You will always be co-parents even when you are done being a parent on a day-to-day basis. The kids are out of the house and living on their own. You have now decided to divorce. How will that impact the kids and/or your life moving forward? While you do not have to go through nitty gritty details about who has parenting time when, you still want to divorce in an amicable way to try to maintain a healthy co-parenting relationship. You will still be co-parents and have reasons to unite at various times to celebrate and encourage your child.
Your future may include events like- graduations, weddings, anniversaries, birthdays, and grandchildren. And while your divorce agreement may not spell out how you will manage each occasion, you want to be on good terms with your co-parent so that each of you can enjoy these special moments in life. You and your children can discuss and plan for any important family matters and celebrations without letting unresolved issues from the divorce interfere. Your children do not have to worry about conflict and tension between you and your co-parent and can focus on the joyous event.
What steps can you take now to go from planning a divorce to attending your grandchild’s first birthday party together in the future? A good way to start is to have a cordial divorce process. A good way to have a cordial divorce process is through divorce mediation. Divorce Mediation focuses on collaboration, which can lay the groundwork for maintaining a friendly, supportive co-parenting relationship even after the divorce is finalized.
During divorce mediation at Westfield Mediation, both parties always meet together with a neutral third-party mediator to focus on their new futures. Your divorce agreement will include the areas you want addressed in your divorce- primarily equitable distribution of your marital assets and debts and spousal support, if your children are independent adults. All the same issues you address in litigation using divorce attorneys, but the process is quite different. In divorce mediation you directly discuss all the topics with one another creating an open, respectful dialogue. This discussion promotes a friendlier and less adversarial relationship. This process encourages better listening and clearer communication, which can spill over into how you interact with one another and your children post-divorce, no matter their age.
In divorce mediation you work directly with each other making these important decisions. You have control over the divorce mediation process. This makes it less stressful and easier to make decisions. There is give and take throughout divorce mediation. But it is easier to follow through with the decisions you made during mediation because you had input into them. They were not thrust upon you by a random judge assigned to your divorce case.
Adult children may still feel the ripple effects of the divorce. By improving communication skills, co-parents can continue collaborating in a healthy way to address their children’s needs. And even though your children are now adults, they still have needs and want their parents’ input. Mediation helps ensure that both parents are committed to offering stability and emotional support, which becomes even more important as children navigate their own unfamiliar adult lives, with their own set of adulting stressors.
When both parents are able to work together amicably, it encourages a positive atmosphere for everyone involved. Your adult children will appreciate your effort to keep any and all of the aforementioned events drama-free. Divorce mediation lays the groundwork for creating a supportive, cordial environment where you and your children, no matter their age, can thrive.
