve cases involving custody and visitation of children. These are seldom, if ever, one time cases, and these cases involve people who are related and will most likely have an ongoing relationship. What that ongoing relationship will look like is the key. The current legal system sets people up to be adversarial, when in truth we have a family that may look different after the divorce, but which, nevertheless, is still a family. When you have to be adversarial with people with whom you're supposed to have an ongoing relationship, well, what kind of sense does that make?

So when a divorce is final and there are children involved, don't Moms and Dads still need to be able to talk to each other? Don't children still need to know that Mom and Dad are both there for them and will support them, regardless of where they live? And if there aren't children involved, don't most husbands and wives still want to be decent toward each other?

In the conventional divorce model, people operate under a huge misconception that "going to court" will solve their problems or that a judge will hear their side and rule in their favor. They believe that justice will be served if the judge can just hear their side. Although this does happen occasionally, most often the clients walk out of court feeling frustrated, let down, and misunderstood.

So what are the downsides to the conventional divorce model? It's expensive, time-consuming, stressful, and destructive to family relationships. Let's discuss each one of these in more detail.

Divorce is expensive. Depending on where you live and the size of your marital estate, the cost of the conventional divorce can be anywhere from a few thousand dollars to hundreds of thousands of dollars. Typically, you will meet with your attorney, sign a retainer agreement, and pay a retainer fee. This money goes into the lawyer's trust account and is drawn out as he or she works on your case. The lawyer's hourly rate varies with locality and experience, ranging from $100 to $1,000 an hour. The typical hourly range is $200 to $500. The lawyer keeps track of his time and bills you at his or her hourly rate.

If there are disagreements as to values of assets, you are also likely to have expert witness fees for home appraisals and business evaluations. It gets pricey to hire an expert to do an appraisal or an evaluation and then to bring that person to court to testify on your behalf. This can add thousands of dollars to your costs.

The picture you may have in your head of lawyers sitting in their offices and tediously going through your financial information is accurate. It's their job to know all the ins and outs of your situation and to prepare exhibits and documents for trial to put you in the best light before the judge. It's their job to "get you the best deal." And they will bill you for every minute of their time spent to get you that deal.

You can see how quickly the costs of a divorce can add up. This reality is something a lot of people don't really get when they start the divorce process, and unfortunately, something lawyers aren't always clear about explaining. Also, what appears to be a fairly straightforward case at first may become more complicated as the case progresses and as the lawyer finds out more information, adding time and cost to the divorce.

Divorce is time-consuming. From filing a divorce to the final order, a conventional divorce can take from one to three years if the case is contested. Once the case is finished, there is also the possibility of appeal if one side or the other doesn't like the court's ruling. It can take up to a year to get your divorce case into court. Then you can show up for court on your scheduled day, only to find your case continued (delayed) for any number of reasons—someone is sick, a witness isn't available, reports weren't submitted in time, the case ahead of yours didn't finish in time, etc.

These are but a few of the factors that contribute to a case being continued, usually resulting in several months delay before getting back into court. The most common thing I hear from my clients is, "I just want it over now!" If that describes you, then the legal system is not your friend. There is nothing quick or efficient about the conventional divorce process. Court dockets can be frustratingly unpredictable.

Divorce is stressful. When people don't know what to expect, they become anxious and stressed. And with legal and financial professionals speaking what seems like a foreign language, most people don't know what to expect. The fear of the unknown can have a paralyzing and debilitating effect on people. (In other words, it makes them nuts!)