Whatever the reason for a couple to divorce, the effects on children can be harmful.

Children love their parents equally and whatever the reasons for a husband and wife to want to end their marriage and go their separate ways, it can not be forgotten how this will impact and affect the children.

Children are hardly ever to blame for a marriage failing. And often they are the innocent victims who lives are completely changed because their parents have decided to split up.

If a marriage is ending because a one of the couple has been unfaithful, the children had no part in this and yet are expected to take sides and willingly accept that their parents will no longer be living together and that the family unit has broken up. Add to this the unimaginable thought of the children having to live with one parent and seeing the other parent on alternate weekends, and you can see how this would badly affect most children especially those who are very small and don’t understand what is going on around them.

Many parents fail to appreciate and understand that their children continue to be affected by this family breakup for many years to come.

Whilst the husband and wife have adapted to being separate, and possibly might have met other partners as time goes on, children still cling on to the hope that their parents might one day get back together again.

They don’t want to see a stranger in their father’s place or another woman with their father. These things can be disruptive especially for young minds and can cause resentment and loathing in children towards the parent who has wronged as well as to the new partners of both parents.

Studies also show that the effects of divorce on young children tend to lead to lower marks at school, mood swings and disruption in the lives of those children whose parents had divorced.

Your divorce decree is only step one in moving into a new life after divorce. The real divorce is the cutting of the emotional, mental and physical ties that still bind you to your ex-husband. This is the real work of divorce recovery: becoming a single woman possessed of confidence, self-esteem, an enthusiasm for life and most important, a complete break from the emotional turmoil that led to your divorce in the first place.

All too often, women experience the same conflicts with their ex that originally led to divorce: constant arguments, reactive behavior leading to emotional upsets, old patterns of reliance, the barrage of destructive barbs aimed at your self-esteem and deep hurts. To truly be divorced you must put forth great effort and inner work that will sever your ties to your ex and you must build a structure that will facilitate that work.

Let me give you examples: You and your ex have children together therefore you must be in contact with one another on a regular basis. Unfortunately, your discussions with him always end in an argument. Nothing happens easily. The deep resentments and hurts suffered in your marriage and actual divorce remain intact. You each know each others hot buttons and continue to push those buttons resulting in upsets. Its the old marriage still running the game. You continually get sucked into this abyss.

If this is the case for you know that you have not divorced on an emotional level. You are an ex-wife versus a divorced woman. Somewhere inside of you there is still an attachment of some sort to either your marriage or your ex. You need to look inside to determine where you are still tied to him.

Acceptance of your new place in life is mandatory. Acceptance comes from acknowledging that your marriage is over with no hope or wish for it to continue. Acceptance allows you to living in a way that reveals a freedom from the past. It means living in the present and the future. It takes work but before you can do this work, you must put in place new rules that will lay the groundwork for a completely new relationship with your former husband. These rules are there to protect you from any further hurts or upsets.

You must build a new structure that empowers you versus disempowering you. Take the analogy of going on a diet to lose weight. You need to create an environment that will both motivate and move you towards your goal. To do so you remove all of the temptations that lead to over-eating or eating the wrong foods. You clean out all the junk food form the cupboards and replace them with healthy and non-fattening foods. You create a support system with a friend who you can call when you feel yourself slipping into your old eating habits. You take on a partner in your exercise program. In other words, you do everything that you can to surround yourself with ways to achieve your goal.

You must do the same thing when you are working at disentangling yourself from your ex. Create an environment that will help, not hinder your progress towards true independence. Remove all the temptations to stay connected to your ex. Within this framework you are free to do the inner work of healing.

WHAT IS MEDIATION?

In many states, mediation has gone from being an option to help resolve issues to a mandatory part of the court proceedings. That is particularly true in cases that involve divorce or custody disputes.

Mediation is called an alternative dispute resolution process. In short it provides you with an alternative to Court to create your own agreements and craft your own orders without submitting those matters to the Judge. This is often a preferred way to resolve disputes in a divorce. The alternative is to proceed to Court and allow a Judge, a complete stranger to you and your children, to hear a few short arguments and testimony and decide your fate. Often such orders may seem like pounding round pegs into square holes with out understanding fully the individual circumstances of the parties. Clearly that is in no one’s best interest and often leads to the long roller coaster ride through court with each party filing new motions year in and year out to change the rulings that the Judge has made.

By contrast, mediation teaches the parties to communicate and to work through their issues productively. In the process, the parties to work with a neutral expert to resolve their disputes in a way that works for them. A mediator is also known as a qualified neutral.

The mediator may be a lawyer, a therapist, a religious leader or other qualified individual. As part of the mediation process, the mediator will not provide either party with legal advice and, instead, will work with the parties on their communication skills to understand the other parties position.

Often mediators will encourage the parties to incorporate into the proceedings other experts to help them in the decision making process,. This may involve the use of appraisers to value a home, accountants and investment counselors to address financial aspects, or a parenting consultant to work through custody and parenting issues. By using one neutral expert, the parties may save thousand of dollars that would be spent for each party to hire their own expert only to remain at an impasse with different results.

WHAT TYPES OF DISPUTES CAN BE RESOLVED THRU MEDIATION?

Mediation can be a useful tool for almost any issue that you encounter in family court. Even the most acrimonious divorces can benefit from mediation by helping the parties resolve some, if not all of their disputes, thereby simplifying the issues to be resolved through the court process.

Mediation may resolve:

disputes between divorcing parties including custody issues, spousal maintenance and property issues;

paternity issues;

restraining order issues.

WHY SHOULD I MEDIATE?

1.Mediation is available any time both parties are willing to engage in the process, even if they are already involved in a contested court case;

2.Mediation is LESS EXPENSIVE than going to court with both parties to the dispute sharing the cost;

As a Minnesota divorce attorney, a question that is often posed to me by my divorce and child custody clients is, “Can’t my spouse (or the other party) and I just agree to something on our own?” Normally, my answer to that question is a resounding “yes” the more you can agree to, the less there is to argue between the attorneys and the less Court involvement that will be necessary. What this normally also means is the divorce or custody proceeding will be easier on your pocket book as well.

However, there are a few exceptions to the “lets just agree to this and follow it” approach. First, if the agreement pertains to minor children in any manner, the Court will always apply an independent “best interests of the child” analysis. In other words, just because you agree to something, if that agreement impacts minor children, the Court could reject the agreement.

With regard to child support, there is a legal presumption that the statutory child support guidelines must be used in all child support determinations. If the parties wish to agree to a different amount, they must provide to the Court an explanation on why this “deviation from the guidelines” is in the children’s best interests.

For an initial child custody determination, the standard for the Court would be “what is in the best interests of the children.” If the parties agree to the child custody and parenting time schedule and provide an explanation for it, generally the Court’s will defer to this agreement. The Courts generally appreciate the parties reaching an agreement on custody and parenting time because in most cases the parents know their children the best and know what is best for their children. So, if they can agree on custody and parenting time, the Court should adopt that agreement.

The tricky part arises when the parties wish to modify an existing Court order (a post-decree modification). For example, John and Jane got divorced. They had two minor children, Jenny and Jimmy. In the divorce, Jane was awarded sole physical custody, the parties were awarded joint legal custody, John was awarded parenting time every other weekend and was ordered to pay $1,000.00 per month in child support. One year after the divorce, John was terminated from his employment, began receiving unemployment and was home for the majority of the days. Based on this, the John and Jane agreed between the two of them that they would modify their agreement to provide for joint physical custody, each spouse alternating every other week of parenting time with the children and that neither spouse would pay to the other spouse any amounts for child support. John and Jane agreed to this in writing, each of them signed it, but they did not submit it to the Court for a Judge to sign and file with the Court.

John and Jane’s agreement would be considered an “extra-judicial agreement.” Is it enforceable? Maybe.

Minnesota courts have approved extrajudicial modification of an existing divorce decree through stipulated agreement. There is a policy favoring the use of stipulations in divorce proceedings. But these stipulations are given considerably less weight when the agreement involves children. The Court is not bound by stipulations involving child custody. Further, child-support stipulations are given less weight to protect “the welfare of the children” as the paramount consideration.