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From Ex-Spouse to New Friend: Reinventing Relationships After Divorce

Everyone knows at least one divorce horror story, but we seldom hear about people who have established friendly post-divorce associations with each other. “Did you hear that Hugh and Liz are getting along well these days?” just isn’t news. Armed with their version of divorce hell, the skeptics tell us it’s impossible for a divorced couple to make peace and become friends. They outtalk the quiet and peaceful believers — perhaps because people who are doing just fine don’t feel the need to vent. “If every divorce were a ‘War of the Roses’, there would be blood on the streets!” points out Barbara Quick, author of Still Friends: Living Happily Ever After…Even if your Marriage Falls Apart.

Luckily, it’s never too late to make peace. With determination and good intentions, you can overcome the anger, grief, and sadness of losing a marriage and eventually — believe it or not — achieve friendship. Whether or not you want to be “friends” with your ex is a decision in itself, but if you have children together, finding a way to be amicable with your co-parent makes life a lot easier. Your former in-laws don’t have to disappear with the marriage either, especially if you’ve always enjoyed a good relationship with them. Unfortunately there’s no rule book for cultivating civility with your ex-spouse, your former in-laws, or even your ex’s new spouse — so we asked several experts — including people who have managed to create friendly post-divorce relationships — for some guidance. Here’s what they had to say:

Click here to continue reading the original article from iVillage.

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Divorced Couples Relationship can Improve with Co-Parenting

Divorce is a sadly common practice in the U.S. According to reports, if rates continue as they are it could be as common as 50 percent of marriages ending in divorce. Perhaps the most tragic of broken unions are the ones that involve children. However, divorced couples with children have the potential to have civil and even peaceful relationships when both individuals focus directly on the children.

New research conducted at the University of Missouri offers hope for divorced parents and suggests hostile relationships can improve when ex-spouses set aside their differences and focus on their children’s needs.

“Most people falsely believe that, when people get divorced, they’ll continue to fight, to be hostile,” said Marilyn Coleman, Curators’ Professor of Human Development and Family Studies at MU. “We found in our study that’s not always true. Some couples get along from the very beginning, and, for about half of the women we interviewed, the couples whose relationships started badly improved over time.”

Coleman and colleagues interviewed 20 women who shared custody with ex-partners. Half reported having contentious relationships with their ex-partners and the other half reported their relationship to be civil and even amicable.

The reason being?

Click here to read the original article from Counsel&Heal.

Stringfellow, S.C., “Divoced Couples Relationship can Improve with Co-Parenting.” Weblog entry. Counsel&Heal. August 16, 2012. Accessed June 25, 2013, from http://www.counselheal.com/articles/2559/20120816/divorced-couples-relationship-can-improve-with-co-parenting.htm.

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Boosting Parent/Child Communication After Your Divorce

It’s no secret that one of the biggest challenges a parent faces after divorce is communicating with your children. All parents struggle with communication issues as their children grow, but children who have had their lives dramatically altered by separation or divorce need even more attention and diligent observation by their parents.

Children tend not to tell you when they are angry, resentful, confused, hurt or depressed. Instead, they reflect their problems through their behavior — acting out or perhaps turning inward in ways that you have not experienced prior to the divorce.

Here are some tips on ways to encourage positive and productive communication between you and your children. Many of these are obvious or innate behaviors. Some can easily be forgotten amid the challenges you are juggling in your own life on a daily basis.

Click here to continue reading the original article from The Huffington Post.

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Divorce Mediation: Cost Saving Process

Daily we are bombarded with articles in the print media, blogs on the internet, and radio and television stories reporting the decline in divorce rates. The reason, all the media pronounce, is a byproduct of the bad economy. As the story goes, when the economy is in trouble, people simply do not have enough money to divorce. And so, they suffer, the reporters tell us, trying to put up with each other in any way they can until there are sufficient funds in their coffers to finance their divorce. Indeed, the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers’ survey of its members revealed that 37% of divorce lawyers were reporting a decline in clients seeking divorce.

To continue reading this article from DivorceHQ.com, click here.

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Making Summer Plans for Your Kids when You are Divorced

Kids wait all year for summer vacation. Now summer is here and all kinds of visions dance in your head about keeping kids busy, entertained, structured, happy, and distracted from the throes of your divorce. Combining these challenges with a multitude of potential celebrations such as graduations and weddings, it is no wonder that most divorced families view summer as a particularly stressful time.

Kids who are home from school have a lot of available time that needs to be scheduled. Some will benefit from going away to camp or to their grandparents, while others will benefit from more one-on-one time with parents because they may find the isolation from divorce as alienating. It is probably a good idea to ask the kids how they want to spend their summer before any final decisions are made.

Summer visitation is important for you and your former spouse to discuss. Visitation scheduling can prove very complicated.

Click here to continue reading the original article from Financial Planning Association.

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The Benefits of Mediation

As divorcing couples search for an easier and somewhat kinder method for resolution, more people have become curious about the benefits of Divorce Without War® mediation and how this kind of process might apply to their unique situation. To help them understand, we’ve compiled a list of advantages of our mediation versus the more traditional and/or litigated divorce process.

 1. LOWER COST

In a Divorce Without War® mediation, willing parties engage in an official process PRIOR to filing a court action. The couple will only pay one professional – the attorney/mediator – versus the expense of hiring two lawyers to take opposing positions in court. Resolution is achieved outside of the courtroom, through discussion and legal settlement based upon terms developed by the participants themselves, eliminating the need for witness subpoenas, court reporter fees and transcript fees typically amassed during divorce proceedings. Prolonged, litigated divorce can deplete assets, entail expensive professional services and interrupt an individual’s personal business, resulting in expenses that may be three times as high – or more – than the cost of Divorce Without War® mediation.

 2. LESS TIME CONSUMING

Participants control how quickly the Divorce Without War® mediation will resolve. The couple determines the schedule and raises issues relevant to their family.  By enabling couples to set the schedule, a mediated result is obtained much faster than in traditional litigation because the case doesn’t rely on the court’s schedule. Additionally, parties do not have to wait for separate meetings and sessions with their individual attorneys, who then take time to speak to each other. Many Divorce Without War® mediators also offer flexible scheduling and appointments in the evenings or on weekends, which can help speed up the process.

 3. PARTIES CONTROL THE OUTCOME

In mediation, the parties reach an agreement developed by the spouses themselves, not one imposed by a third party or  the court system. This is different from litigated divorce, which puts decision-making in the hands of the judge, who may not be familiar with the family’s particular circumstances or needs. Participants are also given the opportunity to try out the terms of their agreement before they become binding,  to see how they work and then propose changes, if needed.

 4. CONFIDENTIALITY

Litigated divorce can be a lengthy process involving depositions of friends, family and business associates, scrutinizing personal activities, finances, and evaluation and criticism of each spouse’s role as a parent. A mediation conference is a private meeting in which the participants are obligated to maintain confidentiality. Clients can discuss important issues in the privacy and comfort of the mediator’s office, rather than in a public courthouse. Additionally, a mediator’s files are confidential – court files are public records that anyone can view.

5. COLLABORATIVE PROCESS

The preservation of relationships is often highly important to divorcing couples, especially when there are children involved.  During the mediation process, the couple will be empowered and guided to communicate about, among other things, his and her concerns, desires, needs, opinions, thoughts and interests. Communication is an essential component of mediation, allowing for the mediator to facilitate a fair agreement. The necessity for communication has often become the “blessing in disguise,” as it may form a nice foundation for the couple, once divorced, to continue the communication that started in mediation.

Divorce Without War allows the opportunity for a once-married couple to look back and to feel proud of his or her conduct, for modeling for their children that when faced with a relationship struggle, they each found a kind way to resolve problems rather than be that parent who declared war on the child’s mom or dad.  The mediation way is one very smart method  that lets the parent protect the health and development of his or her children, the health of precious relationships among family and friends, and the health of the spouse him or herself. Choosing to use Divorce Without War® type mediation results in a kind, dignified process for everyone involved.