The Relational Approach to Co-Parenting

CAN YOU CO-PARENT ? YES WE CAN!

EMPOWERING DIVORCED SPOUSES TO EFFECTIVELY CO-PARENT

E-BOOK FOR CO-PARENTS 2021

A RELATIONAL APPROACH TO CONFLICT MANAGEMENT

THE LAW OFFICE OF MATT SOSSI 16607 BLANCO #707 SAN ANTONIO, TEXAS 78232 210-224-1667

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During your marriage you had a clear vision of the future. You trusted your partner. You were proud of your role as your child’s other parent. You believed that your partner valued you as an equal. You saw through each other’s flaws and

Life was going so well wasn’t it?

forgave

one

another.

You

believed

that

your partner valued you as your children’s other parent. You accomplished so much together, through the good times as well as hard times. Things may not have been perfect, but you were in this together. There was nothing that you could not talk through or walk through. You had the belief, dare I say it, belief, that no matter what that this relationship was going to last forever and ever, for death do us part.

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Maybe it was your choice to end the relationship, maybe it was your ex’s but things have changed permanently. You came upon divorce day.

So at this point understand that divorce day is, like a tree

being

struck

by

lightning, is an event that’s life changing.

In order to co-parent you are going to have to restore a broken relationship.

Like a tree hit by lightning there will have to be new growth for you to succeed and grow. New growth for most divorcing parents will require change in the way you communicate and approach conflict.

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Lessons from Boot Camp

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WhatWE WHAT We LEARNED Learned

A few years ago my law firm ran a divorce boot camp here in San Antonio.

The camp allowed me to present

seminars to parents going through the divorce process. The purpose of the seminar was to give parents skills to transition through the divorce process so they could act as effective co-parents.

My favorite part of the class was sharing resources that I had collected over the years. The first video I showed my parents was an episode from Divorce Court. The case involved a husband who was suing his wife for counseling fees.

The court

interrupted the wife at the beginning of the case as she started to, well, hum. Yes I said it, hum, hum and hum.

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The wife continued to hum and hum during the court hearing. As the court asked the woman why she was humming she said she was told by her therapist to hum when she was angry.

The wife explained that the reason WHY she was angry was because her husband was having an affair. She hummed to let the court, the audience and the television world that she was angry. As the court asked the husband questions the wife continued to hum, constantly interrupting when the husband attempted to speak.

One would need to watch the video at least more than once to remember the underlying reason why the parties were in court in the first place.

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I posed a simple question to my students:

WHAT

What was your goal when

IS

you walked into family law court?

YOUR

not

GOAL

My students were

kids,

were

mostly

working adults in their 30’s and 40’s a mix of women and men

some

were

semi-

professional, mostly college educated and were referred by the family court after their initial temporary order hearing.

After my short

presentation I asked our students one simple question. What do you expect to achieve in court?

Their answers were not surprising.

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At that point I put on my second videoDr. Suess’s a tale of two zax. As the story goes there was a north going zax who needed to go north met a south going zax who needed to go south.

As the story goes the zax’s found each other and each stopped in their tracts, never budging one inch to move forward. The zax story seemed to make the parents laugh at least to a degree understanding that it would be impossible to work through the differences they shared with their ex.

DIVORCE AND KIDS The American Psychological Association states that the divorce, by and of itself does not hurt kids. Kids are resilient to change.

What was found harmful to kids was their parents prolonged conflict.

Conflict Hurts Saying that I asked the students – So how many of you want to co-parent? They all said yes. My next

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Kids.

question - How do you plan on co-parenting? They all chuckled. No one had an interest in talking.

While all of the students wanted a life happy after their divorce, none had an idea of how they were going to fulfill their goal to coparent. None had a working knowledge of what available options and resources existed to help solve the problem. Knowing what the problem is can be very different than knowing what the solution is. They were involved in a tug of war that they could not, would not, win.

These folks were at risk, not just for themselves, but for their children.

Hearing them laugh during the seminar bothered me. This was not a funny laugh, this was an uneasy laugh. The need to be right was costing these parents their savings, retirement and children’s college funds. The pain of divorce was costing these people and their family emotional harm.

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That sad fact was that all these folks were good people. They were smart people. They all had good intentions. All wanted to co-parent.

They thought it

was a great idea. None had a clue how to accomplish the mission at hand.

So lets start talking about your first step in resolving conflict. Do you litigate, mediate or elect a collaborative resolution to your family law conflict.

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Will You Litigate Mediate or Collaborate

When I say divorce, you say courthouse.

Without a thought you automatically chose litigation to resolve your dispute.

Why?

Litigation is what you know. Its as where people go to resolve their disputes. Every community, for example has a courthouse, at least one judge and many lawyers. The courthouse given location typically is in the middle of its downtown community.

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As you understand it the judge hears matters and resolve disputes by making rulings and the parties following orders. The reason why courts were in built in the middle of communities was simple. Without courts, there was little stability and little hope for people to move past their conflict. With courts there was a system in place where people could resolve their disputes and move on with their lives.

When I Say Divorce You Say Courthouse Thinking about it the courthouse resolves disputes through litigation, which is an adversarial system. This system was the first system in place to resolve family law disputes. In the 1960’s when courts were impacted by an exponential number of family law cases, courts began to refer cases out to mediators, whose job was to help the court’s

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reduce their dockets. Mediations were proven to be extremely effective, resolving 90% of the disputes referred.

As time progressed mediation styles evolved. Mediation styles developed from 1. evaluative, where the mediator would tell the parties what would happen if they went to court, to 2. negotiation styles, where the mediator would offer worst case alternatives and best-case alternatives to the parties 3. facilitative, where the mediator would provide the parties options and resources so they could determine an outcome of their own

choosing

to transformative, where

the

mediator takes on a more

active

listening role, allowing the

parties

the opportunity to listen, understand and respond

to 13

one

another.

To this date many mediators say that they will use all four styles to

resolve cases that are referred to them for mediation.

As time moved on, parents even had the choice of moving outside of the adversarial system by electing a restorative approach to resolve conflict, a relational approach known as the collaborative divorce. This approach to conflict resolution was created in 1990 by a Minnesota family lawyer named Stuart Webb, who saw that traditional litigation was not always helpful to parties and their families, and often was damaging.

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There’s No “I” in Team Helping Co-parents through the Court System is a Team Based Approach to Resolving Disputes. The team based approach has been called the interdisciplinary approach.

Court’s way back in the 1960’s and 1970’s introduced mental health professionals in various roles during the party’s divorce process. Mental health professionals were given the duty of preparing custody reports and testifying in open court as to which role parents should have in raising their children. The benefit of using these mental health professionals is to put an end to the litigation, as the parties would most likely settle their lawsuit (from an evaluative point of view) knowing what the court’s expert would say on the ultimate issue. These roles by the way continue today.

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During the 1980’s there was a increasing need to expand mental health professionals role to help parents learn effective strategies to co-exist during and after the divorce process. Moms and Dads wanted a vested interest in raising their children.

The question was how could a divorced mom and dad play a significant parenting role in their child’s life when they no longer wanted to have a relationship

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In looking at the different roles you can see two different streams of thought: 1. Courts should be provided assistance on ultimate issues effecting best interest of their children.

2. Parents should be entitled to obtain resources from mental health professionals to help them with one another.transition Mental health professionals were given from spouse to ex spouse, andexpanded to begin roles the journey from ex-spouse to co-parent.

and had the ability to start interacting with parents on helping spouses’s transition from ex’s to co-parents.

Today even attorneys are given special roles

as amicus attorneys to help attorneys and courts resolve family law conflict.

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The options available to parents were intended, in part, to help parents learn communication skills to communicate and relate with one another in peace, both in the present and in the future.

Options to choose can be a challenge for family law experts in the field and is undoubtedly a daunting exercise for a divorcing parent.

I would ask that you

talk to your attorneys about the pros and cons of each possible team member. The important thing is important to note that you are going to need help transitioning from hurt spouse to start accumulating the skills necessary to BEGIN coparenting.

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Please take your time and review the list of mental health providers I provided in the table attached. Remember the purpose of your co-parenting team is help you have a voice that you need to begin the co-parenting process. The coparenting team gives you resources and options to begin to communicate. You should at this point have some ability, even ifs its marginal, to stop, listen and understand what your ex has to say.

You’ve done the work, and you have

transitioned from ex spouse to co-parent in training.

You now have the OPTIONS AND RESOURCES to Your question What to willyour it take to end this conflict? helpnow: you relate co-parent.

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When Will It

??

After a few months, anyone going through the divorce process would love to end their disputes, get divorced and get back to their lives. Litigation is not fun and is an expensive process.

Mediation has its charms. One day of mediation and your never ending conflict is over. No more cost, no more burden. If you are wanting to mediate do your homework. What type of mediator do you want to hire? Your choice comes down to the mediators’ style of practice and his or her willingness to add you as an active participant.

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What is the purpose of mediation anyway? According to the book the promise of mediation, the purpose of mediation is to effect change. In my mind, change would be transitioning spouse to ex-spouse, ex-spouse to co-parent.

Change would mean that parents now have the skills necessary to opt out of litigation and would use mediation to resolve any future disputes.

The American Bar Association stated that parties who attended mediation that provided them a forum to listen, understand and respond to another had the best chance to not only resolve past due disputes, but to resolve future disputes as well.

A study conducted by the Maryland Judiciary system in 2016 (?) on effective mediation styles appeared to be extremely helpful as well. The study identified different types of mediations and rated them on their effectiveness.

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When You think It’s over, Its Never Over Conflict is not by itself a bad thing. Conflict is a part of our daily life and our daily interactions. There will be cycles of agreements and disagreements. Conflict may arise simply because you see the solution to a problem differently than another. Put another way, conflict arises because of the way you relate to another.

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You simply want to make sure conflict with your child’s other parent never gets out of control again. How you handled conflict as loving spouse or partners is going to be different than you handle conflict with an ex-spouse or even someone you consider a co-parent. So how do we handle conflict as a co-parent?

I hate to say it but if co-parenting is your goal, your true goal, then you are going to have to learn how to relate to your child’s other parent. When you start your path on your divorce most of you will have to admit that you are about as far away from that mission as you could be.

Part of the journey of co-parenting is about transitioning from spouse to exspouse, to ex-spouse to co-parent. Your main questions at this point should how you do you plan on transitioning?

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TAKE IT SLOWLY At this point, if I could give you any advice, I would say STOP TALKING TO YOUR EX.

There are so many options to share information none of which requires you to interact. For example, make sure that your child’s school has provided you both parent student portal accounts and passwords. Need another example? Have the child’s teachers/doctors/dentist/counselor’s carbon copy (cc) both parents for appointments and procedures.

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SLOWLY, START TO RELAY INFORMATION There will be a time when you will need to relay information to your ex.

There are smart apps are Our Family Wizard or App- Close. (You will want to do your research on the benefits of these apps – going online will help you find the most up to date services both apps work.)

So before you send a message to relay information look at what you are sending before you send it. Edit/delete angry comments or hateful suggestions before you send them.

Learn the art of Bill Eddy’s principle of BIFF and slightly modify it. Keep your messages and responses BRIEF, INFORMED, FACTUAL and FOCUSED (Mr. Eddy likes forceful). Use time to transition you to more peaceful, substantive conversations about your children.

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THE NEED FOR CHALLENGING CONVERSATIONS

As your Children will grow their needs will change. There will be times that problems need to be solved between you and your child’s other parent. At this point you believe there is a need to engage in a challenging conversation.

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When I use the term “challenging conversation” I’m going define it as conversations where you are going to have to both provide information to your coparent that may affect his or her emotions.

Examples of challenging conversations are many: a. Zoom or in person schooling for children b. Prescribing a child ADHD medication c. Need for Child to receive therapy d. Having the child play contact football So you want to start a challenging conversation with your co-parent. Go through the following check list: 1. Are you ready to communicate?

2. What is the purpose of your communication?

3. Is communicating truly necessary?

4. How will your ex react?

5. Will communicating make things better or worse?

6. Are you the best person to initiate the conversation?

7. If not you, who?

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BEGINNING A CHALLENGING CONVERSATION 8. Pick a person that your ex will listen to. Perhaps it’s a teacher at the school, perhaps it’s a pediatrician. Some neutral person (team member) who can provide options and resources to solve the problem you are seeing that you see facing your child.

9. Speak to your ex - State the problem you see, not a person, resource or an option.

COLLABORATE

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At this point let us talk about collaboration. Collaboration is not you voicing your opinion and your ex expressing theirs.

This is not a time for debate.

Collaboration is a unified agreement that you and your ex acknowledge that you nor your ex do not know the solution to a problem. Collaboration is walking into a discussion, valuing the other person to the point that you want included as part of your team to solve a particular problem.

Of course you may use BIFF to state the problem, provide information to the other parent of the facts that support your position, just at this point don’t be forceful (stay focused). You are coming to your ex to look for options and resources.

You are avoiding blame and you are not assigning fault.

Team building:

• If it’s a medical issue both go to

your

child’s pediatrician. Ask the doctor for a referral so the option you select is neutral.

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• If it’s a school issue schedule you and your ex a meeting with your child’s teacher. Ask the teacher for a referral.

• Stick to resources you know and expand from there.

You are using tools you learned from your divorce to solve your own problems independently of the courts and attorneys.

Of course during your divorce you used a team of mental health professional. Now you and your ex spouse are choosing your own experts to resolve the problems you see facing your child. Collaborating and co-parenting do go hand in hand.

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TEAM MEMBERS Nuetral Team Member Child Custody Evaluator (CCE) • Mental Health Professional

Pro’s……

Con’s……

A CCE’s task is prepare a report that will provide an opinion as to which parent should have primary custody in a custody dispute.

Parents DO NOT HAVE the chance to collaborate with the CCE to resolve coparenting issues.

The CCE listens the voices of each parent in a custody suit as well as the voices of others who the parents believe are important to be heard.

In Litigation – child custody evaluator’s report is filed with the court and used as evidence.

Mediation: A Child Custody Evaluator’s report helps a mediator evaluate each parents’ position.

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CCE reports’ are expensive.

CCE reports’ take time, and it might be months and months that parents are not talking to one another.

Parent Facilitator • Mental Health Professional • Attorney

While a parent Less Costly than a CCE facilitator can testify in open court they can A parent facilitator not make has the chance to talk recommendations on with the parents and the ultimate issue – help them learn basic custody. co-parenting strategies and Parents may not be techniques. honest and show only their best side in fear A parent facilitator that parent facilitator helps parents learn will testify against skills necessary to co- them. Parent parent. Parents have facilitator may be a great chance of simply a check in the transitioning from box. divorcing parents to effective co-parents.

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________________________ Parent Coordinator • Mental Health Professional • Attorney

Parent Coordinators are low cost.

Parent coordinators are confidential suggestions offered by Parent Coordinators the pc are not to be help parents look for used in evidence in options and resources case the parties end and work through up in trial or issues affecting temporary orders parties parenting hearing plan.

Parent Coordinators help provide parents the resources and options necessary to begin to effectively communicate.

Parent coordinators offer a confidential setting to allow parents to work through their issues.

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If issues are not resolved through coparenting session, frustration at money wasted.

Provides parties child focused way to resolve problems.

Helps provide parties with options and resources to work through issues.

Amicus Attorney

If amicus is skilled, helps the parties begin to talk and work through their coparenting issues.

Provides court, if need be, a position to resolve issues before court.

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Cannot be brought before the court to testify as to reasons behind their decision.

Can be expensive Is not an effective when parties go to trial by jury.

Guardian Ad Litem (GAL) • Mental Health Professional • Attorney

Child Focused Provide court report to resolve issues

GAL sees what people want them to see.

Not inclined to meet with parties to help work through issues Not inclined to offer parties options and resources to work through problems.

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Child Therapist (CT) • Mental Health Professional

Marriage Therapist

Provides resources for Question of neutrality children during a (when child therapist is much needed time. picked without an agreement of the Can provide testimony parties) to the court concerning issues Privilege issues may relating to child. prevent therapist from speaking to parents about child’s issues (may only divulge communicsation through subpoena)

A marriage therapist in divorce? Studies show that there is a significant percentage of divorcing parents that are unsure as to whether or not they want to divorce.

Marriage therapists can help parents reach emotional closure OR reconcile.

When emotional closure is reached spouses are much easier to transition to ex-spouse to coparent 38

Child therapist may not want to accept position if he or she knows that there is pending litigation.

Marriage therapists can be seen as a unwelcome resource for a person urgently wanting a divorce.

Divorce Coach

Helps provide parent skills necessary to work through emotional pains of divorce.

Question of acceptance in legal communityDoes not involve both parents.

May be seen as a Helps provide parents survival guide to skills necessary to litigation, not as an begin to co-parent. effective resource to co-coparent.

Helps parent prepare for court

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