Divorcing With Children

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Session 1 – Focus on You

Before you begin working toward divorce, you must become psychologically fit to balance the demands of a stressful life transition. Emotions can be at an all time high, making concentration and coping difficult. Take charge of your divorce by learning to take care of you!

• Learn how to identify divorce stressors, apply techniques to reduce them and learn to effectively manage your divorce
• Identify the shifting of responsibilities and additional demands created by divorce, and learn to balance them well
• Almost every person who experiences divorce faces grief, whether they were the one to pursue the divorce, or their partner was. Learn to identify the grief stages and how to transition through them in a healthy manner
• Learn how to protect your professional life during divorce by maintaining your emotional health and productivity at work
• Your physical and mental health can be affected during divorce. Learn how to protect both to enhance your endurance in the midst of stress

The goal of session one is to focus on you – where you are in your divorce, your emotional process, and how you can best cope with the challenges you face.

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Session 2 – Money Matters

Learn the basics concerning your assets, liabilities and personal property. Why? Because your future financial security depends on your level of financial awareness in the divorce process.

• Discover why you need both pre-divorce and post-divorce budgets, and how to create them
• Learn to approach your divorce with a business mindset by setting aside the emotional issues for a time
• Create specific financial goals for your Divorce Action Plan, improving your chance for a successful outcome
• Gain our detailed strategy for handling the division of your personal property, or dividing all household items between two spouses—one of the most emotionally draining tasks of divorce
• Division of assets and liabilities requires a lot of preparation. Learn what information to gather and complete key homework tasks within this session, putting yourself well on the way to good organization and planning
• Divorce Tool Box offers a number of financial examples for consideration as you begin the process. Learn how every decision should be made with an understanding of the present, as well as how the decision will affect your future

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Session 3 – Creating Your Divorce Team

Choosing the right professional team for your particular needs during divorce can make all the difference.

• Evaluate professional needs in relation to the complexity of your divorce. Obviously, you’ve already chosen your first professional team member, Audrey Silcox of Divorce Tool Box. While Divorce Tool Box provides valuable insight and planning tools for many areas of divorce, you may desire additional assistance as your divorce progresses
• Learn what your divorce team might look like. Your professional team may consist of experts in various fields—legal, financial, counseling— who can help you be well-informed, prepared and healthy during your divorce
• Consider how to expand your team, and how to evaluate potential team members by considering the benefit their expertise and experience may offer in your divorce

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Session 4 – Child Custody and Visitation Strategies

When you began a family with your spouse, you had dreams for your children’s future.  Keeping those dreams alive post-divorce requires proactive planning now, while your children are still the focus of both spouses.

• Learn about the standard divorce order often used by the courts, which makes many parenting decisions for you. Find out why this may not be the best choice for your unique family
• Identify the specific needs of your children and key co-parenting issues that most families will experience during and after divorce. Divorce Tool Box enables you to create a Divorce Action Plan tailored to the needs of your children
• Develop strategies for parenting between two homes
• Learn how to negotiate differences of opinion regarding children’s issues with your ex-spouse. Understand the importance of knowing what you would like to propose, and the importance of being able to express the why behind it
• Learn about transitioning children between homes, helping children achieve academic success across two homes, extracurricular activities and more
• Consider various custody arrangements and visitation options. Divorce Tool Box offers many examples, allowing you to contemplate which might work for your family. Helping your family to thrive after the divorce papers are signed is just one of our goals

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Session 5 – More Co-Parenting Issues After Divorce

This session dives deeper into the issues surrounding children and the challenges of co-parenting.

• Learn how to design a co-parenting plan that anticipates the unique needs of children, such as: handling chronic homesickness, deciding which parent will take time away from work to care for a sick child, and how medical bills will be distributed
• Recognize and learn to uphold the ethical responsibilities of co-parenting
• Create an effective co-parenting communication plan for all involved
• Discern how to share school breaks, holidays, family vacations, and other special times between two homes
• Learn to manage the unique challenges and concerns of long distance co-parenting. Divorce Tool Box offers ideas to help you design a long distance plan that meets your child’s needs

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Session 6 – Money Matters as Children Mature

As your children mature, their needs change. One significant area of change is often financial, as educational and extra-curricular costs increase with age. A failure to recognize and adequately plan for this could result in your child having fewer resources to meet their needs.

• Learn how to forecast what your child’s needs might look like in 2, 5 or 10 years
• Get a better grasp on how to prepare for those increasing needs, and the price tag that often accompanies them, through different ages and stages
• Develop a strategy for reaching an agreement with your spouse that addresses the future needs of your children

Your decisions now—or the lack thereof—will have a dramatic impact on the quality of life for you, your ex-spouse, and your children for years to come. Through this session, Divorce Tool Box helps you to contemplate those decisions, and develop a plan for the future that benefits everyone.

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Session 7 – Putting Your Co-Parenting Plan Into Action

How your children experience the divorce of their parents can have positive or negative lifelong effects. From how well parents get along in the job of co-parenting, to the quality of each parent’s one-on-one relationship with the child, much of your child’s emotional health and well-being rests in your hands.

Now that the blueprint is in place for your post-divorce life, the success of your co-parenting plan will depend on each parent’s level of commitment to parenting well together. The goal of session seven is to empower ex-spouses to maximize positive outcomes for their children.

• Learn to co-parent in a way that prioritizes the best interests of the child
• Achieve an equitable division of co-parenting time and responsibility
• Identify areas where children may feel “caught in the middle” between both parents, causing the child to feel a loyalty conflict
• Avoid unintentionally giving too much responsibility to your children in the absence of your spouse
• Learn how co-parenting, or the lack thereof, may have lifelong effects for your children, shaping the way they make decisions for themselves in young adulthood and beyond

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Session 8 – Creating Your Divorce Action Plan

With our Divorce Action Plan Template, you can make decisions in advance, become organized, and draft a divorce plan that helps your legal professional to advocate effectively for your needs. Knowing exactly what you want—and why—can boost your chance of legal success and reduce costs. After printing and completing the included Divorce Action Plan Template, you’ll be able to systematically:

• Apply the information you’ve learned from the previous sessions
• Gather and record information related to your assets, liabilities and personal property
• Identify your personal and financial goals
• Determine your children’s needs during and after divorce
• Create a co-parenting plan that will help meet those needs, which is reinforced by co-parenting knowledge and skills required to put that plan into action
• Simplify, organize and document your decisions

When completed, your template outline becomes your Divorce Action Plan. Doing this work now will enable you to enter the legal phase of your divorce more confident about your decisions, and with the ability to explain the reason for each decision in the event you need to justify your desires to your spouse or your attorney.

As you move through the subject matter on the template, you will be able to review your notes, review applicable sessions online, and be confident that you haven’t overlooked important topics for you and your family. Walk into the legal arena prepared!

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