Marriage or Divorce… Your Time of Choice

There is no question that we live in a time when there are endless choices. Career choices, choice of where to settle down, who we settle down with, what cell phone carrier to use, which of the hundreds of television channels to watch or zillions of internet sites to visit, ad infinitum. Everywhere we look, we have choices, lots of choices! Our choices do come in two types… good and bad.

You are free to choose. But, you do have to deal with the consequences from the choices you end up making.

Just a few decades ago, societal pressures on men and women in America to conform by getting married and having children were enormous: couples had their 2.5 kids and men were the breadwinners and women were the stay-at-home-moms. Those who made choices outside the box risked being looked on as living outside the norm.

In some ways, life seemed easier when there were fewer choices because people knew what was expected of them, they knew where the boundary lines were and they knew that there job was to stay within the lines. The problem comes in when things don't go according to the script or when there is no script to follow.

The world has indeed changed dramatically from those times. Nowadays, when we don't have choices, we often feel trapped and unfulfilled. Perhaps this plethora of choices was started by women who felt there needed to be more to life.

Aside from marriage and divorce, some of the choices we enjoy today include not marrying but having children, marrying but not having children, being single and adopting, being a gay couple and adopting, being a lesbian couple and having a child via in vitro fertilization, having children later in life.

Regardless of how we got where we are, we are here, an age and a culture that is defined by choice. We take our freedom for granted and find it hard to imagine that there are still places throughout the world where marriage is expected or even arranged!

Did you know you even have a choice in exactly how you go about getting a divorce?

Divorce courts operate under the same basic rules used by courts that deal with other disputes. Often these rules do not work well in solving divorce disputes, divorcing couples do better working out solutions themselves or using mediation or collaborative law. Working out a solution together. You and your spouse can sit down and reach agreements on how your possessions and debts will be divided, whether one of you will pay the other support, and how much, and if you have children, how they are going to be raised. For some couples, reaching a settlement on these issues will be so easy that it can be accomplished in one meeting. For others, it makes sense to keep the stress level down by spreading the task out over several meetings.

At WHYmediate?, Find out if mediation can allow you to resolve Divorce conflicts in a positive learning environment that covers how to deal with all the special days in your life.

WHYmediate? Mediation Services
4500 South Lakeshore Drive Suite 300 
Tempe, AZ 85282 
(480) 777-5500
http://whymediate.solutions