Visualizing Divorce - Collaboratively

Sometimes the hardest part of divorce is starting the process.  No matter how unhappy you and your spouse may be, you know what day to day life is like inside your marriage, but you don’t know what the world will look like when you get outside.  Opening the door to divorce feels like walking outside into a foggy night.  So, many people stay in their marriages and put off opening that door.

One way to make starting the process less scary is to take an inventory of your resources – assets, income, skills, family and friend support.   Be aware of your liabilities – both financial and emotional.  Have a sense of what you have and what you need so that you can do more than just survive but be comfortable and happy.

When you have taken your inventory, there’s a useful tool that may help you put those things together and prepare you to make decisions when you are called on to make them. Clear some time and space where you can sit and visualize the future after divorce.  Put your mind to a time when you are walking out of your lawyer’s office, or a courthouse,  now divorced, and ask: What do I want that to look like?  Be specific and draw mental pictures – think of them as pieces of a puzzle that you are putting together.  What home are you going to and what does it look like?  Who is in the household?  When you get up in the morning are you going to work, school, or staying at home with the kids?  Where do you expect/want any of that that to be and how does it effect the other pieces of the picture?  If you have minor children, where would they be going to school and from whose household?  As you do this, think about what parts of this picture are the most important to you and why – and whether there are other, similar images that serve the same interests and are acceptable to you.  For example, if you picture yourself in the home you live in now, can you see yourself in other living situations?  What would those look like?  When you visualize yourself in one of those other housing options, does it make you comfortable or uncomfortable?  The goal is to understand what interests are most important to you and which are less important. 

Having a picture in your mind of where you want to get to, should help you get started on the journey there.

In collaborative divorce, the professionals are trained to help the parties identify not only their preferred post-divorce pictures, but the goals and interests that lie underneath them.  Of course, your spouse will have their own mental pictures, which may conflict with yours. Once you come up with these images you may have to research the options to decide which ones are realistic, affordable, or reachable.  But the professionals will work with the parties to help them align their pictures where possible, by identifying the different options that best serve their mutual goals and helping them choose which ones make sense for their family.  In a sense, both spouses put their puzzle pictures on the table and, taking parts of each of them (and suggestions from their team or other sources), work together to make one puzzle picture that they both can accept as their family’s future.  When they can both look at the picture they have assembled together and say, “Yes, I am willing to live in that picture,”  the divorce is resolved.  The collaborative process is a puzzle you build together – not a competition against each other.

If you are looking through the divorce doorway at a foggy night, contact a CCDG professional to learn how we can help your family create a new picture that you can all live in. 

Adam J. Teller, Esq.

Diana, Conti, Tunila, Sheridan & McCann, LLP1091 Main Street, Manchester, CT 06040

Phone: 860-643-2181 ext 15

Fax: (860) 647-7950

Email: ateller@dctlaw.com

Website: www.dctlaw.com