Articles about Mediation and Collaborative Divorce

Parenting plans should be specific and define terms. Almost any phrase in a plan can be interpreted differently by the clients. The mediator should encourage specificity and unidentify unstated ambiguities to help clients avoid future conflict.

Clients in Mediation and Collaborative Divorce should use their team to figure out how to address the family's house. Clients should try to be flexible and find resources to help them in this challenging housing market.

In Oregon, the law favors ongoing consistent and safe contact with both parents. There is no protection, necessarily, for the person who was the primary parent. To the extent appropriate and practical, divorcing parents should focus on meeting the children's needs in a child-centered way to ensure their emotional protection. Divorce is a challenge for every member of the family. My office provides recommendations and resources to help parents safely navigate through the process in a way that is legally appropriate, emotionally healthy, and child-centered. (Special thanks to the marvelous Christina McGhee for many of the tips and resources in this article. Her book Parenting Apart: How Separated and Divorced Parents Can Raise Happy and Secure Kids is a fantastic resource for families. And please also enjoy her appearance on Susan Guthrie's fabulous podcast, Divorce and Beyond, https://divorceandbeyondpod.com/divorce-and-children)

Compensatory support may be payment for any significant support that one spouse provided to the other's career advancement. It should be discussed in mediation if one spouse's in the home efforts supported the career of the other spouse. And, it should be combined with other types of support.

The Thanksgiving holiday is a reminder that your children may be exposed to relatives that are unsavory or unsafe. Here are three thoughts to consider when determining whether to include safety clauses in your parenting plan about contact between your children and the unsafe relatives.

Mediation can help parents make decisions about their child's school.

Oregon parents need to remember that they may need to support their adult children attending school.

Four ways that a consulting attorney can help a client prepare for divorce mediation and support the process, to lead to better outcomes.

Parenting plans should be written and comprehensive. There are many benefits, incluiding stability for the children and opportunities for the parents to have an established baseline that will allow the parents to avoid ambiguities and frustration.

Grandparents and their relationships with their grandchildren should not be collateral damage in a divorce. Mediation can help maintain or rebuild relationships between the grandparents and parents for the benefit of the grandchildren.

Oregon engourages clients to mediate child support to ensure ongoing support of children. One consideration that may be necessary to mediate is what is income, since that drives the calculation. This is especially important for clients with fluctuating incomes as well as underemployed or unemployed clients.

A mediated pre-marital agreement can protect both clients from unreasonable expectations during the marriage. It should be part of the marriage planning for any newly engaged couple.

Divorce limits choices and it can be hard to find the ability to find self-determination options during the divorce process. Both mediation and collaborative divorce provide options to allow clients to make difficult decisions that is best for them and their family.

Divorce can be difficult for children. There are many ways that parents can help a child get through a divorce in an emotionally healthy way. Here are three (or four) ways that parents can support their child through a divorce. First, parents need to do what they can to work together to be consistent with their children. Second, parents can respect each other’s time with the children, and third parents ensure that the children do not perceive themselves as carrying the burden of the parent’s relationship. Finally, parents should use their team to support the children’s emotional health.

There are several ways to distribute personal property between the clients during the mediation or collaborative divorce.

It is important to have a team to support you during a divorce - including professionals and friends and relatives. Each has a specific role. Divorcing clients should know who can be on their team to support them both as a couple and individually.

People in crisis, especially when facing divorce or other family conflicts, look to lawyers to help them through the experience. What should you think about when hiring a lawyer to help you As a Collaborative Divorce attorney.

During a recent mediation, a husband came in emotionally conflicted. I could see that he was angry, but unsure about why. He called for the divorce. But then he saw his soon to be ex-wife on a date with another man. The husband kept telling me and his ex-wife during the mediation that he was gl...

I was sitting in a coffee shop when I overheard a young adult discussing her recent trip back home. She said she had a great time but was frustrated by will the need to balance the time between her divorced mom and dad. Even though they had been divorced for years, it was clear that she was sti...

The holidays season can be difficult for anyone who recently divorced or is going through a divorce. If you stack divorce on top of the already stressful holiday season, it can become even more difficult for the entire family.  There is also the emotional impact of not having your children with...

Misconception #1:  There is a relationship between parenting time and child support payments. There is not a connection between parenting time and child support. Parenting time is the time that a parent spends with the children. This could range from several nights a week to several hours a week...

Many thanks to my good friends at the Mosten Guthrie Academy, who first posted this article on October 13, 2021. Mediation is a powerful tool that can be used to resolve conflict and prepare for conflict. This blog looks at three ways that mediation can be used by families to help prepare before conflict ever arises: addressing parenting plans to meet the needs of the children, preparing emergency parenting kits, and for prenuptial agreements before marriage.

One of the first questions people ask when getting divorced is, "how are child support and spousal support determined?" People want to know what they can rely on to ensure that they are paying their bills monthly. In this blog, I guide you through how child support and spousal support are deter...

Divorce is hard on families, but hardest on children. This is why it's important for parents to work on supporting the needs of children during a divorce. Each child is different, so it is up to the parents to be empathetic to the child as they transition from living in a household where the fam...