What Are the Advantages to Divorce?

As we all know the word Divorce generally has negative connotations. Getting divorced may bring about personal, emotional, relational and financial advantages. Divorced people sometimes pursue enriching and confidence-building activities they gave up during marriage. Some people also expand or renew social relationships and gain independence after separating from their marital relationship.

In some cases, people lose touch with their personal identity and self-interests during marriage. A divorce may cause a person to reflect on passions and preferred activities. Being independent again allows someone time and freedom from pressure, allowing that person to make choices that are self-serving.

While researchers love to praise marriage as a health-boost (they clearly were never stuck in a miserable marriage.) And the rest of us tend to think that a marriage is better than no marriage at all. And while all the stats and studies love to tout the benefits of being hitched, we often forget that it's not about the marriage as much as it is the quality of the marriage. There's been plenty of science to prove that an unhappy, conflict-riddled marriage can be worse for you health-wise than if you were single. And if you hadn't broken up, you would still be at an increased risk for heart disease, cancer, arthritis, diabetes and depression.

When you fall in love again, don't be intimidated by the idea that you don't have what it takes to make a marriage work. You actually have better odds at making your marriage last having been married once before. In fact, a study found that people who remarry are less likely to get divorced. According to the Marriage Foundation, 45 percent of first-time marriages are destined for the divorce courts. Compare that to 31 percent of second-time newlyweds ... how do you like your odds, now?

A recent study indicates that divorced women are often better off in later life. Researchers at the University of Connecticut, Social Security Administration, and National Institute of Aging dug back through 40 years of Census Bureau and Social Security data to see how divorce affected women's earnings over their lifetimes. It turns out that the earnings growth was greatest for divorced women who never remarried. They were more likely to delay drawing Social Security benefits, resulting in higher lifetime benefits than married women. It looks like financial independence maybe a bigger benefit!

Realize that you can re-decorate and re-organize your home, and make it exactly the way you want it? Pink and shabby chic and feminine. Do whatever you’d like! You will be the boss!

At WHYmediate?, we give you the tools you need to resolve your Divorce conflicts in a positive learning environment. 

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

Divorce and Holiday Visitation

With the Fourth of July just around the corner the subject of holiday visitations seemed an appropriate topic for our blog. Are you happy with the visitations you have as a result of your divorce? Did you use a divorce court or did you use mediation for your divorce?

What happens when your holiday falls on the ex’s weekend? Did you work that our in advance? Who gets priority when a date conflicts with a week or weekend that normally belongs to the other parent?

Having a holiday visitation schedule can make life easier because it lays out where the children will be spending each holiday without having to continually negotiate with your ex.

While each state has its own individual visitation recommendations for holidays, parents generally rotate holidays such as Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, New Year's Day, Easter, Memorial Day, July 4th, Labor Day, and Thanksgiving. The children are usually with the mother on Mother's Day and the father on Father's Day. When the parents live far apart, the schedule needs to be adjusted to compensate for travel times.

Christmas vacation is usually split evenly between the parents. For example, one parent will have the first half of the Christmas break and the other parent will have the last half. Ideally, to be fair, this may need to alternate every year.

While the holiday visitation schedule usually takes precedence over the regular repeating schedule, so both parents need to take this into consideration when setting up their visitation schedule for the year. For example, if the non-custodial parent will miss the regular visitation time due to the other parent having that holiday, the regular schedule will resume after the holiday.

Even with a holiday schedule in place, there may still be questions that come up.

No make-up time is given for days that are missed because of the holiday schedule, and no additional time is added to placement time to account for holidays.  The holiday schedule is based solely on the holidays identified in the order. There is a good chance that a judge could miss the 4th of July, or maybe the judge considered it and decided not to add the holiday because it would interrupt the summer schedule.  Regardless of why the 4th of July is not identified, the terms of the order govern until they are modified by a subsequent court order.

An order may be modified in two ways: the two parties can agree to modify the order and submit a stipulation for the court’s approval, or one party can request a modification by filing a motion. 

At WHYmediate?, we give you the tools you need to resolve Divorce conflicts in a positive learning environment. 

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

Do You Know The Best Way To Divorce?

Does our title seem like something that you are looking for? “Resolve Your Divorce Conflicts in a Positive Learning Environment.”  

Are you familiar with the saying “You don’t know what you don’t know.”? If you haven’t learned about the advantages of using Divorce Mediation rather than going to the adversarial process of Divorce Court, then it is something you don’t know. Please take a minute and look over some of the advantages of the services from WHYmediate?.

The WHYmediate? process helps people resolve conflicts and re-create relationships. Mediation is a conflict resolution process – a smart alternative to going to court, saving time, money, energy, stress and paperwork. You will walk away with an in-depth understanding of how to best address communication with the other party. Better mutual understanding can lead to current and future resolution!

Your guided mediation process to resolve your conflict and move you from WHY? to YES!

We can help you stay out of court; avoid the legal fees associated with high court costs and still resolve your conflict!

Did you know that your conflict can result in a lasting growth experience instead of the usual permanent destruction of relationships after the court battle is over? Get on with life, sooner!

In the WHYmediate? process, we will move you from conflict to mutually agreeable terms and mutual understanding – sometimes with grace, sometimes with technical brilliance and sometimes with shear gut intuition and will.

During your mediation session each person involved in the dispute presents a summary of his or her point of view. If you have an attorney, they are often allowed to attend, but you then have to pay for three professionals in the same room at the same time, and most parties do not want to spend that much money these days in these challenging financial times. The mediator will meet with everyone together and may also meet individually with each side. This offers participants the opportunity to communicate to the mediator their real interests in the dispute as well as to vent anger or frustrations outside the presence of the opposing side. The mediator will work with each person until an agreement is reached that is acceptable to everyone. 

Once they do reach agreement, the mediator or the attorneys will put the agreement or the final consent decree or stipulated agreement in writing and signed by the people involved, with the advice of their attorneys which can then be filed as an order to be approved by the judge assigned to your case.

At WHYmediate?, Find out if mediation can allow you to resolve Divorce conflicts in a positive learning environment.

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

Divorce Resolution In The Best Environment

First, going through a divorce is hard. Learning to do it in the very best way does make a bad situation better.

More or less half of folks who marry end up divorced. In divorce as in marriage, friendly trumps fighting for creating positive outcomes for everyone. A collaborative divorce process speeds up the inevitable grief at loss of what was and sets the stage for a better future.

Divorce and relationship endings of all types tend to create emotional distress. The process is often a painful one. Negative emotions like anger, resentment, disappointment, shame, guilt, and anxiety can tempt folks to want to dump blame on the other and to resort to punishment. Yet blame and impulses to punish or get revenge back will not heal anyone's emotional pain, relieve shame, or ease resentments. They just add to the emotional damage of everyone involved.  

The alternative to going to war with fighting, accusations, blame and attempts to use the courts to get even begins with building an honest understanding of what each of you did that led to your divorce.

While coming to this kind of understanding on your own, reviewing your marriage together to build a blame-free narrative is ideal. A legal mediation specialist, a trusted friend, family member, religious counselor or therapy professional may be able to help you. Look back at the history of how your marriage slipped from loving to anger and distance, identifying especially the key factors that undermined the love bond for each of you.

A good divorce mediator will pay close attention to the power balance between the spouses and uses specific techniques to address the imbalances. If one spouse persists in dominating behavior, the mediator will call a stop to the mediation rather than allowing it to continue. One caveat: Even the best mediator can be unaware of a power imbalance if it only goes on outside of the mediation sessions and the spouses don't let their mediator know about these conflicts.

Within mediation, the spouses discover they can stand up for themselves and what they really want. They don't have lawyers speaking for them and telling them what to do. As a result, people who mediate often come out of their divorce with enhanced communication skills and self-confidence, as well as agreements they can really live with.

Using mediation almost always takes less time than litigating a divorce. Unless the spouses have worked everything out ahead of time, hiring lawyers to handle the divorce will almost always take as long or longer than mediating, even if the lawyers are able to settle out of court.

Keep in mind that at At WHYmediate?, we work to give you the tools you need to help resolve your conflicts in a positive learning environment.

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

Divorce From a Psychological Point of View

The dissolution of a marriage is a legal act that may not always coincide with a couple's emotional tearing asunder. Divorce is typically a painful process for all concerned. While it can take adults time to regain psychological equilibrium, whether or not children ever recover a stable perspective continues to be debated. Post-divorce hostility between adults, in addition to directly harming kids, is a sure indicator that the emotional split is incomplete.

In the U.S., divorce rates have been rising since the beginning of the 20th century, and especially since the 1970s, when no-fault divorce was instituted. Some experts contend that the easing of divorce laws has helped make marriage stronger by rooting it more deeply in personal choice, although it does little to give people the skills needed to work out the inevitable difficulties that arise in marriage.

Keep in mind that at At WHYmediate?, we work to give you the tools you need to help resolve your conflicts in a positive learning environment.

Men:

For many men, a wife's request for a divorce is the first inkling that something is wrong with the relationship. Their perception is that it hits them out of the blue.

Truth is, such men just don't recognize the signs. Take one common pattern: A wife snipes at everything he does, but he never stops to ask why she's always angry. Women are often living their husband's emotional lives for them, protecting them, not expecting much of them, and then divorcing them for living up to those low expectations that they set.

For most males, that means recovering the sense of emotional connectedness they did not have as part of their upbringing, like learning how to take responsibility for contacting others and building their own supportive social network.

Although many men will almost instinctively try to isolate themselves, it's imperative that they get a push in the opposite direction. So such guys need to make contact with their own family of origin, from whom they often feel cut off. They also need guides for them to actively cultivate new friends.

Children:
Your children are having their own experience. Let them.

The two of you:
Did you start out friends? If your marital love was born out of a deep, abiding friendship, and your divorce rekindles that friendship, your children - and your own wellbeing - are blessed.

Root of all evil:
Having money and stuff to split is bad. Not having money or stuff to split is bad.

Whymediate?, making a difference through conflict resolution... one couple at a time.

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

The Myths Surrounding The Divorce Process

There are a lot of myths about divorce that keep infecting our society. We're used to seeing divorce in the media as either a grand emotional battle or something that involves just "signing the papers" and it's over. In real life, divorce is generally none of those things. Divorce is also a tough time even if you have the best lawyers or easiest case, so don't be afraid to reach out to friends, family or other groups and professionals for support and help.

Myth Number One: Divorce Harms Children
Oh course divorce can be stressful on kids, but not so much, harmful. What does the most damage is parents fighting in front of the kids.

Think about it. Who likes to be around conflict all the time? Tension is contagious and kids in particular don't have the tools or defenses to handle angry exchanges from their parents. There is a great deal of research indicating that what children need more than anything is a stable and peaceful environment. That may be with parents living together, but it can also occur when parents are living apart. The key is that parents get along and stay present for their children. Kids shouldn’t be caught in parental crossfire, used as a pawn or treated like a surrogate spouse.

Myth Number Two: Divorce Equals Failure
Whether it’s a starter marriage (a marriage that ends within five years and doesn’t result in kids) or a marriage that has stood the test of time, divorce doesn’t mean you’ve failed.

The one measure we have to determine whether a marriage is successful or not is by how long it lasts. Yet, there are many people who have healthier, better lives after divorce. Perhaps the couple has raised healthy kids who’ve flown the coop and now they want to take a different direction in their lives. Why is that a failure? Many times the media clamors to place the blame somewhere, yet there was no one and nothing to blame. A marriage simply ended with both of their blessings.

Myth Number Three: Second Marriages Are More Likely To End In Divorce
Some 45 per cent of marriages between first-timers are destined for the divorce courts, while just 31 per cent of second weddings will end in failure, the Marriage Foundation has claimed.

The results suggested that those on their second union benefit from age and experience, and are more ready to commit, and will have carefully weighed the pros and cons of getting married rather than slide into it without much thought.

If divorce is a consideration visit our website to find out about the smart alternative to divorce court and the adversarial lawyer battles.

At WHYmediate?, we give you the tools you need to help resolve your conflicts in a positive learning environment.

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

Stress and the Divorce Process

We all know that stress can be bad for your overall health. Very few things are as stressful as staying in a relationship that is wrong for you.

With all the pressures and worries we may have in our lives today, living with chronic stress may be the norm, not the exception. Now, what if you have to add divorce to that mix.

There are two types of chronic stressors with divorce situations. There are the “known” stressors: having to start over; making the decision to keep the house or move; the loss of the familiar life and lifestyle; paying high attorney bills; having less money to live on; holding your kid’s reaction to the divorce and not being able to tuck them in on a nightly basis.  

In divorce, what people don’t know can cause much greater fear and stress than what they do know. It’s a scary time indeed and the outcome is in the hands of the professionals you hire, how cooperative your some-day-ex will be as well as how the laws are interpreted and how well the courts view your position.

First and foremost you need to stop playing the blame game. Yes, bad things happen to good people! We all know this. But if you suddenly find yourself picking up the remnants of a broken relationship, the last thing you need to do is start the blame game. No woulda, shoulda’s or coulda’s can change the situation. We are subject to our own flawed human traits and, yes, a relationship that fails is caused by many different reasons. Learn from them and learn to move on.

If you are a newly single mom, there is a greater reason for avoiding the blame game. The children are watching how you handle the situation, and you need to show them that you can stay positive and move through the transition without remaining angry and stressed. The more you project a healthy perspective and develop a comfortable daily routine for your family, the better your children will react.

When we end a relationship, it is common to focus on the loss. You have lost a partner, and if left unchecked, you may begin to focus on your own loneliness and your diminished family. At this fragile time of transition, you need to network with friends and establish or re-establish friendships from the past. Healthy networking is important during this time.

When dealing with the emotional strains of a divorce, it is not unusual to want to become isolated. But relationships matter and becoming suddenly single does not mean you have to go through life alone. Going through a divorce can tear down even the strongest self-esteem.

At WHYmediate?, we give you the tools you need to help resolve your conflicts in a positive learning environment.

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