OK, so Dads are important. We got to this funky situation by arranging things so that Moms stayed home and Dad's earned the money and so when separations and divorces got more common, Dads started disappearing from kids' lives. We need to fix it.
I suggest three things. The first is something that many states' laws already require. First, we need to treat Moms and Dads the same in divorce. We cannot give Moms a preference for custody just because they are female. Most states' laws require this, but in practice, what is happening is that judges looking for what to do with the kids, will bring in psychologists to interview and evaluate the custody situation.
Unfortunately, as I mentioned in Daddies are important Part 2, the current theory of psychology is that children should have as little change as possible. They rely upon studies of foster and adopted children to say that children should not be moved, as much as possible. They forget that the loss of the father from the household constitutes a huge change, and they don't seek to minimize this part of the change in their lives (for example, via trying to organize a significant post-separation role for the father in the child's lives). Instead of working to find a way to resolve the issues that arise from that change, they advocate that the mothers should be the primary parent (especially if the Mom says she is already), and that the children should stay in the same school district (as if keeping the same friends is more important than keeping the connection with the father), and then the father can become a frequent visitor in the child's life (often, under these circumstances, a visitor whose presence annoys Mom, which the kids know about, so it's a setup for the relationship to deteriorate).
If we start with a law that says Moms & Dads need to be considered equally, and that custody should be whatever is in the best interests of the child, but we give the custody decision to a person who is not trained to evaluate the facts of various accusations that are flying this way & that, and who just tries to find some happy medium where the kids have one primary household and do not have to move too much, we will often end up with Mom being primary parent and Dad being a visitor.
In some states (Arizona is the one I'm most familiar with), the lawmakers have tried to fix this. For example, they specifically changed the law reads, to say "parenting time", instead of "visitation". From now on, any time a parent has with a child is called "parenting time", NOT "visitation". Unfortunately, a change of terminology does not solve the problem if the parenting time the kids spend with Dad is only 10% of their lives, and does not constitute the serious times when they need to learn to work, study, and organize themselves. It may feel expedient to give primary parenting to one parent and split the rest of the time, but as the kids get older, the fact is that REAL parenting takes place in the snippets of time between when they wake up and when they are at school... between the end of their football or cheer practice and the end of dinner. because otherwise, they are on the phone, visiting friends, at school and activities, texting and e-mailing and facebooking... and so our only opportunity to influence them is in these moments of time we can catch from them... and this happens on the weekdays... when we have to tell them that they don't get to turn on the computer until they're finished with their Math assignment... they can't answer their texts at dinner time, and that they need to be part of the household and help with the dinner dishes. If we don't let dads have the kids during this time, we're making a big mistake for the kids.
You can call it parenting time, but if you do not give them a significant amount of time, it will always be vacation, NOT the same kind of parenting that the kids need.
Another positive change in Arizona is that parents who intentionally manipulate the situation to make it appear that they are primary parent when they are not, who make false or exaggerated accusations against the other parent, will not be able to profit from these manipulations or accusations. This law does not go far enough. When judges rely upon counselors and counselors have a bias towards mothers being the primary parent, there will not be a change in their recommendations that reflects the reality that most families have daddies who are very much more involved than the daddies of previous generations.
The legal change we need is a rebuttable presumption of equal parenting time. 50-50. There are a few different schedules that can accomplish this, either week on-week off, or 5-2-2-5, but whatever plan is used, 50-50 is appropriate.
I can hear some of my friends groaning. They insist that they, the mommies, know better what is best for their families and there should never be any presumption. They don't understand the concept of a rebuttable presumption. And this one can and should be rebuttable.
In this option, parents who cannot come to an agreement, but who still live near enough to each other to maintain the continuity of the children's current schedules in each household, will get 50-50 time, unless one of several things happens. First, parents should not have equal parenting time if they live too far away from each other to maintain their regular school & extracurricular schedule in each parent's house. Another way to rebut the presumption can and should be if the parents choose a different schedule for themselves. Perhaps Mom is in the military and can only promise 4 weeks a year in the children's hometown. Maybe Dad is a firefighter and works 72 hours on, 48 off, which makes his schedule rotate every week. I've also had flight attendant parents who needed parenting schedules that matched their work travel needs. These parents might find their own solutions to parenting time that are not equal, but that needs to be something they can cooperate about.
And of course, if either parent is unfit to have the children overnight, then they should not have 50-50 time with the children. But in that situation, we have to hope that the parent claiming that the other is unfit, would have been acting as though the other parent was unfit well before the disintegration of the romantic relationship between the two parents, and that this is not just an accusation born of anger over the separation.
I have an acquaintance who, every time I mention this idea that 50-50 needs to be the presumption, gets very angry at me. She says "it's up to whatever the CHILD can handle". I agree. But children can NOT handle having either parent marginalized in their lives EVEN if it's ONLY the daddy who is being marginalized. So we need to START with the presumption that, if the parents can come to an agreement otherwise, it will be a 50-50. And then if there is cause for it to be something other than 50-50, let each parent have the opportunity to explain to the judge why it should not be 50-50...
Certain things need to stop being considered... if the kids LIKE either parent more than the other, that needs to not be a reason to change parenting time... kids will like or be angry at a parent for not giving them enough STUFF, for being disciplined, or because the other parent wants them to show anger. Sometimes kids will align with the parent they perceive as being victimized by the romantic breakup, other times they will align with the parent they perceive as being stronger. Another thing that should not be considered... if either parent has a nicer house or more family or more money... it's not a good thing to let the kids move to live with Mom if she has married into money, or to live with Dad just because he is a higher earner. If Dad has lots of family in the area who can help him with daycare, hooray! This is a good thing, not a bad thing, but it should not mean that Dad gets more time with the children than Mom... just that she will have to either stay amicable with his family so she can get daycare from them, or she needs to find a different solution for when the kids are with her.
And we shouldn't try to equalize income in the child's two households, just let the children learn how the different households manage. Let one parent provide expensive toys, and the other parent provide inexpensive togetherness. If they do it right, the kids will learn that both places have advantages, and both have disadvantages. It is not fair or right to make one parent pay part of their income to increase the lifestyle that the other parent can afford (this is above & beyond support, food & basics, for the child), and it is not fair or right to make one parent give up time with the child because they don't live an expensive lifestyle. We also need to give parents a dis-incentive for bribing the children with expensive toys. If we enforce parenting time equally with the poorer parent, then the richer parent who plays the "who is your favorite parent?" game, will not benefit from it. The incentive to playing this game is greatly reduced if it will not result in the ability to cut the other parent out.
I'm not saying the children's interests should not be heard, just that you should give them as much weight as you give, say, their interest in choosing not to go to school. Unless someone at the school is abusing them, you make them go. They need to learn the things that are available to learn at school, and they need to learn to deal with it. If it becomes detrimental for them to go to school, then bring in the therapists and create a plan to make it work, or find another placement, but you don't let the kid say, "I don't like school" and honor that decision. You listen to the complaint, and try to figure out how to fix it. This is how things should progress in custody determinations. If the child wants to say "I like Dad better than I like Mom", then fine, but don't let it change the 50-50 schedule unless there is a significant reason behind the preference that would require stripping Mom of her parenting duties.
So what is the custody evaluator's role in this 50-50 rebuttable presumption? First, the evaluator needs to check to see if there are credible reasons that either parent should be removed from the child's life or restricted to supervised visits only. If they do not see credible evidence that requires such removal, they need to be more pro-active in recommending specific remedies to help the family in it's new, separated status. They need to make suggestions for helping the parties learn to co-parent equally and properly. Sometimes, the parents will need to learn to come to some basic agreements about things like bedtime and diet and hairstyle for their children. Sometimes, they will need ongoing support in handling these kinds of rules (particularly for parents who have very different parenting styles). Sometimes, the evaluators need to address a process for the children to learn to stop playing favorites, or to help the parents come to some agreement on how to split the children's toys between the two houses.
Under this theory, sometimes the parent who is busily trying to tear down the co-parent, will lose parenting time until they can moderate their behavior, and the custody evaluator will need to recommend specific limits to this temporary separation so that the parent who loses custody temporarily can get appropriate intensive counseling to help return to full participation in their children's lives.
Under this proposal, we come from a "make it work" theory. We are no longer looking for ways to decide which house should be primary and who should therefore "lose", but rather we are looking for ways to make everyone a winner.
If we did this, and enforced it, then ultimately, the incentive for nastiness during a custody battle would be minimized, and the ultimate winners in that solution would be the children. And isn't this who it's all about in the first place?
Showing posts with label divorce. Show all posts
Showing posts with label divorce. Show all posts
Thursday, December 19, 2013
Thursday, December 12, 2013
Daddies are important, Part 2
A few years ago, I wrote Part 1 of this topic, and I fully intended to get to work on Part 2 right away, but we were called on to provide Foster care to some children in our county, and things got in the way. I'm back on the topic now, and ready to think through Part 2.
Daddies are important.
Unfortunately, though the world has changed such that Dads expect to be involved in their kids' lives, we pretend that change doesn't exist the minute the parents decide to separate. Upon separation, the working mother who saw their children NO MORE OFTEN than the working father, suddenly acts as though they have been the primary (or only) "REAL" parent in the family. Generally, the division of labor in the family had been organized so that Mom took care of what was important to Mom and Dad took care of what was important to Dad, and everything else either fell through the cracks (dusting the geegaws in the living room, perhaps) OR they joined together or outsourced it (such as sharing meal-making, or maybe getting takeout a majority of the time)...
When they split, Mom thinks that she should get the kids because SHE was the REAL parent, but what she doesn't understand is that Dad ALSO thought HE was doing important things for the kids.
Our courts, and frankly, our custody evaluators and other professionals in the system, are reluctant to catch up to the current reality, which is that if the parents split up, leaving the kids with Mommy for 90% of the time and making Daddy a visitor in his own kids' lives, is a big loss for Daddy (which no one really cares about, because it's all about what's best for the kids) AND it's a big loss for the kids! The therapists are so busy saying that a child needs a single home base to call their own, that moving is bad for the kids, etc... that they ignore certain realities...
In a family where the parents WANT to move, and handle it properly with the children, there are very few problems with moving from one location to another. Military families are notorious for moving regularly and also for raising wonderful, resilient children. JUST because something is disappointing to a child does not mean we should avoid it. It is through learning how to adjust to change, learning how to weather disappointment, that a child learns. The therapists will point to the losses of orphans and foster children as proof that children should not be moved if possible, but those analogies ignore the fact that in the case of foster children and orphans, the adults that they should be able to trust have become untrustworthy, and are NOT managing the changes in their own lives well.
In other words, if the adults in a child's life are positive about a change, and help the kids work through their concerns about it (where will my favorite chair be? How will Santa find us? How can I EVER find a new friend in a strange school?) the kids will be just fine. In many cases, children of divorce or separation are not helped to weather the changes in a positive light, but instead are prepared for it as if the parents are preparing for the world to come to an end. And you can be SURE that if the parents feel their world is coming to an end, the kids will feel that way also.
If parents are not taking a move well, then the kids will also not take it well. Look at parents who are losing jobs, getting evicted, or separating/divorcing. We see them explaining the move to the child in terms of "don't worry, we'll SURVIVE... somehow, as long as you stick with ME", it is a whole lot different than, "Daddy just got a great job and we're moving to a bigger town where there will be a bigger house and a playground right across the street, and the school has computers for every kid to use in the classrooms and a great soccer team"... The trick on handling a separation/divorce, and the required moves with a kid, is to help them understand that this change will be better. "Mommy & Daddy won't argue so much, but we'll be in different houses. Daddy will have a house with rooms for you kids, and Mommy will have a house with rooms for you kids, and you'll have two times as many rooms, two times as many birthday parties, two times as many visits from Santa!!! Instead of going camping as a family for 2 weeks in the summer, you'll spend 2 weeks camping with me and ANOTHER two weeks camping with Daddy, or maybe instead of camping, you'll go skiing in the winter, or to Disney... it'll be GREAT... and when we're not always arguing, it'll be a lot happier too!" A WHOLE lot better than "Dad is leaving us, we'll get by, don't worry, the judge will force him to pay child support and if he doesn't they'll send him to jail"... (yes, some parents DO say this to their children... it's awful, and it doesn't usually come all in the same sentence, but they say it in tiny little bits, until the children put it altogether and realize that this is AWFUL... Daddy doesn't love us, walked out on us, won't pay for our needs, might go to jail, we'll never see him again & Mommy & Us might starve!!!...)
Unfortunately, many people treat Daddy like an ATM... and the ability to have children as if it's a career choice... a money-earner. And when the courts support this vision of how Daddies are, the men in these children's lives will slowly disappear. They will become marginalized... they become Disney Dads who show up on the rare occasion when mom & the judge allow them to see the kids. And the kids start to feel a bit of awkwardness... feeling like a guest in what should be their own home...
When this happens, kids only get the part of parenting that the Moms took on. Dads stop parenting the kids and spend their precious little time with the kids, just trying to maintain the connection, entertaining the kids and hoping that they enjoy the relationship enough that they'll come to Dad if they ever have a need to do so. Unfortunately, they rarely do. This parenting schedule that our society has fallen into... a schedule that was more appropriate 50 years ago when Daddies did all the work and Mommies always stayed home... the every-other-holiday, every-other-weekend and one dinner a week... it's a schedule that encourages Disney Dad syndrome. If the parents have one designated as a primary residential parent, and the other as the "visitor", who is involved only during play time (every other weekend, holiday, etc), we can be sure that the primary residential parent will be the one burdened with 100% of the homework, 100% of the carpooling to & from school, 100% of the organizing of extracurriculars and play dates, 100% of the whiny wake-up moments and quick breakfasts before school, 100% of the chore-making... all while losing 50% of the vacations, holidays, weekends and fun times with the kids.
Most parents will not call this a "burden", but whatever they choose to call it, they become the disciplinarian, the organizer, the person who has to spend 100% on the kids and who has lost the partner who used to help out.... even if that partner was only helping pay the bills, clean the house, and do the carpooling when you instructed, this partner carried an important part of the burden of the household. And there are bad side-effects for the adult who is suddenly 100% in charge of children, with no partner present to take any part of that burden. First, this adult loses the opportunity to fully participate in their career, to be at the office without the likelihood of getting a call from the school that a child is sick... The absence of a second parent to call on for those duties, makes it impossible for this primary parent to fully participate in the workplace without the possibility of a child-related interruption. The primary parent also has more difficulty creating an adult social life for themselves. While the "visiting" parent can develop adult friendships in a normal fashion, outside of the influence of the children until the parent is sure the relationship is viable, the primary parent loses this opportunity. For the primary parent, a casual flirtation cannot turn into a coffee date, an invitation to happy hour cannot be fulfilled, because child care issues will nearly always be present. And any relationship that gets past the coffee date stage will necessarily start to unfold in the presence of the children, whose needs and opinions will intrude.
As a result, the opportunity for the primary parent to process the loss of the romantic relationship and replace it in their lives is curtailed and altered. If we want a surefire way to jump from marriage/mistake #1 into marriage/mistake #2, we could not create a better formula for making it happen. After the sudden loss of #1, don't give the primary parent the opportunity to mourn the loss or learn the relationship lessons, don't give them the chance to figure out what they did wrong and how they want to do it better next time, don't give them time to explore relationships in private. Instead, make sure this person has no opportunity for adult companionship unless it's mostly in the presence of the children. Instead of recovering, this person will be rebounding, and with no free time left to process what is going on, they are being reactive rather than pro-active. It will not work. It's no surprise that second marriages have a higher failure rater than first marriages, especially if children from the first marriage are involved!
I can promise everyone here that if a parent is reading this who is the primary residential parent and the children's mother, that she will be saying to herself, "I'm the MOTHER, I am the one with the INSTINCTS, and I am willing to make the sacrifice for MY KIDS". Unfortunately, this sacrifice does not do the best for the kids.
The kids lose the good homework help in the subjects that Dad is better at than Mom is. Girls lose the strength of the relationship with the one man in their lives who will always find them beautiful, who will CREDIBLY (Mom can't be credible on this issue) tell them that a boy does not deserve this much attention... the boys lose the strength of the relationship with the one man in their lives who can CREDIBLY tell them what a REAL MAN does, who was the first and most reliable example of what they wanted to be. The kids lose an example of how to live life in the way he chooses to live, so that when they grow up, they have a more balanced vision of how to get by in this world on their own.
Once upon a time, not too long ago, we would say "it takes a village to raise a child", meaning that having more examples of adulthood around, to pick up pieces of the load and help the children see how to live and cooperate in this world, is a good thing... yet when a separation occurs, we suddenly stop believing this, deciding that it's an OK thing to totally cut out one of the two most important people in the child's life. As a rule, we are making a big mistake if we think it's OK to cut out or marginalize the influence of either parent.
I do not say there are not exceptions to the rule... We MAY need to cut out the baby daddy who is a raging alcoholic, or addict... or who is dangerously violent. But more often than not, we find that the mother who, just last week, was quite willing to leave her children alone with this guy for hours on end, entire weekends while she was out with the girls, away for work, or visiting her mother... all of a sudden, upon separation, she acts as though his faults are so extreme that he does not deserve time with the children any more... or that his time should be severely limited. Suddenly, a woman who has been married nearly 2 decades where her only complaint was that he did not earn enough money, SUDDENLY she is accusing him of violence and telling judges that the children need to be protected from him most of the time. In these cases, we need to double-check the likelihood that these accusations are true. There are too many incentives for an exaggeration or lie to take place at the time of separation. Too many reasons for a person freshly angry over a split, to suddenly forget their own part in the problems of the marriage and bring every disagreement to light in an effort to crush the other parent.
Unfortunately, while recriminations or lingering angry feelings are no problem for childless couples who can separate and never have to see each other again, this does not work for separating couples who have children together. It is not good for people who must continue to co-parent, to have opportunities to bash each other. Accusations go both ways, this is why the couple is no longer together. The courts understand that there are usually two sides to any story, but instead of encouraging the parties to put aside their anger, the court system, which is adversarial by nature, encourages both sides to have equal opportunity to vent.
Perhaps one reason that mothers are often winners in the initial custody battles is that fathers are less articulate about emotional issues such as this. Unless a daddy takes on the significant burden of very high legal expenses required for a very difficult and protracted custody battle (and unless the daddy is willing to put his children through such a battle), the woman will usually win, just by virtue of being better at holding onto their grudges against the ex and being better able to articulate their grudges.)
Some parents with very strong parental instincts manage to put the anger behind them. And generally, they figure out an amicable arrangement of parenting time. Usually, these days, the arrangement is something close to equal time... he gets a week, then she gets a week... something like that.
Such a schedule gives her time to go grocery shopping on her off weeks, without little hands reaching for every piece of candy in the checkout line... it makes it possible for her to have HALF of her work days ENTIRELY available to stay late at the office if the boss needs it... making it possible for her to do the kind of office politics/networking that will help her break through whatever glass ceiling her mommy-track might have held for her...
Generally, such a schedule also causes her a LOT of worry at first. The kids' hair won't be brushed right, or they will be fed on McDonalds fries and sodas... they'll be allowed to stay up all night and will be late to school... Dad will forget to take the Tuba to school for band practice. If she calms down and lets him do this stuff without her interference or nagging, she will probably find that he can manage these things just fine. If he's JUST as incompetent as I described, he will find out the frst time they're up all night, bouncing around because of the sugar & caffeine high of the McDonalds' colas, that this might not be such a great idea for dinner... he will figure out how to put the kids' hari in a pony tail and the KID will come home crying that her hair was a mess all day and her friends made fun of it, so he will figure out how to get it done correctly, even maybe helping her learn how to do it himself if he feels that incompetent about it. And the first time he has to re-organize his work schedule to go pick up the stupid tuba from the house and bring it to the school in time for Band... he'll remember not to let the kid forget it again.
More likely, he'll feed the kid a more balanced meal from a healthier fast food place, will have learned how to brush his own daughter's hair after watching you do it for years, and will be JUST FINE. And in some instances, Mom will have to enforce the parenting time issues, such as refusing to take over when the kid is sick on his watch... Dad needs to step up and do the whole job, just like Mom now has the opportunity to step up and do Her whole job as far as breadwinning goes.
And the kids will get the Daddy who can help them with their math, who takes them to see a really cool workplace on "bring your kids to work day", who talks to them about budget and career and what boys really think like and how a real man handles his responsibilities, who takes them on more physically challenging activities on weekends than Mommy might usually schedule.
And Daddy might have a Wii at his house, while Mommy has a Playstation... daddy has scooters while Mommy has bikes. Daddy has a dog who catches Frisbees while Mom's dog has learned to roll over and play dead.
Pushing daddy away gives the child half a life. It should be reserved for very rare, dire circumstances... which do not exist in most separations or divorces!
Daddies are REALLY important for this... they provide a balance in the kid's life.
Daddies are important.
Unfortunately, though the world has changed such that Dads expect to be involved in their kids' lives, we pretend that change doesn't exist the minute the parents decide to separate. Upon separation, the working mother who saw their children NO MORE OFTEN than the working father, suddenly acts as though they have been the primary (or only) "REAL" parent in the family. Generally, the division of labor in the family had been organized so that Mom took care of what was important to Mom and Dad took care of what was important to Dad, and everything else either fell through the cracks (dusting the geegaws in the living room, perhaps) OR they joined together or outsourced it (such as sharing meal-making, or maybe getting takeout a majority of the time)...
When they split, Mom thinks that she should get the kids because SHE was the REAL parent, but what she doesn't understand is that Dad ALSO thought HE was doing important things for the kids.
Our courts, and frankly, our custody evaluators and other professionals in the system, are reluctant to catch up to the current reality, which is that if the parents split up, leaving the kids with Mommy for 90% of the time and making Daddy a visitor in his own kids' lives, is a big loss for Daddy (which no one really cares about, because it's all about what's best for the kids) AND it's a big loss for the kids! The therapists are so busy saying that a child needs a single home base to call their own, that moving is bad for the kids, etc... that they ignore certain realities...
In a family where the parents WANT to move, and handle it properly with the children, there are very few problems with moving from one location to another. Military families are notorious for moving regularly and also for raising wonderful, resilient children. JUST because something is disappointing to a child does not mean we should avoid it. It is through learning how to adjust to change, learning how to weather disappointment, that a child learns. The therapists will point to the losses of orphans and foster children as proof that children should not be moved if possible, but those analogies ignore the fact that in the case of foster children and orphans, the adults that they should be able to trust have become untrustworthy, and are NOT managing the changes in their own lives well.
In other words, if the adults in a child's life are positive about a change, and help the kids work through their concerns about it (where will my favorite chair be? How will Santa find us? How can I EVER find a new friend in a strange school?) the kids will be just fine. In many cases, children of divorce or separation are not helped to weather the changes in a positive light, but instead are prepared for it as if the parents are preparing for the world to come to an end. And you can be SURE that if the parents feel their world is coming to an end, the kids will feel that way also.
If parents are not taking a move well, then the kids will also not take it well. Look at parents who are losing jobs, getting evicted, or separating/divorcing. We see them explaining the move to the child in terms of "don't worry, we'll SURVIVE... somehow, as long as you stick with ME", it is a whole lot different than, "Daddy just got a great job and we're moving to a bigger town where there will be a bigger house and a playground right across the street, and the school has computers for every kid to use in the classrooms and a great soccer team"... The trick on handling a separation/divorce, and the required moves with a kid, is to help them understand that this change will be better. "Mommy & Daddy won't argue so much, but we'll be in different houses. Daddy will have a house with rooms for you kids, and Mommy will have a house with rooms for you kids, and you'll have two times as many rooms, two times as many birthday parties, two times as many visits from Santa!!! Instead of going camping as a family for 2 weeks in the summer, you'll spend 2 weeks camping with me and ANOTHER two weeks camping with Daddy, or maybe instead of camping, you'll go skiing in the winter, or to Disney... it'll be GREAT... and when we're not always arguing, it'll be a lot happier too!" A WHOLE lot better than "Dad is leaving us, we'll get by, don't worry, the judge will force him to pay child support and if he doesn't they'll send him to jail"... (yes, some parents DO say this to their children... it's awful, and it doesn't usually come all in the same sentence, but they say it in tiny little bits, until the children put it altogether and realize that this is AWFUL... Daddy doesn't love us, walked out on us, won't pay for our needs, might go to jail, we'll never see him again & Mommy & Us might starve!!!...)
Unfortunately, many people treat Daddy like an ATM... and the ability to have children as if it's a career choice... a money-earner. And when the courts support this vision of how Daddies are, the men in these children's lives will slowly disappear. They will become marginalized... they become Disney Dads who show up on the rare occasion when mom & the judge allow them to see the kids. And the kids start to feel a bit of awkwardness... feeling like a guest in what should be their own home...
When this happens, kids only get the part of parenting that the Moms took on. Dads stop parenting the kids and spend their precious little time with the kids, just trying to maintain the connection, entertaining the kids and hoping that they enjoy the relationship enough that they'll come to Dad if they ever have a need to do so. Unfortunately, they rarely do. This parenting schedule that our society has fallen into... a schedule that was more appropriate 50 years ago when Daddies did all the work and Mommies always stayed home... the every-other-holiday, every-other-weekend and one dinner a week... it's a schedule that encourages Disney Dad syndrome. If the parents have one designated as a primary residential parent, and the other as the "visitor", who is involved only during play time (every other weekend, holiday, etc), we can be sure that the primary residential parent will be the one burdened with 100% of the homework, 100% of the carpooling to & from school, 100% of the organizing of extracurriculars and play dates, 100% of the whiny wake-up moments and quick breakfasts before school, 100% of the chore-making... all while losing 50% of the vacations, holidays, weekends and fun times with the kids.
Most parents will not call this a "burden", but whatever they choose to call it, they become the disciplinarian, the organizer, the person who has to spend 100% on the kids and who has lost the partner who used to help out.... even if that partner was only helping pay the bills, clean the house, and do the carpooling when you instructed, this partner carried an important part of the burden of the household. And there are bad side-effects for the adult who is suddenly 100% in charge of children, with no partner present to take any part of that burden. First, this adult loses the opportunity to fully participate in their career, to be at the office without the likelihood of getting a call from the school that a child is sick... The absence of a second parent to call on for those duties, makes it impossible for this primary parent to fully participate in the workplace without the possibility of a child-related interruption. The primary parent also has more difficulty creating an adult social life for themselves. While the "visiting" parent can develop adult friendships in a normal fashion, outside of the influence of the children until the parent is sure the relationship is viable, the primary parent loses this opportunity. For the primary parent, a casual flirtation cannot turn into a coffee date, an invitation to happy hour cannot be fulfilled, because child care issues will nearly always be present. And any relationship that gets past the coffee date stage will necessarily start to unfold in the presence of the children, whose needs and opinions will intrude.
As a result, the opportunity for the primary parent to process the loss of the romantic relationship and replace it in their lives is curtailed and altered. If we want a surefire way to jump from marriage/mistake #1 into marriage/mistake #2, we could not create a better formula for making it happen. After the sudden loss of #1, don't give the primary parent the opportunity to mourn the loss or learn the relationship lessons, don't give them the chance to figure out what they did wrong and how they want to do it better next time, don't give them time to explore relationships in private. Instead, make sure this person has no opportunity for adult companionship unless it's mostly in the presence of the children. Instead of recovering, this person will be rebounding, and with no free time left to process what is going on, they are being reactive rather than pro-active. It will not work. It's no surprise that second marriages have a higher failure rater than first marriages, especially if children from the first marriage are involved!
I can promise everyone here that if a parent is reading this who is the primary residential parent and the children's mother, that she will be saying to herself, "I'm the MOTHER, I am the one with the INSTINCTS, and I am willing to make the sacrifice for MY KIDS". Unfortunately, this sacrifice does not do the best for the kids.
The kids lose the good homework help in the subjects that Dad is better at than Mom is. Girls lose the strength of the relationship with the one man in their lives who will always find them beautiful, who will CREDIBLY (Mom can't be credible on this issue) tell them that a boy does not deserve this much attention... the boys lose the strength of the relationship with the one man in their lives who can CREDIBLY tell them what a REAL MAN does, who was the first and most reliable example of what they wanted to be. The kids lose an example of how to live life in the way he chooses to live, so that when they grow up, they have a more balanced vision of how to get by in this world on their own.
Once upon a time, not too long ago, we would say "it takes a village to raise a child", meaning that having more examples of adulthood around, to pick up pieces of the load and help the children see how to live and cooperate in this world, is a good thing... yet when a separation occurs, we suddenly stop believing this, deciding that it's an OK thing to totally cut out one of the two most important people in the child's life. As a rule, we are making a big mistake if we think it's OK to cut out or marginalize the influence of either parent.
I do not say there are not exceptions to the rule... We MAY need to cut out the baby daddy who is a raging alcoholic, or addict... or who is dangerously violent. But more often than not, we find that the mother who, just last week, was quite willing to leave her children alone with this guy for hours on end, entire weekends while she was out with the girls, away for work, or visiting her mother... all of a sudden, upon separation, she acts as though his faults are so extreme that he does not deserve time with the children any more... or that his time should be severely limited. Suddenly, a woman who has been married nearly 2 decades where her only complaint was that he did not earn enough money, SUDDENLY she is accusing him of violence and telling judges that the children need to be protected from him most of the time. In these cases, we need to double-check the likelihood that these accusations are true. There are too many incentives for an exaggeration or lie to take place at the time of separation. Too many reasons for a person freshly angry over a split, to suddenly forget their own part in the problems of the marriage and bring every disagreement to light in an effort to crush the other parent.
Unfortunately, while recriminations or lingering angry feelings are no problem for childless couples who can separate and never have to see each other again, this does not work for separating couples who have children together. It is not good for people who must continue to co-parent, to have opportunities to bash each other. Accusations go both ways, this is why the couple is no longer together. The courts understand that there are usually two sides to any story, but instead of encouraging the parties to put aside their anger, the court system, which is adversarial by nature, encourages both sides to have equal opportunity to vent.
Perhaps one reason that mothers are often winners in the initial custody battles is that fathers are less articulate about emotional issues such as this. Unless a daddy takes on the significant burden of very high legal expenses required for a very difficult and protracted custody battle (and unless the daddy is willing to put his children through such a battle), the woman will usually win, just by virtue of being better at holding onto their grudges against the ex and being better able to articulate their grudges.)
Some parents with very strong parental instincts manage to put the anger behind them. And generally, they figure out an amicable arrangement of parenting time. Usually, these days, the arrangement is something close to equal time... he gets a week, then she gets a week... something like that.
Such a schedule gives her time to go grocery shopping on her off weeks, without little hands reaching for every piece of candy in the checkout line... it makes it possible for her to have HALF of her work days ENTIRELY available to stay late at the office if the boss needs it... making it possible for her to do the kind of office politics/networking that will help her break through whatever glass ceiling her mommy-track might have held for her...
Generally, such a schedule also causes her a LOT of worry at first. The kids' hair won't be brushed right, or they will be fed on McDonalds fries and sodas... they'll be allowed to stay up all night and will be late to school... Dad will forget to take the Tuba to school for band practice. If she calms down and lets him do this stuff without her interference or nagging, she will probably find that he can manage these things just fine. If he's JUST as incompetent as I described, he will find out the frst time they're up all night, bouncing around because of the sugar & caffeine high of the McDonalds' colas, that this might not be such a great idea for dinner... he will figure out how to put the kids' hari in a pony tail and the KID will come home crying that her hair was a mess all day and her friends made fun of it, so he will figure out how to get it done correctly, even maybe helping her learn how to do it himself if he feels that incompetent about it. And the first time he has to re-organize his work schedule to go pick up the stupid tuba from the house and bring it to the school in time for Band... he'll remember not to let the kid forget it again.
More likely, he'll feed the kid a more balanced meal from a healthier fast food place, will have learned how to brush his own daughter's hair after watching you do it for years, and will be JUST FINE. And in some instances, Mom will have to enforce the parenting time issues, such as refusing to take over when the kid is sick on his watch... Dad needs to step up and do the whole job, just like Mom now has the opportunity to step up and do Her whole job as far as breadwinning goes.
And the kids will get the Daddy who can help them with their math, who takes them to see a really cool workplace on "bring your kids to work day", who talks to them about budget and career and what boys really think like and how a real man handles his responsibilities, who takes them on more physically challenging activities on weekends than Mommy might usually schedule.
And Daddy might have a Wii at his house, while Mommy has a Playstation... daddy has scooters while Mommy has bikes. Daddy has a dog who catches Frisbees while Mom's dog has learned to roll over and play dead.
Pushing daddy away gives the child half a life. It should be reserved for very rare, dire circumstances... which do not exist in most separations or divorces!
Daddies are REALLY important for this... they provide a balance in the kid's life.
Monday, July 1, 2013
Kids lie
So many people will protest loudly at the claim that kids lie. Anyone who uses children as a witness in a case HOPES that the children know better than to lie under oath, but the truth is that at a certain age, children can't even tell the difference between truth and a lie. To them, ghosts and fairys and "the borrowers" really do exist. At an older age, they have often been taught what the proper answer is to many questions, and they will supply whatever answer does not get them into trouble. If a divorced mother is angry at the kid's father, the children know very well that it will make her happy if they say things that is bad about him. He is mean, he doesn't let them do stuff. Or maybe the kids will try to be the peacemaker, saying he's really NICE, that he's not so bad, he lets them eat candy and stuff (innocently unaware that the issue of eating candy and not eating nutritiously at each other's house has been a main issue in the custody battle).
If kids are angry at someone, they will say things that will get that person into trouble, and if they are happy with that person, they will say things that will get the person OUT of trouble. If they want something, they will say things designed to get that thing for them, and if they don't want something, they will make up things that they hope will prevent them from having that something. "I'm allergic", becomes the refrain told to the lunch lady, babysitters, and camp counselors. I've heard "I'm allergic" as an excuse not to eat oatmeal, not to drink milk, not to eat fruit, or any kind of meat that the child did not like. A recent set of foster kids had me totally convinced that they were "lactose intolerant" (advanced little brains using a much more sophisticated form of "I'm allergic"), so that they could turn down milk, only to go bananas over ice cream, butter, and cheese when the opportunity arose. My explanation that those things include lactose did not faze them... "MOMMY lets me eat that!", is their way of proving that I'm wrong. Even scientific proof garnered from that perfect source of all truth (the computer), could not convince them to drink milk or let me sneak it into their cereal or any other normal option... no, their allergy was ONLY negated if the milk came in a high fat, high sugar option.
I have even known parents to TEACH their kids how to lie, thinking that it was for a better purpose... a mother, wanting to win the custody battle, was seen sitting in the lobby of the counselor's office (the counselor who would report to the judge), coaching the kids... "if she asks ..., you can say..." VERY carefully parsing the words so that the kids could tell the "truth" (Mom's version), without saying something they KNEW to be a lie under oath... and insisting that the intention to mislead while still telling the truth was OK, because if they went to Dad's house, they'd not be allowed to see their friends (he lived a few miles away from their Mom's neighborhood), drive their car (SHE bought it for them and would not allow them to keep it at Dad's house), participate in their sports (Dad was upset about their grades and had suggested curtailing the extracurriculars until their grades had come back up), OR go on vacation (a vacation she had planned in secret because it was against the court order regarding parenting time, her intention had been to keep the kids away from Dad so she planned the vacation specifically to keep them out of state at the time Dad was supposed to spend time with them). So they intentionally mislead the counselor, each separately telling her that, contrary to Mom's claim, they DID love their Dad and they did NOT fear him, but magically, each of them had only a few hours a week to see Dad... between Sunday morning at church (which Mom rarely attended), and Sunday evening's youth group, if they weren't booked for an afternoon with friends or Mom's family, they could envision letting Dad spend a few hours with them. Understand, these lies are coming from OLDER kids, who were WELL OVER the idea that fairies were real. They were young and idealistic enough that they did not WANT to do the wrong thing, but when their mother explained all the reasons they would want to lie, they did NOT naturally revert to the truth. Faced with the possibility that they could get what they wanted, and not get caught, by lying. They lied.
The Mom who taught her kids to hide things from their Dad and to lie about things so she could win the custody battle, is now reaping the rewards of her choice, and now that the children are adults, they are lying to her as well. But that is all I'll say about that situation for now, because this is not about the evils of using your children as weapons against your co-parent, but rather about how easily children lie, how they are not born with an innate knowledge of truth, nor are they born with an innate desire to tell ONLY truth.
The knowledge of what is truth, and the desire to tell it, only come with training. We teach children about how the world works by lying to them... we teach them to "be good" by telling them about Santa Claus, we get them not to cry over losing a tooth by lying to them about the tooth fairy. We tell fairy tales that have morals we want them to learn. And if they ask us the tough questions about whether our family is financially secure, whether we are cheating on each other, hiding things from each other, or splitting up... if the truth is inconvenient, we lie. On the other end, we spend a lot of time telling them that strangers are dangerous, and then we're surprised when they meet ONE stranger who proves to NOT be dangerous, and they decide we don't know what we're saying when we preach about stranger danger, so they stop being careful around OTHER strangers.
Worse then telling them an altered version of the truth to teach them a lesson, we reinforce the lies they tell. If a cookie is missing from the cookie jar and crumbs all over their mouths, we ask, "where did it go", and when they say "I don't know" or "(name the invisible friend) took it"... we play along and try to convince them to come clean by proving it to them by logic. Or, BONUS, we laugh at the absurdity of the story. In doing so, we confirm for them that the lie worked, and even that it was cute and funny. That telling the lie made us love them more at the same time as keeping them out of trouble! If we ask, "did YOU do it"? (for just about ANY infraction of rules), and they say "no", we are thrown into a posture of having to play detective and prosecutor with them, convince them that their lies are not plausible. We give them the power of having fooled us so now they have made us WORK at it, and they are sure that we can never be completely sure of our conclusions, because they are pretty sure the lie worked. There is no down side to the kid for lying like this.
Think of it. "Did you take the cookie?" has two possible answers. "Yes", guarantees punishment. "No", evades punishment for at least a short time, and forces Mom to find evidence that will convince us that she knows we're lying. And to a 3 year old, saying it louder and longer sometimes just MAKES it true. We all know adults who never learned otherwise... those people who are so sure that if they say it, it is true, despite all evidence to the contrary, or who believe that it doesn't matter what anyone else says, if they say it louder and longer, we'll believe, or at least we'll submit to their demands.
So what is the solution? There is no requirement that we STOP telling fairy tales or change the Santa story. No... but we must address each situation of the children finding out the truth, as it arises, confirming for them that there is a different between fairy tales and truth, and the fairy tales are often based upon truth or teach very valuable lessons. But when we catch them red-handed in the cookie jar, we need not engage in any little games where they get to play "innocent until proven guilty" and turn us into a detective and prosecutor. Particularly when they are not old enough to understand logical reasoning! NO. When we catch them with a hand in the cookie jar, it's perfectly OK if they think we have eyes in the back of our heads... They were SURE we were turned around or out of the room, but we KNOW that they just stole a cookie. At the time of life when they can't possibly understand logical reasoning, it's perfectly OK if we are part of that magical world in their heads where some things... fairys, Santa, and Mom & Dad, KNOW EVERYTHING. We don't ASK, because we KNOW. So we do not ask, we TELL them. Johnny, you just took a cookie. You know how you're not supposed to get into the cookie jar when Mom is not here? Well, because you took a cookie now, you go into time out. 3 minutes. And then you don't get a cookie later because you already had it now. OK? And we do NOT let them wheedle, whine, and try to convince us that we're wrong.
Of course this doesn't work if we are not sure. Being unsure and falsely accusing the kid is a sure-fire way to OTHER bad things. However... sometimes we have to decide whether it's more important to make sure the kid does not get the feeling that lying can get them off the hook for stuff, or ... well, whatever other bad thing we're facing... punishing them for a cookie that we're not sure whether they ate it or not. Teaching them to save snacks till Mom says it's snack time, or whatever other lesson... which is more important... explaining snack time to a kid who can barely pronounce the word "snack", or teaching the child that lying does not work?
If you have gotten past this age and are confronted with a child who seems entrenched in a lying behavior, you may have some very difficult choices. Consult a therapist for help with this. With one of my foster children, I have to say that the therapist and I worked out a very important intervention for lying... we needed to even praise the child for telling the truth EVEN WHEN the truth was, "yes, I hit my little brother". The bottom line is that we were never going to get that statement out of her without a lot of work, so giving her the opportunity to lie about it by asking the question was not going to happen. We needed to work on telling the truth in LITTLE issues, like whether her homework was done or whether she spilled her orange juice, having a little party even, (making a big deal out of the occasion, not a whole PARTY with cupcakes & stuff!)... to celebrate her successes in telling the truth. Something like this needs to be done very carefully.
And the sooner, the better. You REALLY do not want to wait till the kids are away at college before you address the issue... because they'll be lying to you about the BIG things... drinking, drugging, roommates, romances, health, tuition, other finances, grades, and future plans... that can become a BIG expense (bail, bailing out credit, dropping out of college, raising grandbabies, etc). At some level, if your child has learned that lying is easier than the truth, you'll be lucky if your kid gets through adulthood without missing a holiday season visit with you because of a prison term!
Kids DO lie. And if we cannot acknowledge it, we cannot address it. And if we DO try to address it, we need to do so in a way that they can learn how to tell the truth. If we do not, we will regret it.
If kids are angry at someone, they will say things that will get that person into trouble, and if they are happy with that person, they will say things that will get the person OUT of trouble. If they want something, they will say things designed to get that thing for them, and if they don't want something, they will make up things that they hope will prevent them from having that something. "I'm allergic", becomes the refrain told to the lunch lady, babysitters, and camp counselors. I've heard "I'm allergic" as an excuse not to eat oatmeal, not to drink milk, not to eat fruit, or any kind of meat that the child did not like. A recent set of foster kids had me totally convinced that they were "lactose intolerant" (advanced little brains using a much more sophisticated form of "I'm allergic"), so that they could turn down milk, only to go bananas over ice cream, butter, and cheese when the opportunity arose. My explanation that those things include lactose did not faze them... "MOMMY lets me eat that!", is their way of proving that I'm wrong. Even scientific proof garnered from that perfect source of all truth (the computer), could not convince them to drink milk or let me sneak it into their cereal or any other normal option... no, their allergy was ONLY negated if the milk came in a high fat, high sugar option.
I have even known parents to TEACH their kids how to lie, thinking that it was for a better purpose... a mother, wanting to win the custody battle, was seen sitting in the lobby of the counselor's office (the counselor who would report to the judge), coaching the kids... "if she asks ..., you can say..." VERY carefully parsing the words so that the kids could tell the "truth" (Mom's version), without saying something they KNEW to be a lie under oath... and insisting that the intention to mislead while still telling the truth was OK, because if they went to Dad's house, they'd not be allowed to see their friends (he lived a few miles away from their Mom's neighborhood), drive their car (SHE bought it for them and would not allow them to keep it at Dad's house), participate in their sports (Dad was upset about their grades and had suggested curtailing the extracurriculars until their grades had come back up), OR go on vacation (a vacation she had planned in secret because it was against the court order regarding parenting time, her intention had been to keep the kids away from Dad so she planned the vacation specifically to keep them out of state at the time Dad was supposed to spend time with them). So they intentionally mislead the counselor, each separately telling her that, contrary to Mom's claim, they DID love their Dad and they did NOT fear him, but magically, each of them had only a few hours a week to see Dad... between Sunday morning at church (which Mom rarely attended), and Sunday evening's youth group, if they weren't booked for an afternoon with friends or Mom's family, they could envision letting Dad spend a few hours with them. Understand, these lies are coming from OLDER kids, who were WELL OVER the idea that fairies were real. They were young and idealistic enough that they did not WANT to do the wrong thing, but when their mother explained all the reasons they would want to lie, they did NOT naturally revert to the truth. Faced with the possibility that they could get what they wanted, and not get caught, by lying. They lied.
The Mom who taught her kids to hide things from their Dad and to lie about things so she could win the custody battle, is now reaping the rewards of her choice, and now that the children are adults, they are lying to her as well. But that is all I'll say about that situation for now, because this is not about the evils of using your children as weapons against your co-parent, but rather about how easily children lie, how they are not born with an innate knowledge of truth, nor are they born with an innate desire to tell ONLY truth.
The knowledge of what is truth, and the desire to tell it, only come with training. We teach children about how the world works by lying to them... we teach them to "be good" by telling them about Santa Claus, we get them not to cry over losing a tooth by lying to them about the tooth fairy. We tell fairy tales that have morals we want them to learn. And if they ask us the tough questions about whether our family is financially secure, whether we are cheating on each other, hiding things from each other, or splitting up... if the truth is inconvenient, we lie. On the other end, we spend a lot of time telling them that strangers are dangerous, and then we're surprised when they meet ONE stranger who proves to NOT be dangerous, and they decide we don't know what we're saying when we preach about stranger danger, so they stop being careful around OTHER strangers.
Worse then telling them an altered version of the truth to teach them a lesson, we reinforce the lies they tell. If a cookie is missing from the cookie jar and crumbs all over their mouths, we ask, "where did it go", and when they say "I don't know" or "(name the invisible friend) took it"... we play along and try to convince them to come clean by proving it to them by logic. Or, BONUS, we laugh at the absurdity of the story. In doing so, we confirm for them that the lie worked, and even that it was cute and funny. That telling the lie made us love them more at the same time as keeping them out of trouble! If we ask, "did YOU do it"? (for just about ANY infraction of rules), and they say "no", we are thrown into a posture of having to play detective and prosecutor with them, convince them that their lies are not plausible. We give them the power of having fooled us so now they have made us WORK at it, and they are sure that we can never be completely sure of our conclusions, because they are pretty sure the lie worked. There is no down side to the kid for lying like this.
Think of it. "Did you take the cookie?" has two possible answers. "Yes", guarantees punishment. "No", evades punishment for at least a short time, and forces Mom to find evidence that will convince us that she knows we're lying. And to a 3 year old, saying it louder and longer sometimes just MAKES it true. We all know adults who never learned otherwise... those people who are so sure that if they say it, it is true, despite all evidence to the contrary, or who believe that it doesn't matter what anyone else says, if they say it louder and longer, we'll believe, or at least we'll submit to their demands.
So what is the solution? There is no requirement that we STOP telling fairy tales or change the Santa story. No... but we must address each situation of the children finding out the truth, as it arises, confirming for them that there is a different between fairy tales and truth, and the fairy tales are often based upon truth or teach very valuable lessons. But when we catch them red-handed in the cookie jar, we need not engage in any little games where they get to play "innocent until proven guilty" and turn us into a detective and prosecutor. Particularly when they are not old enough to understand logical reasoning! NO. When we catch them with a hand in the cookie jar, it's perfectly OK if they think we have eyes in the back of our heads... They were SURE we were turned around or out of the room, but we KNOW that they just stole a cookie. At the time of life when they can't possibly understand logical reasoning, it's perfectly OK if we are part of that magical world in their heads where some things... fairys, Santa, and Mom & Dad, KNOW EVERYTHING. We don't ASK, because we KNOW. So we do not ask, we TELL them. Johnny, you just took a cookie. You know how you're not supposed to get into the cookie jar when Mom is not here? Well, because you took a cookie now, you go into time out. 3 minutes. And then you don't get a cookie later because you already had it now. OK? And we do NOT let them wheedle, whine, and try to convince us that we're wrong.
Of course this doesn't work if we are not sure. Being unsure and falsely accusing the kid is a sure-fire way to OTHER bad things. However... sometimes we have to decide whether it's more important to make sure the kid does not get the feeling that lying can get them off the hook for stuff, or ... well, whatever other bad thing we're facing... punishing them for a cookie that we're not sure whether they ate it or not. Teaching them to save snacks till Mom says it's snack time, or whatever other lesson... which is more important... explaining snack time to a kid who can barely pronounce the word "snack", or teaching the child that lying does not work?
If you have gotten past this age and are confronted with a child who seems entrenched in a lying behavior, you may have some very difficult choices. Consult a therapist for help with this. With one of my foster children, I have to say that the therapist and I worked out a very important intervention for lying... we needed to even praise the child for telling the truth EVEN WHEN the truth was, "yes, I hit my little brother". The bottom line is that we were never going to get that statement out of her without a lot of work, so giving her the opportunity to lie about it by asking the question was not going to happen. We needed to work on telling the truth in LITTLE issues, like whether her homework was done or whether she spilled her orange juice, having a little party even, (making a big deal out of the occasion, not a whole PARTY with cupcakes & stuff!)... to celebrate her successes in telling the truth. Something like this needs to be done very carefully.
And the sooner, the better. You REALLY do not want to wait till the kids are away at college before you address the issue... because they'll be lying to you about the BIG things... drinking, drugging, roommates, romances, health, tuition, other finances, grades, and future plans... that can become a BIG expense (bail, bailing out credit, dropping out of college, raising grandbabies, etc). At some level, if your child has learned that lying is easier than the truth, you'll be lucky if your kid gets through adulthood without missing a holiday season visit with you because of a prison term!
Kids DO lie. And if we cannot acknowledge it, we cannot address it. And if we DO try to address it, we need to do so in a way that they can learn how to tell the truth. If we do not, we will regret it.
Monday, July 25, 2011
NO BONFIRES: 10 steps to getting rid of your ex's stuff
Everyone who has had a heart-wrenching split from their mate knows of the urge to have a bonfire. Movies have touted its efficiency in purging emotional baggage. But deep down, we all also know that the tactic is wrong. Somewhere, deep down, we are motivated by anger, and destroying our partner’s belongs feels satisfying in its vengeful quality.
SO,I must warn that the little voice in the back of your head is a good voice. It is telling you not to trash your ex's stuff, and it is right. Setting fire to things that symbolize your ex lover is doing violence, while perhaps not as taboo as doing violence to the person, it is still a violent display of anger. At the outset, you envision living in a home free of their stuff, but deep down, a little devil inside is dancing with glee at the disappointment of your ex in finding out that the stuff has been trashed. A bonfire is the ultimate display of disrespect for the person you once shared a life with.
While some therapists may encourage such grand displays of anger, I believe this is misguided advice. I agree that it is good to expel the energy behind an angry feeling, but the harm that a bonfire does goes beyond a few missing photos and heirlooms. Domestic violence experts warn that destroying clothing or precious items belonging to another person is abusive. It’s a display of anger and destruction that will give the message to the victim of the anger, and the message is that the abuser is dangerous. This message, whether intended to do so or not, coerces compliance. The woman whose clothing has been slashed will fear defying her mate. The man whose family heirlooms have been destroyed will fear that the person who destroyed these things intends to alienate the children from his side of the family. The victims of this distruction fear defying the destroyer, in a way that does not do justice. It only does more destruction. So, when people plan bonfires with the intention of avoiding violence, and they would never want to believe that they are being violent, the opposite is what happens. They become the violent abuser. But ultimately, what they are doing is just as bad as the violent husband who has removed his wife’s clothing from the closet and slashed it, turning it into a message to her that he is dangerous and has control over things that are precious to her.
If you are convinced of the wisdom of this, you need an alternative, acceptable, plan of action for getting rid of your ex’s junk. So, here’s the plan:
If you follow these steps and do not play games with them or do anything unreasonable in the course of setting deadlines and making this happen, you will have the satisfaction of knowing that you did the right thing and did not give into the temptation to hurt someone else, needlessly.
SO,I must warn that the little voice in the back of your head is a good voice. It is telling you not to trash your ex's stuff, and it is right. Setting fire to things that symbolize your ex lover is doing violence, while perhaps not as taboo as doing violence to the person, it is still a violent display of anger. At the outset, you envision living in a home free of their stuff, but deep down, a little devil inside is dancing with glee at the disappointment of your ex in finding out that the stuff has been trashed. A bonfire is the ultimate display of disrespect for the person you once shared a life with.
While some therapists may encourage such grand displays of anger, I believe this is misguided advice. I agree that it is good to expel the energy behind an angry feeling, but the harm that a bonfire does goes beyond a few missing photos and heirlooms. Domestic violence experts warn that destroying clothing or precious items belonging to another person is abusive. It’s a display of anger and destruction that will give the message to the victim of the anger, and the message is that the abuser is dangerous. This message, whether intended to do so or not, coerces compliance. The woman whose clothing has been slashed will fear defying her mate. The man whose family heirlooms have been destroyed will fear that the person who destroyed these things intends to alienate the children from his side of the family. The victims of this distruction fear defying the destroyer, in a way that does not do justice. It only does more destruction. So, when people plan bonfires with the intention of avoiding violence, and they would never want to believe that they are being violent, the opposite is what happens. They become the violent abuser. But ultimately, what they are doing is just as bad as the violent husband who has removed his wife’s clothing from the closet and slashed it, turning it into a message to her that he is dangerous and has control over things that are precious to her.
If you are convinced of the wisdom of this, you need an alternative, acceptable, plan of action for getting rid of your ex’s junk. So, here’s the plan:
1) When you have separated and to not intend to reconcile, give your former partner a reasonable amount of time to get settled. “Reasonable”, depends upon the circumstances. It is longer than a week, not as long as a decade.
2) Consult your lawyer to make sure you do not make deadlines that are not appropriate for your situation. Ask for help setting reasonable limits so that you will not have stuff taken from you and that you will be safe if there are issues of physical violence or distrust as part of this separation. The lawyer can help you decide whether you need to have friends standing by with you, if you need to pack the stuff and leave the home, if you can have police standing by (you may have to pay for this service from off duty police officers). There are many options, even if you do not have a lawyer, pay for an hour worth of their time to get some ideas on how to do this properly so that no one will ever accuse you of contempt of court or worse: a crime of taking or destroying someone else’s property. With guidelines from your lawyer on how you can protect yourself and your stuff while your ex is removing their stuff, move forward.
3) Let your former partner know that you want them to remove their property from your home. Give them a reasonable deadline. Offer opportunities to schedule the move-out.
4) Either give it all to them and give them enough time to pack it all, or give them enough time to sort through it all as well as time to pack it up. It is often an entire lifetime worth of stuff. Be reasonable.
5) This part of the split is harder on them than it is on you. For you, it is an imposition into your private space. For them, it is the logistical nightmare of moving their entire life without causing too much trouble to anotehr person. Do not complain that they do not have enough friends to help with the move, or that they do not have the strength or space in their truck to complete it in one trip. Those complaints are only intended to embarass them and hurt them, and make the whole task more difficult. Some people find it hard to impose on others for help in situations like this. Other people cannot afford the moving van needed to do the job properly. Do not be cruel about it. Remember how difficult it was to move when you were together and being cooperative with each other? This is worse for them, going it alone. So have a little sympathy. I know, I know, they hurt you and they deserve this pain. Still, you want to be the better person (by seeking out advice, you are trying to be the better person). So within your means and your former partner’s means, find a way to manage the logistics of removing their stuff from your house, without using it as an opportunity to hurt or embarrass them, or rack up unnecessary costs. This is the last time you have to cooperate with each other, try not to make it a nightmare that will cause everyone involved to feel justified in being upset with you. Yes, there are plenty of reasons for you to be upset with them, but do not allow your anger and upset show in this task. This is not the time or place for you to contemplate revenge.
6) For items you agree upon, offer to pack. It will save them time and save you time of being intruded upon. If you do pack for them, then do so carefully. Let it roll off your back if they decline your offer with some nasty comment that suggests you are incompetent. Wrap and pack the things as well or better than you would do for yourself. No letting it sit in moldy puddles of water in your shed after you have packed it and until they can schedule a pick-up.
7) For photos and memorabilia, sort out what you want and put the remainder in a box for the ex. Your ex gets that box outright and can take it home to sort through at leisure. Let the ex sort through the items you choose to keep. They will be sorting these items into two piles. Some they do not want and therefore automatically go to you without question. Others, they want. This is the pile of disputed items. For disputed photos and papers, get copies. If any disputed items can be copied, then do so and each of you keep a copy (digitalizes photo records make this task much easier than a decade or two ago!) Keep the remaining disputed items and come up with a way to distribute them later. Never, ever assume that it yours and use it or dispose of it until you have resolved the dispute.
8) If your former partner does not cooperate with your attempts to get them to remove their stuff, your lawyer can help in explaining what is reasonable as far as giving them notice and a deadline. Be reasonable. Make sure they receive your message that you will be getting rid of their stuff if they don’t pick it up. If you have a court order to give them stuff, and it’s still at your home, your lawyer will probably recommend going back to court to get an order that will set deadlines and procedures for managing the pick-up.
9) ONLY after you are certain that your partner has every item that they might want to get, assuring that you have not hidden things from them, that they have not forgotten some vital heirloom that they will only remember at Christmas, or their parent’s anniversary, etc., THEN you may dispose of the remainder of the items. Have a garage sale, toss them in the trash. If they are papers that contain identifying information, shredding and bonfires are acceptable. Be safe about however you handle their former property that they have chosen not to pick up or forgotten about. You do not want to be the source of a lifelong identity theft problem because you failed to take care of their copy of their birth certificate when you found it in your attic a decade after the divorce and they didn’t want to pick it up.
10) Throughout this, remember that you can only control your own behavior. You cannot control theirs. Do your best to remain in control of your emotions and be treat their property and them with respect. Do not call them names or demean them for having difficulty in organizing this task. Remember that it is a monumental task and they are in just as much pain as you are, more, maybe, for having had to make do without their stuff, since the separation. Remember that they are the ones moving and going through this part of the trouble, only half of the problem is over with for them, once they have removed the stuff from your home. They still have to figure out what to do with it, where to put it, how to unpack, etc., etc., after you are finished with the task. Be respectful. Even if they are cruel, mean, angry, remember that this is their behavior, and you do not have to respond in kind. Try not to cry or yell or have drama during the contact. There is time enough for you to fall apart when it’s over.
If you follow these steps and do not play games with them or do anything unreasonable in the course of setting deadlines and making this happen, you will have the satisfaction of knowing that you did the right thing and did not give into the temptation to hurt someone else, needlessly.
Saturday, July 23, 2011
Cooperative co-parenting: giving each other the information
I recently helped someone figure out how to handle a situation: her child was scheduled for an event. She and her ex husband had chosen to schedule the event together, because they were trying to be cooperative co-parents rather than competitive co-parents. But she was the "point person" on the task of applying for the event, paying, preparing and taking the child to the event. She sent several reminders, and could not figure out why he had not yet asked her for the address or contact information so he could attend and participate. She was getting frustrated, and believed he was expecting her to act as his receptionist, organizing his schedule for him and helping him figure out how to get there and who to contact so that he could do something special for their child.
It took about a minute and a half of talking to her that she realized what was going on. In her head, she was handling this in the same way she handled things during the marriage, when they lived in the same house and drove to events in the same vehicle. She was frustrated at what she perceived to be his inability to organize his life. She expected him to rely upon her, so she did not just cut and paste the contact and other event information (date, time, location) into her e-mail reminders to him. She was waiting for him to realize that he did not have it already and ASK for it. She was getting frustrated at him for not recognizing that he did not have it yet, and expecting her to organize his life for him (or at least his participation in this event).
I pointed out that it does not matter HOW he organizes himself any more. That's up to him. But in case he is the type who doesn't realize that he doesn't have the address of the place he's going, until he's about to get in the car, she can save herself the frustration of getting a last minute call from him while she's in the car and on the way, if she only cuts and pastes the event information into one of her reminder e-mails to him.
She admits to me that her thought process was mixed up with a little anger at him for a past situation where he failed to give her event information until she asked directly, but she realizes that letting this issue become "an issue", is more appropriate to competitive co-parenting than it is to cooperative co-parenting. She realizes that she solves the potential drama in this situation if she sends him the information without making him ask for it first.
We talked a little about her feeling that he was turning her into “his secretary", as she put it. I pointed out that even if this is one of the support staff-like functions of organizing a family, then the secretary of the business doing the event-planning is responsible for sending out the complete contact information for those business people who are not directly planning the event, bur merely attending and participating. When she realized that she is acting as HER OWN secretary rather than his, by giving him complete information, it fell into place in her head. Her responsibility in being point person on an event they agree about, is to keep him fully informed without waiting to be asked.
Once she gives him the information that she possesses, her responsibility to him is over. He can keep or toss the information, if he mistakenly hits the "delete" button, then it's reasonable for him to ask if she can re-send and she’s being nice (and doing right by her kid) to do that, but other than that, it's all on him.
The lesson here? In this world of instant communication, the process of letting each other know who, what, when, where, why (and how much $$), is simple. Cut, paste, and <send>. Assuming that you are in agreement on the actual event, coordinating attendance is as simple as handing each other the information. Cooperative co-parents learn to do this automatically, as automatically as if they were acting as THEIR OWN secretary in forwarding their boss' invitations with complete information. Once the recipient gets the information, it's up to them to follow through. Cooperative co-parents need not nag, push, manipulate or mislead each other on this particular issue. After they have been so good as to cooperate in choosing the event and choosing a point person for making the event happen, all they have to do is inform. Completely.
It took about a minute and a half of talking to her that she realized what was going on. In her head, she was handling this in the same way she handled things during the marriage, when they lived in the same house and drove to events in the same vehicle. She was frustrated at what she perceived to be his inability to organize his life. She expected him to rely upon her, so she did not just cut and paste the contact and other event information (date, time, location) into her e-mail reminders to him. She was waiting for him to realize that he did not have it already and ASK for it. She was getting frustrated at him for not recognizing that he did not have it yet, and expecting her to organize his life for him (or at least his participation in this event).
I pointed out that it does not matter HOW he organizes himself any more. That's up to him. But in case he is the type who doesn't realize that he doesn't have the address of the place he's going, until he's about to get in the car, she can save herself the frustration of getting a last minute call from him while she's in the car and on the way, if she only cuts and pastes the event information into one of her reminder e-mails to him.
She admits to me that her thought process was mixed up with a little anger at him for a past situation where he failed to give her event information until she asked directly, but she realizes that letting this issue become "an issue", is more appropriate to competitive co-parenting than it is to cooperative co-parenting. She realizes that she solves the potential drama in this situation if she sends him the information without making him ask for it first.
We talked a little about her feeling that he was turning her into “his secretary", as she put it. I pointed out that even if this is one of the support staff-like functions of organizing a family, then the secretary of the business doing the event-planning is responsible for sending out the complete contact information for those business people who are not directly planning the event, bur merely attending and participating. When she realized that she is acting as HER OWN secretary rather than his, by giving him complete information, it fell into place in her head. Her responsibility in being point person on an event they agree about, is to keep him fully informed without waiting to be asked.
Once she gives him the information that she possesses, her responsibility to him is over. He can keep or toss the information, if he mistakenly hits the "delete" button, then it's reasonable for him to ask if she can re-send and she’s being nice (and doing right by her kid) to do that, but other than that, it's all on him.
The lesson here? In this world of instant communication, the process of letting each other know who, what, when, where, why (and how much $$), is simple. Cut, paste, and <send>. Assuming that you are in agreement on the actual event, coordinating attendance is as simple as handing each other the information. Cooperative co-parents learn to do this automatically, as automatically as if they were acting as THEIR OWN secretary in forwarding their boss' invitations with complete information. Once the recipient gets the information, it's up to them to follow through. Cooperative co-parents need not nag, push, manipulate or mislead each other on this particular issue. After they have been so good as to cooperate in choosing the event and choosing a point person for making the event happen, all they have to do is inform. Completely.
Thursday, June 16, 2011
How to prepare to request alimony
Preparing to ask for alimony requires getting creative. You must pay attention to financial matters and career issues that you may have put aside when you decided to stay home or take lower paying jobs in order to follow your spouse’s career. Many stay-at-home spouses intentionally ignore financial information and cultivate an attitude of naivete about the cost of the big picture of their lives. But you no longer have a partner to split the responsibilities of maintaining a household with. Your soon-to-be ex spouse will have to do his own grocery shopping, cooking and cleaning, and you will have to take care of your own car and figure out how to bring enough money into your household to make ends meet. And to do this, you need to know how much it takes to make ends meet, and what resources do you have. These are similar to the things you’d need to know if your spouse passed away. The basic question the judge will have is, “how do you plan to finance your life, now that the job of stay-at-home spouse is no longer available?”
Even before the initial shock of the separation and imminent divorce is over, you need to start figuring out what your expenses will be. What will your mortgage or rent and utilities be? How about medical expenses? Transportation? Food, clothing and entertainment? Your lawyer will have worksheets to help you estimate how much you need. Unless the two of you together were able to save money like crazy, you will never get enough money to support your whole lifestyle, from your ex. You will likely have to reduce your expectations, as will he. And they will never demand that more than half of his paycheck go to support you. You may need to have a roof over your head and food. But he also needs those things, plus he needs to do his own cooking and cleaning now that you’re gone, and he probably needs transportation and work clothes. The job of staying at home to take care of his house and kids, is no longer yours and you must make plans to pick up some of the slack in terms of bringing in money. One income simply will not split into two households, so things need to change.
Do you have a job yet? If now, then the judge will ask why not? When you found out about the separation, why did you not run straight out to get work? Have an answer to this question available, even if it does not sound like a pretty answer, so that the judge will understand that you tried, or why you could not try.
Figure out what your career requires in order for you to rehabilitate it. If you were licensed to perform work, but gave up your license because you were not working at that occupation, what will it take to get that license back? Do you quit college or give up other schooling in order to get married or raise children? If so, what will it take to finish your education and get up to speed in your career? Have you moved around the country to follow your spouse’s job opportunities and lost your own opportunities in the process? What would it take to fix that? If you have been unemployed for so long that you do not know what is available to you, start talking to people, make connections, find work. If you are lucky enough to have other sources of income (like a trust fund or savings accounts), this will help you get by. Tell the judge that you are counting on it, and also remind the judge that you have the right to come out of the marriage with just as much STUFF as your ex does, without having to sell all the furniture to finance the rehabilitation of your career. Do not try to convince a judge that you have been living off of zero for the past year during a separation, and that you have no resources and must live 100% off your ex. Tell the judge how you supported yourself during the separation and why this source of support should not be counted on as a continuing source.
If you are unlucky enough to be disabled and unable to work, and you hope for the judge to agree with you, then please go apply for disability now, if you have not done so already! A disability determination in social security court will certainly help persuade the judge in your divorce, that you are unable to work. If, on the other hand, your disability is that you have frequent migraines and must stay in bed 20 hours a day (I had one client whose ex tried to convince the judge of this), remember that this will mean you might be telling the judge that you cannot be a fit mother to your very active children who need supervision more than 4 hours a day (my client’s ex did not count on this).
Whatever you do, make some plan to support yourself. If the only work you can find is as a greeter at WalMart, take the job to show that you are being industrious and trying to make ends meet in your separation. Figure out how to work the child-rearing around your job, and if this means making your ex step up to the plate and share in these duties, make sure he is aware of this and has enough advance notice that he can arrange his own time off work when it’s his day to maintain the kids. Do not count on a judge agreeing with you that your children should never need daycare, sitters, or after school care.
Figure out how much you will need from your ex to make up the difference between your pay and your expenses. If your way of supporting yourself happens to be finding a new lover, understand that the courts are not likely to agree with you that your soon-to-be ex should support you and your new lover. Calculate child care expenses separately, because those will be requested as part of the child support amount. Don’t try to get daycare and babysitters paid for by your alimony. You don’t want this, anyways, because you have to pay taxes on your alimony, but you don’t get taxed on the child support that you receive, so you want your ex to pay for child-issues in a separate amount than in your spousal support check.
Gather information about what you did to support your ex’s school or career, and how his career or your support caused a detriment to your own career. Be prepared to explain what it will take to rehabilitate your career. Be realistic. If your career cannot be rehabilitated, don’t expect the judge to order him to pay for it. If you were a 110 lb world class prima ballerina who has gained 150 lbs, had 3 kids and is now 20 years older, it’s going to be different than if you were a hair stylist who stopped paying for her license just last year and has only been away from work for 5 years. If you were a teacher who married a doctor and were in divorce court 2 years later, do not expect the judge to make your doctor ex husband make up the difference between your teacher’s salary and his doctor’s salary, for live. Getting a man to say “I do” is not like winning the lottery. It’s more like getting a job, and if the marriage is over, the job is over. The judge needs to hear your realistic plan for your new life. Everyone in the courtroom knows it will not be easy. It’s called “work” for a reason. But divorce means that the opportunity to have someone else support you while you make sure the house is spotless and the kids’ homework is done, is gone. As a career choice, "stay at home housewife" only exists for as long as the marriage exists. More on that later.
The judge hears from many people daily about how easy or difficult it is to get a job today, and will have an idea of how long it should take YOU to get something new going, so if you exaggerate or procrastinate, the judge will know. And will give you less than you request. If you go ahead and make a realistic plan and start to follow through on it, the judge will know that you are being realistic and will be more likely to give you what you need.
Your best bet in convincing a judge to give you as much alimony as possible is to figure out how much you need, make a plan for how to get to where you are self supporting, show that you are being industrious, and calculate the difference between what you can earn and what you need.
Wednesday, June 15, 2011
Explain why I can not get permanent alimony. What is Rehabilitative alimony?
Very few people qualify for permanent alimony any more. In the 1950s, it seems that permanent alimony was the standard, and unfortunately, movies such as “the Odd Couple”, gave us the impression that this is how divorce is, and should be, handled. That getting a man down the aisle and saying “I do” was like winning the lottery for a woman. That she would, forever after, be entitled to have him support her “in the style to which she has become accustomed”.
If you are separating or divorcing in the 21st century, wipe those thoughts out of your vocabulary. In the 1950s, women had been bumped out of the workforce by men returning from WWII. Men ruled the roost and “the little lady” (a), could not get good employment outside of the home and (b), was given an allowance by her husband to use to keep the household running. Men did not lift a finger to diaper the children, were banned from the delivery room, even, and basically did not show up in their children’s lives except to cheer them on at little league or other special events. In a divorce, the women always got the children, and without the assistance of the father to raise the children, they were not expected to “go back to” work. There was no “back” to get to, back then.
Someone, in some movie, decided that “the style to which she has become accustomed” was the standard that the man had to provide for the woman. While this may be one factor used in determining what amount to award in alimony cases, the reality is that one cannot take one income, split it in two, and manage to keep EITHER party in the style to which it has become accustomed if the other party is to have any possibility of living, themselves. Many other factors come into play as well. That held true in the 1940s and 50s, and is more true now, as people have been living beyond their means in the first place, and are divorcing with tons of debts outstanding.
In the 60 years since the times where alimony to a woman was expected, we worked hard to get more opportunity for women in the workforce. Men worked just as hard to become more a part of their children’s lives. There has been a change in the way divorce is handled as well. Even if you chose a traditional family constellation for your household, a woman still has more opportunity than her mother/grandmother. And even for the husband working full time while supporting a stay-at-home wife, he probably still changes more diapers, does more homework with, and handles more issues about raising the kids more his father and grandfather before him. Each new generation brings new opportunities. And divorces have changed to reflect these opportunities.
No one will tell a loving couple whether or not they are allowed to choose to have either family member stay home and not earn money, so long as they are living within their means and not asking the court to mediate their differences, but where a couple has separated and one of them asks for the court to order their partner to help maintain the family, the choices to keep one of them unemployed are reviewed and may require change. Some general principles have emerged as part of this, but the rules are constantly changing. No one can look at what happened in their friend’s case, or look up the rules on the internet, and expect them to stay the same. In general, as time progresses, it seems the Courts are less paternalistic… there is less coddling of women. Women are less likely to be able to claim total dependency. Judges are less willing to believe that women are incompetent and incapable of fending for themselves in the working world. And the courts are giving more respect to the position of “father”, as being an important and valuable one to enforce.
What remains in this new way of thinking, is that many families who worked well together, made some decisions that would cause one or the other’s career to falter, so the courts are left with trying to figure out how to solve this so that the one with the faltering career can get back on their feet after a divorce. The money that is needed for this is often called “rehabilitative” alimony (or spousal support). This is money that is given for a temporary period, expected to help the receiving spouse rehabilitate their career prospects after years away from the workforce. It may include money for education, licensing, or to tide the receiving spouse over while working their way up the ladder at the office. It may help with relocation expenses or finance a startup of a new business or company. It almost always has a time limitation, and is usually between 1/3 to 1/2 of the length of the marriage, to be ended entirely if the former spouse remarries.
To prepare for the new world of single-hood where the only alimony available will be temporary, or “rehabilitative”, a woman should do a little research. The Courts want to help a receiving spouse get up to speed in her career, but do not intend to let her lounge around and procrastinate. They will not accept it if you have remained naïve about finances and career issues once a divorce was imminent. By the time you get to trial, you need a plan, because if you have not figured out what you need, they will possibly give you less than you need.
Stay tuned to this blog for a post on how to prepare when you need to ask for alimony.
Tuesday, June 14, 2011
Alimony: your friends are a bad substitute for a good lawyer
Your own perception of what you deserve in a divorce is likely skewed. It is either higher than realistic, or lower, depending upon your own perception of yourself, your friend’s support, your understanding of what others got, and what you read in the news or online. Do not rely upon any of these ways of finding out what is fair and what you might get in terms of alimony!
To begin with, we have a growing problem in society of demanding that “friendship” means “blind support”. In many groups, you get together for a chat with friends, and whoever of the friends has bad news expects the others to rally around with supportive contributions to the conversation. “He’s a jerk”, or “good riddance to her”, are expected. Group-thinking prevails, and any thought which disagrees with the main force of the group is suppressed. "Support" is blindly re-defined to mean "agree with whatever the upset person wants to hear", and as long as everyone follows this social code, everyone will be happy. So when you tell your pals about your financial situation, you expect them to be similarly supportive. You expect any unsupportive persons who maybe telling you something different, will be run out of town on a rail. Even if you want your friends to give you a realistic appraisal of your chances, you can expect them to be overly optimistic, in the mistaken belief that you need to keep a positive attitude.
This kind of support can hurt you. While it feels good, this kind of groupthink rarely reflects what is really going on the world. Just because someone suffered through their own divorce and made a killing off of their ex, does not mean you will. You need to meet with an attorney to get the real story. And if one attorney does not agree with you, go ahead and get a second opinion. Be careful to find a smart opinion, not just one that will agree with you. If you get your advice from an attorney who has never seen this issue in court, and their advice is different from what every other attorney has told you, there may be a very good reason for that. Look for an attorney who has handled this kind of issue before, successfully, and ask them for a realistic appraisal of whether you can win in your case. One frequent refrain in family court is that family cases are like fingerprints in that no two are exactly alike. Do not think that because your bests friend married for 15 years to an engineer with 3 kids got a bazillion in support, that you, also married to an engineer for 15 years and with 3 kids, will get the same. Other factors could be at play here that could totally change your result. You need to be prepared for this possibility.
Let me give you an example of how your friends or family’s blind “support” can lead you astray:
I had a client who arrived on my doorstep with a horrifying situation. After an annulled teen marriage and a brief first marriage right after college, both of which ended amicably, she spent 25 years with her second husband, sticking through thick and thin. He was a lazy jerk, but she was embarrassed about picking so badly and having 2 divorces under her belt by the age of 25, so she was not going to have a third divorce! Unfortunately, her husband took advantage of this. He kept getting himself fired from one job after another, forcing her to work harder and harder if they were to make ends meet. She would come home to a full slate of parenting duties, because he chose not to be engaged with the children. She did the cooking, cleaning, took the kids to the doctor and everything. All he did was play guitar and work out with weights in the basement. About 15 years into the marriage, she started talking about divorce. He had done some research online and talked to pals about it, and he felt he had positioned himself perfectly to be supported by her, for life. So he told her this. She sought advice from friends who were divorced, most of whom were stay-at-home mothers who really did do the work of staying at home. These friends confirmed that a stay-at-home parent with 2 children would most certainly get alimony after a 15 year marriage. Terrified and fully aware that she could not support two households, she remained until it became unbearable.
Luckily, her next move was to hire me. Many people in her place would try to save themselves a few bucks by trying to do it for themselves. especially after hearing from everyone they knew, that they would lose their argument in the divorce. I explained that he and her friends were wrong.
While everyone was right about the courts trying to be less sexist about their decisions, his fantasy of what defines a “house-husband”, was mistaken. He could NOT refuse to be a parent and ignore the kids so that they'd insist on leaving when their mother left, and then get child support. He could NOT, as an able-bodied man, choose not to work just because he had a spouse who would pick up the slack while she was married to him, and expect that a judge would make her pay him to continue. He had missed some essential elements to positioning himself for a good result. He had assumed that there are "tricks" that he could exploit to bring him a result that was unfair to his ex and his kids, and allow him to continue to be lazy in life. He was wrong.
And bringing in 500 pages of automated applications to menial jobs, generated by sending his resume to Monster.com, followed up by nothing, would not change that. He could NOT convince the judge that he had made a reasonable effort to become self-supporting.
After I laid out the situation for the judge, the judge actually turned to him and said, “I hear Circle K is hiring”. His attorney was embarrassed. My client nearly fainted in relief. He had spent years, online and learning about the purpose of alimony, intentionally positioning himself for becoming the winner of the “alimony lottery”, and having buddies pound him on the back in congratulations about what a brilliant strategist he was. And he missed the simple guiding principle… that every adult needs to work at something, and if your joint choice of how to divide labor within the marriage makes it tough for you to get back up to speed in your own career choice, THEN … MAYBE… you will be supported until you can revamp your career.
If you spend your time positioning yourself to look like a lazy bum, and you show up in court with that record… well, your friends, your internet research, and your own fantasies have steered you wrong. There are legitimate "tips and tricks" out there, none of which are very "tricky", to help you position yourself in a divorce or separation. For example, getting copies of all the financial documents and keeping them in a separate place, closing access to accounts for the purpose of keeping EITHER of you from spending all the spare cash and wasting it before separating, sitting down when you have both come to a conclusion that you can't stay together, and before you have decided to be evil to each other about it, and separating all the personal property and heirlooms, removing them and putting them in separate households so that you can't get evil and start having bonfires with each other's things once the amicable stage is over... those are great tips. But trying to find a way to trick the system into giving you more than you deserve, letting you be an adult who does not pull their own weight... these are bad tricks and tips to take, and if your friends are urging you into doing that, they're wrong.
Hollywood may have given us the wrong impression of what is appropriate... from "Odd Couple" and "First Wives' Club", where ex wives receive ample support to live on, no matter what the pre-divorce situation... to various shows where the main characters' separation is a side issue and we merely witness them being evil to each other by doing things like telling the children that the reason they can't afford this or that is that the support is too high, or not high enough... these are NOT the appropriate places to get our strategy. Please, consult with a reputable lawyer, a mediator, an economist and/or a therapist, for legitimate help with your separation and divorce. DO NOT rely upon Hollywood or your best pals for good tips and tricks!
If you spend your time positioning yourself to look like a lazy bum, and you show up in court with that record… well, your friends, your internet research, and your own fantasies have steered you wrong. There are legitimate "tips and tricks" out there, none of which are very "tricky", to help you position yourself in a divorce or separation. For example, getting copies of all the financial documents and keeping them in a separate place, closing access to accounts for the purpose of keeping EITHER of you from spending all the spare cash and wasting it before separating, sitting down when you have both come to a conclusion that you can't stay together, and before you have decided to be evil to each other about it, and separating all the personal property and heirlooms, removing them and putting them in separate households so that you can't get evil and start having bonfires with each other's things once the amicable stage is over... those are great tips. But trying to find a way to trick the system into giving you more than you deserve, letting you be an adult who does not pull their own weight... these are bad tricks and tips to take, and if your friends are urging you into doing that, they're wrong.
Hollywood may have given us the wrong impression of what is appropriate... from "Odd Couple" and "First Wives' Club", where ex wives receive ample support to live on, no matter what the pre-divorce situation... to various shows where the main characters' separation is a side issue and we merely witness them being evil to each other by doing things like telling the children that the reason they can't afford this or that is that the support is too high, or not high enough... these are NOT the appropriate places to get our strategy. Please, consult with a reputable lawyer, a mediator, an economist and/or a therapist, for legitimate help with your separation and divorce. DO NOT rely upon Hollywood or your best pals for good tips and tricks!
Sunday, June 5, 2011
Fixing the Picker: Part III. Money
Most divorces arise from serious disagreements about money: How to handle it, how to save and spend, how to get it, and who has the power or control over it. Whenever I see a statistic about what causes people to break up, THINGS and MONEY are always the number one issue. He can’t keep a job. She spends every dime that comes into the house. He wastes the joint money on golf, a boat, or some other habit he insists on maintaining. She overspends on the kids, claiming a right to do so because “it’s all about the CHILDREN”, despite that it will put them into bankruptcy. She refuses to work despite that he says they can’t afford a stay-at-home parent. They spend themselves into bankruptcy. He doles out money to her like a parent giving allowance to a kid. She maintains her salary in a separate account for herself (after advice from others that a woman always needs “her own” money), while thinking of HIS salary as jointly owned. He sends money to his parents to help them out in their old age, despite that she says they can’t afford to do so. She is jealous of the alimony or child support that he owes to previous relationships and wants him to run to court and find ways to reduce it. They invest in a business, throw all their money into it, and then can’t agree on some details of how to save it when it fails, and blame each other for losing their nestegg. Every one of these situations comes from a divorce I handled, and I could simply keep going. The point is that every person has their own issues, and every couple develops their own ways of handling the joint issues. And many times, these issues and the couple's ways of handling the issues can create problems.
However it comes around, money is a huge issue in many marriages, and is the catalyst for most breakups.
Given this information, it makes sense to have long discussions about money before you marry. If your officiant does not require pre-marital counseling that has a component about finances, you should do it on your own. And even if you do get a premarital counseling on finance, you should work harder on this issue than your counselor requires.
After years of being a divorce attorney, I decided to avoid this for my future relationships. When we were dating, I decided to explore the whole situation before we went further. Use my choices as a guide in doing it, yourself: I provided information to my (now) husband about my finances, my office and business, my retirement savings, my income and my tax liabilities. He knew the value of my house, my car, and the loans on them. He knew about every credit account I had. I asked for his information. I got him to let me browse through his copy of his divorce file along with all the financial disclosures from it. I checked to make sure he had fully paid his divorce lawyer from his previous marriage. I knew his child support situation and his retirement savings situation. I looked (with permission) at the credit bureau report that he had from the purchase of his post-divorce house. I offered for him to get a credit bureau report on me.
We talked about our future plans, about our business plans, our retirement plans, our careers, our plans for financing our lives. We talked about the fact that neither of us were from rich families and were not living off of trust funds. We talked about whether either of us would have ongoing obligations to our parents as they aged and how we planned to handle the moral obligations without ruining ourselves financially. We talked about the same issues in regard to his kids and their college expectations. We looked at each other’s career paths, and discussed the mistakes we and each other had made.
Even with all this talk, there were surprises. We did not anticipate the economic downturn and the resulting affect it had on our real estate and retirement accounts. We did not anticipate the job situation that required us to move around the country. But the fact that we had discussed all these other pieces of the puzzle ahead of time made it possible, when the country’s financial crisis arose, for us to trust each other in discussing how to resolve our personal issues within the country’s crisis.
The older you are, the more of a track record you have in issues involving things and money. Look at how someone chooses to spend thier money. Are they living high on a small budget and using credit to do so, or are they pinching pennies with a million dollars in the bank? Are you overspending your income and hoping a partnership with someone will help solve your credit issues? Does your proposed partner know that you expect them to solve your money issues?
If you and your partner are young, it’s difficult to ascertain what your partner’s attitudes might be, but even if both of you are financial babies (very new to understanding financial issues), you can figure out if you have similar hopes and dreams, and whether you have a smart plan for making those things happen. You know whether each other has bought all the toys you can afford or whether you are trying to develop a habit of working and saving for a rainy day. And recognize that it will take work to grow together in these issues.
If you and your partner are older, you can look at your partner’s track record and figure some of this out. Expect that you will not change someone else’s basic attitudes about money. Expect that you will have to negotiate and grow together on this issue. Expect that from time to time, even people who agree on everything will encounter surprises or have to negotiate. But you cannot ignore it.
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