The Valuable Divorce: A blueprint for a post divorce family that works

One in two marriages end in divorce. Once this was just another statistic, no surprise to anyone. Now, however, if you are contemplating a divorce or actually engaged in one, that statistic has become a personal crisis. A divorce creates an upheaval in your life. Regardless of how amicable you think it might be, a divorce is a potential vehicle for creating untold suffering for you and others in your family, especially children. Just ask a few people who have been through a divorce.


Why are so many divorces emotionally draining and nasty? Because, in many cases, there is an established pattern for the way people behave during a divorce. Even when things begin amicably, during the divorce people tend to develop animosity, emotional turmoil and sometimes, unprincipled behavior in gaining leverage over the other party even when it runs counter to their own core values. People usually get emotionally “hooked” sometime during their divorce process and they loose perspective on the long-term results of their very “human” reactions to what is happening.


Divorce is often viewed as the end of something and people behave accordingly. Some see it as an end game with a winner and a looser. Some desperately want to just “get it over with” and move on to a “new” life.


The truth is that when there is a family involved, Divorce is the beginning of something else. The Divorce process itself builds the foundation for the family’s post divorce relationships. A post divorce family relationship is unavoidable if you care about your children and it can last for many, many years.


I speak from both professional experience as a family law attorney and personal experience with my own divorce in the late 1980’s when I say that a nasty divorce, with lots of unresolved feelings and reactive behaviors can lead to years of suffering for the family long after the divorce process is complete. Regardless of weather you feel the results of the divorce action were in your favor or not.


The Possibility of a Valuable Divorce
In our experience, the divorce process does not have to be this way. There is another possibility. It requires the right team of people and a process to support you in achieving what we call a “Valuable Divorce”. If I had had access to this process in the late 1980’s, I could have possibly avoided years of feeling victimized by my ex-husbands behaviors and, more importantly, addressed the source of my daughter’s emotional pain around the way her father handled our parenting agreement.


In other cases, families do find themselves back in court over and over again because the “Legal Agreement” just does not handle the unresolved way in which the divorced parents relate to each other and their children.


The Valuable Divorce Process provides you with the assistance you need to create a Post Divorce Family that works. It is a combination of legal representation and divorce coaching that works together to support you in building a new foundation for your post divorce family relationships. Both sides do not have to participate for it to work, although it is great when it can happen. The Valuable Divorce Process has a beginning, middle and an end. Step by step, the Process tracks with the necessary actions you must take in your Divorce Proceeding while supporting you to make smart long term decisions and create a new set of agreements and behaviors you need to have the family work in a post divorce setting.


Here at Matthews & Matthews we have created a coordinated step by step process to generate a Valuable Divorce and a Post Divorce Family that works.  For more information about the Valuable Divorce process please call Leslie Matthews at 303-329-3802.