Graceful Divorce Solutions: A Comprehensive and Proactive Guide to Saving You Time, Money, and Your Sanity

Copyright © 2014 M. Marcy Jones, J.D.

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Editor: Jill Dearman

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AUTHOR’S NOTE: The material in this book is provided for informational purposes only. The reader should consult with his or her personal legal advisor before utilizing the information contained in this book. The law is different in every state. The author and the publisher assume no responsibility for any damages or losses incurred during or as a result of following this information.

Many names and identifying details of the individual examples described in this book have been changed to preserve confidentiality.

ISBN: 978-1-4525-9625-9 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4525-9627-3 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4525-9626-6 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2014907036

Balboa Press rev. date: 04/27/2014

Contents

Dedication

Acknowledgments

Foreword By Carolyn Ellis

Preface To The Second Edition

Introduction: How This Book Came To Be

Chapter 1: Getting Divorced? It’s Time For Change

Chapter 2: Defining The Problem: The Way We Do Divorce

Chapter 3: What’s Your Story? Where Are You Now?

Chapter 4: It’s Time To Focus: What’s Important To You And Where Do You Want To Be?

Chapter 5: The Truth About Children And Divorce

Chapter 6: More About The Children

Chapter 7: Whose Fault Is It Anyway? (The Myth Of Winning)

Chapter 8: The Four Divorces: How To Prepare Yourself To Do Divorce Better

The Legal Divorce

The Financial Divorce

The Social Divorce

The Emotional Divorce

Chapter 9: Your Options: A Blueprint For Change

Option One—Litigation

Option Two—Lawyer/Lawyer Negotiation

Option Three—Collaborative Divorce

Option Four—Mediation

Option Five—Do It Yourself

Chapter 10: More On Collaborative Divorce: The Kinder, Gentler Choice

What Is Collaborative Divorce?

What Is The Collaborative Divorce Team?

Who Are The Collaborative Team Members And What Are Their Roles?

Why Is The Collaborative Divorce Process One Of The Best Methods To Resolve A Divorce?

How Is Collaborative Divorce Different From Mediation?

How Is Collaborative Divorce Different From Divorce Litigation?

What Happens If One Side Has A Hidden Agenda Or Is Dishonest In Some Way?

Is Collaborative Divorce The Best Choice For Me?

How Can I Find A Collaborative Lawyer?

Is The Collaborative Divorce Process Expensive?

Chapter 11: More On Litigation: The Legal Vortex

Chapter 12: Falling Off The Effective Communication Wagon: When Your Best Intentions Just Don’t Work

Chapter 13: Domestic Violence: It’s Epidemic

Chapter 14: High Conflict Divorces: Who Are These People?

Chapter 15: The Five Issues Of Divorce

Custody

Visitation

Child Support

Important Note On Custody, Visitation, And Child Support

Property Division

Spousal Support

Chapter 16: Creating Your New Financial Life

Chapter 17: Boomers Splitting: What You Need To Know

Chapter 18: Choosing A Lawyer: Getting The Right Fit For You

Chapter 19: My Closing Argument: Make Way For Change

Recommended Reading And Resources

Glossary

About Graceful Divorce Solutions

About The Author

Dedication

To my children, Collier and Jordan. You have grown into amazing adults, despite my less than stellar parenting during some tough times. Thank you for your kindness, inspiration, and constant support. I have learned so much from both of you.

And to all of you going through divorce. With my heartfelt compassion, understanding, and encouragement, I hope this book informs you, inspires you, and helps you pass through this challenging time with ease and grace.

Acknowledgments

I am privileged and grateful to have so many wonderful people who have supported me in getting this book written and published. I deeply appreciate each and every one of them and would like to acknowledge them here.

To Sue Brundege, my coach and mentor while I was writing this book. Early in that coaching relationship I made the statement, Someday I would like to write a book, and by the end of that coaching relationship, I had a draft of a manuscript! Your gentle guidance and support helped me to accomplish something I had only dreamed about. Thank you for showing me how to tighten up my writing and for that first round of editing. And, more importantly, thank you for your continued support in helping me to get (and keep!) the vision that I could do this.

To my editor, Jill Dearman, you are an amazingly talented writer, editor, and published author with a great sense of humor. Thank you for the excellent editing, encouragement, and helpful feedback on my writing.

To Carolyn Ellis, for your generosity in taking the time to write an amazing Foreword for me, and to everyone who wrote the wonderful endorsements that follow—Dr. Christiane Northrup, Cheryl Richardson, Constance Ahrons, Pauline Tesler, Stu Web, Lisa Herrick, Christina McGhee, Adele D’Ari, Jill Dearman, Lisa Schenkel, Kimberly Fauss, Deborah Maxey, Rhonda Hess, and Tyler Tichelaar. I am honored and humbled to have your support of this book.

And to my friends, family, and colleagues who supported me in this process. You all helped me to stay the course and believe in myself. Your divine guidance and constant support have made this book a reality. You have my warmest appreciation and sincerest gratitude.

And last, but certainly not least, heartfelt thanks to my former husband and my children, who have been my inspiration and greatest teachers along this journey. But for our experience, I wouldn’t have had the passion, courage, or calling to write this book.

Foreword

By Carolyn Ellis

Divorce is never something for which a person plans. I remember the day when I realized my own marriage—after twenty years and three children—was headed for divorce. Although I asked for the divorce, there was a voice inside my head insisting, Hey, but this isn’t supposed to happen! I thought I was going to be married happily ever after!

As about 50 percent of married couples in North America discover, marriage isn’t always a case of living together happily ever after. Imagine taking every significant component of your life—your most significant intimate relationship, your children, your finances, your emotional well-being, your social network, your home, your sense of identity, and sometimes even your career—and turning them all upside down all at once. Now you’re getting a sense of the far-ranging scope and impact that divorce has on a person’s life. This is true for both the person who chooses to leave the relationship and the one who is left behind.

Making the decision to divorce is difficult in itself. Yet charting your road through divorce and implementing this decision requires a whole level of focus and commitment that is often overlooked. Disentangling the emotional, financial, social, and romantic threads that bind people together is a monumental task. At a time in your life when your emotions are running on overdrive already, you will be asked to make fundamental decisions that will impact the rest of your life. It is a very treacherous mix because when emotions run high, intelligence typically runs low. Your need to articulate your desires clearly, advocate for the needs of yourself and your children, if you have any, and reinvent your life comes at a time when your emotional resilience will be tested to the limits.

Overlay onto this rocky emotional landscape the need to engage in the legal system. Unfortunately, the legal system and the kind of training most lawyers receive often leave much to be desired. Emotionally shell-shocked clients, with little understanding of their rights or how to create a framework for their lives after divorce, stream into lawyers’ offices looking for answers. They place their power in the hands of trained legal professionals, assuming a lawyer or the court system will come up with an answer to their pain and be the vehicle for creating a plan that works and stands the test of time.

What they learn about the conventional approach of duking it out in court between two battling lawyers and a judge with an overflowing docket is that going to court is expensive, time-consuming, destructive to relationships, and extremely stressful to the entire family. Nobody really ends up a winner when all faith, hope, and decision-making on one’s divorce is put in the hands of the attorneys. Parties often leave their court settlements dissatisfied with the outcome and with significantly less money after legal fees are paid out. Divorced parents also face the prospect of how to co-parent with each other for the next decade or two after having torpedoed the goodwill and trust needed to develop a co-parenting partnership.

At the end of the day, you must be the quarterback of the legal team. The court system and the judge view you as a file, not a family. Most lawyers are trained to view things from the adversarial lens and what’s right and what’s wrong. That black-and-white perspective works great if your dispute is about fulfillment of a widget contract. It doesn’t work when you’re talking about reframing a family system that will have an ongoing and dynamic relationship for years to come after the case is settled. What’s needed is for the individual clients to direct their legal advisors in a way that elicits and executes a plan that reflects their values and supports building a new relationship. And that’s where M. Marcy Jones’ Graceful Divorce Solutions comes in.

This book is a must-read for anyone facing the prospect of divorce. With straightforward language and offering a clear approach, Marcy puts you back in the driver’s seat so you can navigate your divorce with more power, ease, and options. What you’ll learn from reading this book will save you literally thousands of dollars compared to if you went through this learning curve in a lawyer’s office.

In this comprehensive and timely book, you’ll learn why the system is broken and why it just is not set up to handle the emotional and psychological issues of divorce. A compassionate and intuitive lawyer, speaker, and advocate, Marcy has spent the last nineteen years working with families going through divorce. She went to law school after her own divorce and with two young children at home, so she has been in the trenches and has studied the workings of the system from all sides. She is passionate and determined to get out her message that there are better ways of divorcing—ways that protect children and preserve relationships.

In Graceful Divorce Solutions, Marcy essentially provides you with your first legal consultation. You learn about the different processes for divorcing, as well as the issues that you need to be thinking about. You’ll be encouraged throughout to take the highest road possible for your situation—with the understanding that there is no one size fits all way of going through this transition. But the important thing is you will become informed and know your options before getting caught up in the system. You will be proactive in your own case—and that is one of Marcy’s primary goals throughout this book.

I am a huge advocate of ensuring information is not just enlightening on an intellectual level, but practical to implement in your daily life. Graceful Divorce Solutions includes not just the information you need about the legal system, but Marcy offers powerful exercises for each aspect of your divorce that will help you articulate your priorities and values on the major pieces of the divorce puzzle. This is a necessary, yet often overlooked, part of creating a divorce solution that works not just legally, but emotionally, over the long haul. So get your pens and notebooks ready and decide for yourself that you will take an active and informed role in this journey upon which you are about to embark.

Throughout this book, Marcy advocates change—change in the legal system, change in the way lawyers represent clients, and change in the way clients come to the table. Here she has given you the information and encouragement you need to be able to partner with your lawyer or mediator or collaborative professional. This book is an invaluable tool to set you up for a better divorce experience.

I firmly believe you don’t have to settle simply for surviving your divorce, as many people assume. Instead, I believe divorce offers huge lessons for us and that it’s possible to thrive after divorce. As a coach and trainer, I’ve shared this message with thousands of people from around the world.

Divorce is an unfortunate reality in our society, but finding ways to reform and humanize it makes us all winners. M. Marcy Jones’ Graceful Divorce Solutions offers a clear roadmap through the legal solutions, which is one of the most intimidating and daunting pieces of divorce. Whether you are going through a divorce now, thinking about separating, or wanting to support a loved one in the process, this book is an indispensable resource and will help to anchor and guide you along the way. It’s a resource that has my highest recommendation!

Carolyn Ellis

Author of The 7 Pitfalls of Single Parenting: What to Avoid to Help Your Children Thrive after Divorce and Creator of the award-winning The Divorce Resource Kit

www.ThriveAfterDivorce.com

Preface to the Second Edition

Since the publication of the first edition of Graceful Divorce Solutions in 2010, important changes have occurred everywhere—in how information is shared, in the economy, and in the world in general. These are intense and unpredictable times. For most of us, it’s all we can do to hang on and try to make sense of our lives.

What I have learned since the first edition of this book is just how necessary this book really is. I have a married friend who told me she thought Graceful Divorce Solutions should be required reading for all married couples. It gave helpful tools as well as new and important insights to her own relationship. Unfortunately, divorce is a fact of life. Not all relationships are forever. And when people decide their relationship is not meant to be forever, what happens then?

If you are going through a divorce or even just thinking about divorcing, this book is your roadmap. You now have the information you need so you can ask better questions of yourself, your spouse, and your attorney. You now can know what to expect going forward. You now are empowered to take charge of your situation and be involved in your process.

I want to congratulate you on being proactive and seeking out this information. With nearly half of all first marriages ending in divorce, and nearly 60 percent of second marriages ending in divorce, it’s time to stop waging divorce wars and time to find more peaceful ways of ending marriages. One of the ways to achieve this change is for you, the person going through it, to become more involved in your own process. This means seeking out important information before you go to a lawyer and before any legal action is begun.

And just to be crystal clear, I am not advocating divorce by any means. What I do know, though, is that people are making decisions to divorce every day. And as a family law attorney with significant training in collaboration, mediation, and interest-based negotiation, I have seen the impact on families of divorce when the couple goes to court as opposed to finding a more peaceful resolution. The difference for the family is immeasurable.

This book provides what you need to know in an easy-to-read, no legalese, fashion. It will put you on the path to achieving a better divorce experience. It informs. It outlines options. It encourages you to make intelligent and responsible choices. And, most importantly, it helps you along the emotional path necessary to weather the challenges of ending a significant relationship with integrity, dignity, and grace.

Those