Helping People Obtain a Healthy Divorce

Divorce Therapy considers the economic, legal, and familial contingencies the marriage faces. This exploration is conducted within the safety and highly confidential mediation relationship; Divorce Therapy is not marital therapy. In Divorce Therapy, we address issues such as whether or not to stay married, exploring options related to separation or divorce, and lastly to mediate new boundaries and conditions that could set the stage for working on repairing the marriage. Below is a list of some of the specific focus areas of Divorce Therapy:

Exploring Options
Divorce Therapy allows a couple to get answers to important questions regarding legal and practical issues of divorce and separation. These questions can be explored without the assumption that divorce or separation is the inevitable or desired goal. Additionally in Divorce Therapy, these questions and concerns are explored as a couple, rather than unilaterally or secretly. Approaching an attorney alone, seeking divorce advice, can in itself trigger a marital crisis; meeting in Divorce Therapy takes the fear, secrecy, and mistrust out of finding out what to do when a marriage is going sideways. Divorce Therapy can also help you explore the options available for fixing a broken marriage. There are a myriad of marital therapies available and Divorce Therapy can explore what would be the best therapeutic modality for the current needs in your marriage. There are many resources for a couple that can be considered including, retreats for couples repairing a marriage, there are religious and cultural resources available. Choosing between the options and knowing which options are suited to you and your partner is an invaluable resource available in Divorce Therapy.

Which Way to Go?
Choosing the right way to obtain a divorce is the most critical decision you will
make regarding your divorce. There are several methods for obtaining a divorce.
It is important to learn about each one and then choose the one best for you.

Going Beyond Weekly Couples Therapy
Couples retreats can be tailored to your specific needs and situation.
Often an intensive focus on the marriage relationship can provide
new perspective and options.

The 8 Best Marriage Counseling Retreats in the US

Making Real Changes
Divorce Therapy is an opportunity to look at the current state of the marriage in an all-encompassing framework. The goal is not to rapidly sooth over a fight, or expediently resolve a current crisis, merely to recreate the prior conditions. Life evolves and so must marriages, what worked at one stage of life or marriage is not likely to work at every stage. Without the perspective of a broader context, expectations may not approximate realities; the ensuing struggles and frustrations can become misconstrued as harbingers of failure, rather than predictable challenges to be met. The foundation of Divorce Therapy includes looking at each of your expectations, within the context of the history of the relationship, and the options available. This broader context of managing expectations will assist you in deciding between how to repair the marriage or the manner of dissolution of the marriage.

Indecisive
Divorce Therapy can help you workout ambivalence regarding staying together or separating. Often this decision is too complex to resolve on your own, resulting in repeated oscillations between deciding on leaving or staying. These choices can feel firm and resolved when made only to shift into the opposite decision; this back and forth reflects the ambivalence. Such an oscillation indicates that the decision is very conflicted, generating these disruptive swings between tending towards re-commitment or dissolution. Accepting the depth of the ambivalence sets the stage for examining the causes of the mixed feelings, resulting in a clarity that allows for a healthy sustainable choice to be made.

Trust
Where a marriage is faced with issues of trust, Divorce Therapy can help set boundaries to strengthen and support the behavioral changes required to reestablish trust. Since Divorce Therapy is a mediation relationship, the process can help establish boundaries that have legal and economic consequences. Equally, the highly confidential nature of the Divorce Therapy creates an environment of transparency and accountability, both emotional and behavioral.

Here is a link to a PDF that explains the process: Collaborative Divorce Knowledge Kit

Collaborative Divorce
It’s a healthy nondestructive way for couples to negotiate a divorce settlement without involving the courts. You and your spouse, or domestic partner, each have an attorney, all four of you sign a commitment not to take the issues to court but to work together, face-to-face, to create a marital settlement. Collaborative divorce is relatively new; however, the law and courts recognize this process and support the process. Your divorce is filed as a collaborative divorce and the court will allow you to resolve all your disputes without involving the court.

Reconciliation
Divorce Therapy can be the environment that holds together a temporary separation in the marriage, a place where safe conversations can be held to discuss the practicalities of living separately as well as exploring conditions for reconciliation.

Endings
The issues addressed in Divorce Therapy can be the foundation for the process of legal separation or marital dissolution. When legal and economic boundaries have been established in Divorce Therapy, these agreements can be carried into the legal process for dissolving a marriage. Divorce Therapy is a mediation relationship and being transparent and equitable it can become the environment for mediating a complete dissolution of the marriage.

The Family and Others
Divorce Therapy can assist in developing strategies for managing a separation or divorce in the healthiest way possible. This includes how to address concerns regarding children and extended family. And how and when to tell others about your changed circumstances can be examined in an all-encompassing context. Strategies and boundaries can be developed for managing social, public, or business and economic consequences to a separation or divorce.

 

In a traditional court involved divorce, the spouses have their own lawyer. Each lawyer strives to get his or her client the best settlement possible. Although your lawyer may attempt to negotiate a settlement all actions taken are aimed at the likely possibility of a court trial. The traditional court based divorce tends to result in considerable cost and conflict.
Similar to traditional divorce, arbitration uses an independent non-court-magistrate rather than a court judge. Each of you has an attorney, who advocates for your best interests. There can be some savings in time and cost in using an arbitrator over a trial in family court, but you continue to have exposure to a ruling that may not really be best suited to either of you in the long run.
Collaborative Divorce does not involve the courts in your divorce. All disputes are resolved in meetings attended by the two of you with your attorneys. All four of you have agreed to not resort to family court to resolve your issues. Collaborative Divorce has the advantages of having an attorney who will advocate for your best interests without the cost and loss of control over the process that happens in family court.
Mediation is the most flexible of all the ways to obtain a divorce. The foundation of the process is working with a neutral third party to problem-solve and negotiate the issues. You can utilize your own attorney for guidance and consultation, and have the ability use the courts or an arbitrator at any time, or for issues that could not be resolved in the mediation.
The courts encourage and allow individuals to prepare and submit, on their own, the needed paperwork to obtain a divorce. If you and your spouse and partner can resolve the issues between the two of you then it is a simple matter to prepare that agreement for the court. There are also many affordable paralegal assistance that can take your resolved issue and format them appropriately for submission to the court.