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Divorce mediators share their best tips and advice.
Yona Elishis and Sarah Nissel view their position at the helm of the The Jewish Divorce Assistance Center (JDAC) as peacekeepers. They believe that certain things can help make the divorce process as smooth as possible.
“I don’t want to distill something so complicated and delicate,” Sarah Nissel states, “but there are some practices we found, based on experience, that can keep the process peaceful.” Here’s their best tips on how to gracefully leave a marriage.
Don’t speak negatively about your spouse to your parents, your children, or to the community.
People sometimes seek out their parents’ advice to help them determine the terms of the divorce. Of course you can seek emotional support from parents, but asking them to help create the terms of the divorce can lead to multi-generational war.
Nissel elaborates, “Sometimes a client will ask, ‘Can I come in with my mom?’ and I answer, “Why do you need your mother? If you do not trust the process and trust me, this mediation won’t be successful.” Nissel found that when her clients turn to their parents for more than emotional support, the war escalates.
Make sure to speak positively about your spouse to your children. This can be a difficult rule to follow. The realization that you will not see your child every day once you are divorced becomes very tangible. Many times, the parental instinct can lead you on a path to try to get custody by coercion.
Neither spouse should tell their child bad things about their parents. The child shouldn’t be a conduit or a sounding board. You must remember that you and your spouse are both parents of this child and most often they identify with each parent. When you insult the other parent, the child internalizes it and feels bad about themselves. It also comprises your own dignity.
Yona Elishis states that speaking disparagingly about your spouse to the community can backfire because as much as you see yourself as separate from your spouse, the external world may still view you as a unit. Trash talking your spouse to the community harms your family’s reputation and will not benefit you in the long run.
Inform the people in your children's lives who need to know about the divorce - the school, the parent of your child's best friend, any professionals your children see, a camp director. Boundaries need to be respected. Information shared should be only on a need-to-know basis.
According to Elishis, “It is crucial to disclose financial information completely and expeditiously. If you have a larger income and your spouse has less money you need to make sure they are being cared for even in the interim before final agreement. Creating an enforceable mediated agreement can take months, and being forthright about all disclosures from the beginning and making sure the other spouse has resources they need is crucial.
“We see people who act like a mensch. Then of course there are people who don’t, and this complicates and elongates the process.”
Sometimes in marriage there is a spouse who does not understand finances. They may not know about all their assets or what businesses or properties are worth. In this case, they are reliant on the other person to be honest and forthright. This is where evaluations get heavily disputed.
One man might say, “I have a business, but it's worth nothing.” His wife might respond, “What do you mean? You could sell your business for two million dollars!” And they argue back and forth.
Another gray area is income imputation, the amount of income that someone is capable be earning but isn’t. This gray line causes people to litigate for years. The best and most economical choice is to choose honesty and disclose information.
Unified parenting begins with how you tell the children about the divorce.
Elishis advises, “Think it through and have a conversation with a therapist about how to tell your kids about the divorce. You can successfully do this by presenting a unified front, not blaming anyone, and stressing to the kids that it has nothing to do with them. Assure them that you always love them and will continue to parent them together.”
And do not discuss the divorce in front of them.
Nissel explains, “Ninety-nine percent of our cases involve children. The responsibility and mission of JDAC is to help people find a way towards resolution of their conflicts; find a way to divorce, but also help them figure out a way to live in peace moving forward, because they are going to be co-parenting for the rest of their lives.
Nissel said, “We once had a case that we knew was going to be a high-conflict divorce. There was mental health and substance abuse issues amongst the parents. We started by asking them, ‘What's going on with your kids?’ It turns out their teenager was starving herself and weighed 70 lbs. Had we never asked, we don't know whether she would have gotten the care she needed. They hadn't been thinking about their child. When you’re in a time crisis or you’re losing something like your marriage, it's hard to see anyone but yourself.”
Nissel explains that when people become entrenched in their trauma they move into a very selfish place and it’s hard to see anyone else themselves.
Putting your children first changes the dynamic and allows you to remember what matters most.
Nissel states, “Cases where the desire to divorce is unilateral are one of the hardest types of cases to work with. It’s an interesting psychology. The person who doesn't want to get divorced sometimes becomes the most difficult client to work with because they never want to concede on anything further. They rationalize, Why should I concede on this request? I already agreed to the divorce. What they don't realize is that their agreement to divorce is irrelevant to the negotiation and it's purely a threshold issue.”
Don’t blackmail or hold things over your spouse’s head. Concede, give in and, whenever possible, give the other partner what they need and want.
Elishis says, “It’s never going to be fifty-fifty and we feel that good mediation leaves both parties feeling slighted. If someone says, ‘I got everything I wanted!’ we know that we did not do our job.
“I have been at mediations where one partner has spreadsheets with every item they own. They have split everything down to the soup ladle! ‘You keep the strainer, I’ll keep the garbage can.’
“Not everything is going to be fair or clean. The goal is not for it to be 100 percent equal. Instead, the goal needs to be how can each party can each survive this and move forward as happily as we can. Small-minded pettiness ruins peace.”
People come in with the expectation that the story of why they got divorced will be taken into account. In reality, it doesn’t matter. The courts in California do not care if there was infidelity.
It does not matter why you got divorced and it does not affect how things are divided up.
Venting has its place but that's not going to determine the outcome in a divorce.
Not only has mediation saved thousands and even millions of dollars, mediation prevents the animalistic side of people from rearing its head in a divorce.
Elishis and Nissel once mediated between a couple where the woman said, “I know that this is a fair agreement, but I am so worked up about what happened that I need to take him to court.” She spent a fortune and got less than what she would have received with the mediated agreement.
Elishis shared, “Another very wealthy couple came to us before going to litigation. I told them, if you go to court you will spend a significant amount of time and millions of dollars in litigation. They went to court anyway and they landed exactly where I predicted they would.”
When speaking to your spouse about divorce terms, use a reflective surface like a mirror to keep you in check while talking. Studies show that this can prevent the situation from escalating. Even just pressing a record button can also help you stay on your best behavior. Seeing or hearing yourself will cause you to be less nasty.
Mediators can help be that reflective surface.
“Once we had clients who said, ‘My therapist said you’re a sociopath!’ Instead of that spiraling out of control, we interjected with, ‘That's not helpful or kind.’ The person stopped themselves and apologized.”
Try to maintain peace at all costs by focusing on ending the dispute amicably.
Nissel explains, “We mediate the easy stuff first. Then progress to harder topics once we have built confidence in their ability to work through conflict.”
Elishis once sat in on a divorce mediation where the wife tried to give back her engagement ring to her husband. “You should give this to the next woman,” she told her husband.
He responded, “No, you were my wife for many years and even though we are each going in our own direction that doesn’t erase the fact that we had a family together. You must keep it.”
“They literally sat there fighting: ‘You keep it!’ ‘No, no you keep it.’ I'd never seen anything like it. Uncharacteristically, I asked, ‘Are you sure you want to get divorced?’ It turns out there was an issue of substance abuse and addiction and the marriage had to end. However, they decided to put the ring in trust for their daughter.”
Putting your family’s needs first before your pain is one of the most effective ways to end the divorce gracefully.
Divorce is a painful process, but these tips can help anyone navigate it with less suffering and greater success.
Very sweet and useless article.
The author has clearly forgotten that most marriages break down because somebody forgot how to- or is incapable of- being a mensch.There's not likely to be a metamorphosis when a marriage is terminated.