Introducing Our Family in Two Homes – a divorce resource now offered by Transitions Legal!

Introducing Our Family in Two Homes – a divorce resource now offered by Transitions Legal!

by | Jan 17, 2022 | Collaborative Divorce, Family Law, Legal Process, Transitions Legal News

Introducing Our Family in Two Homes – a divorce resource now offered by Transitions Legal!

If I had a resource like Our Family in Two Homes (OFTH) when I was getting married and raising children, I would have been so supported!

It never occurred to me way back when, nor does it to most people, to think through and articulate my values, my perspectives, and my beliefs on parenting, partnership, finances and more – and if I had, I bet I could have avoided many marital arguments or parenting disconnects.

Most people don’t really think through these things when it comes to the most important relationships of our lives because it’s just not embedded in our culture to do so. Think about all the romantic movies you’ve enjoyed in your life, which painted a picture of relationships as easy, automatic and synergistic. That rarely happens in real life.

Of course, I see couples when things have gone so wrong, they’ve given up hope that they can stay together. Nonetheless, I am excited to offer OFTH as a unique resource to help couples who are contemplating divorce, already decided to split or going through mediation.

They begin by going through pages 1-13 of the workbook, where they’ll find questions to help them get in touch with what is important to them for the divorce process. These pages cover communication, trust, emotions, values, expression tendencies and more.

It goes so much deeper than the kids or the house. What I love about this resource is how it helps clients discover their personal and collective core values and decision-making preferences. There is a lot of work people can do on their own before they come to an attorney, and this work helps them be more efficient with their attorney, which can sometimes reduce overall legal costs and time spent negotiating.

An example of this is when a client comes to me and insists they want to keep the house, but they’re not sure they can afford to do so, I have to dig deep with them to determine first what is important to them about the house. Then we explore the feelings behind it. That can take a lot of time at billable rates! I enjoy doing this kind of work with my clients. I am also aware that some clients are watching their money. This can save them on fees that might be needed further down the road, or better yet for their kids’ college education.

But if the same client worked through this on their own with the workbook, they would save time spent with me, their attorney, and get moving on the actions required to facilitate their breakup.

I use OFTH in Collaborative Divorce cases and also in Mediation. Individuals can purchase the workbook directly from Transitions Legal, and in doing so, they also get three consulting hours with me as they work through it.

The goal is for people to understand themselves better and understand the divorce process more. Also, they gain insights in how they interact and communicate, which helps an attorney know what they are dealing with in the case. They can draw out an introverted spouse or respectfully ask an extroverted spouse to give the other person some time to speak.

There are, of course, instances where using this workbook might help a couple to identify some of their nagging problems and decide to work on resolving them in an effort to stay together. That’s a lovely outcome when it happens!!

Regardless of the situation, anyone who uses this resource will gain clarity. They’ll understand elements of divorce like parenting time and custody, and know how these are established in the state of Michigan, where I practice. They’ll also know the background of the law to help them reach their decisions.

People often say, “I don’t know what I don’t know.” This resource gives you what you want to know.

To learn more about Our Family in Two Homes or to purchase the workbook-consulting package, click here.

Striving for Gratitude and Patience in Divorce

Striving for Gratitude and Patience in Divorce

by | Nov 22, 2021 | Collaborative Divorce, Off Topic

Gratitude is a choice – we can let the sadness and heaviness bring us down or choose to find the silver lining, no matter how hard it is to spot.

There is one judge who always asks disputing couples in court to look at each other and think back over the years to when they decided to marry.

“You had a life together,” the judge says. “There must be some goodness there. And no matter how hard it is, look at that goodness. Remember it. Realize it wasn’t all bad.”

November is often considered a month to focus on gratitude, and I believe gratitude and patience are important assets in divorce. First, you can’t be angry and appreciative at the same time. One must outweigh the other.

Yes, divorce can be a time of grief, loss and disappointment. Things didn’t turn out the way you had hoped. But like that judge said, it probably wasn’t all bad, and if you can reflect on the more precious moments of your time together, perhaps you can feel less like a failure, and less hurt by the dissolution of the relationship.

Feelings of gratitude help move us through in constructive ways, whereas feelings of anger and hurt only lead us to be vindictive and want to strike back at the one who caused us pain.

When you’re going through a divorce, it’s important to have gratitude for the experiences that you have. For the good times and loving moments, yes, and for the way the relationship brought you to this point. Appreciate all that you have learned from being married to this person. If you have children, have gratitude for their presence.

And as you go through the divorce, have gratitude for the team that supports you, whether that’s your parents, your best friend, your lawyer, whoever holds your hand through the process. Gratitude is a choice – we can let the sadness and heaviness bring us down or choose to find the silver lining, no matter how hard it is to spot.

Even if you had some missteps along the way, lashed out at those who were there for you or spent much of the time feeling sorry for yourself, it’s never too late to reach out to say thank you. In divorce lawsuits, and frankly in life, things can’t always go your way. But just because you didn’t the exact outcome you had hoped for, it doesn’t mean your professional team wasn’t properly supportive.

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Consider all the benefits you’re getting from the steps that you took. One of my clients commented once that something I said was so important, she expressed so much gratitude to me, and it made me feel not only appreciated but recognized for my hard work and dedication. Her case was difficult, and even she was difficult at times, but I knew why. Her expression of gratitude was so heartfelt and it meant so much to me.

This month – and always!! – find ways to be grateful. There is always something good lurking in the corners of your life. Make sure you notice it and let anyone who made it happen know how much you appreciate their attention to the details of your life.

The Freedom You’ll Find After a Divorce

The Freedom You’ll Find After a Divorce

by | Jul 5, 2021 | Legal Process

The Freedom You’ll Find After a Divorce

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For many people, divorce means freedom.

Freedom from an overbearing or underwhelming relationship. Freedom from the obligations to please a person they just can’t please. Freedom from the trappings of a go-nowhere relationship. Freedom to become who they feel they are at this point in life.

That freedom can be exciting, and it can be scary, too. Having both of those feelings is absolutely to be expected and 100% normal. 

I encourage divorcing clients to create a plan for what they will do with the time, space and quiet post-divorce. So often, they see only the leaving and not what life will be like after they’ve left.

They don’t see the potential loneliness, only the open calendar. They don’t see the way a Sunday can feel long and empty when there is no one to share it with. And they certainly can’t see that even if they initiate a divorce, they, too, will experience loss, pain and sadness as they mourn the death of the relationship.

Of course, they also can’t see what comes after that, which is beauty, possibility, and a new sense of self.

The plan you can create to guide your post-divorce freedom should include a small circle of go-to friends that you’re comfortable calling if you need to talk or want to hang out. These are friends who don’t judge your relationship’s end or your newfound singleness.

Some friendships will end because those are the people who only knew you in the context of your relationship. That’s ok. Perhaps they served their purpose, just as your marriage did. Make your peace and give yourself permission to move on.

You’ll make new friends, too. Friends who are in similar circumstances. Friends you’ve been wanting to know but your prior relationship prevented that from happening. Friends you don’t expect to discover but suddenly stumble upon happily.

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Photo by Austin Distel on Unsplash

At first, though, the people who respond strongly to your breakup – saying, “Oh no!! How are you handling it?” Or making comments about how they never liked your partner anyway. Or other things that just don’t help – these reactions can make it harder to be alone.

You have to be ok with your breakup so they will – and surround yourself with people who support you.

In the aftermath of a divorce, start by getting to know yourself again. Use the free time without your kids or without a partner to explore what you want with your life.

Try new modes of exercise. Take a solo trip. Eat in a restaurant or go to a movie alone. Discover your neighborhood through your eyes. Get a pet. Write a letter to an old friend you’ve missed. Buy yourself an indulgent gift just because you can.

Court your relationship with yourself before you ever begin to go in search of others. Ponder and reflect on your relationship and see what you can discover about yourself and how you relate to a partner. Try to articulate what you could have done differently or what you want to do in a future relationship. And celebrate the successes, because surely there were some.

Once you become solid on your planted feet, you’ll be in a great position to start anew – with dating, with friends, perhaps even with new work. Anything is possible if you take it slowly and map it out.

The biggest mistake newly divorced individuals make is rebelling against the relationship by partying hard, hooking up with too many partners, and basically numbing the pain of the loss. Embrace the uncertainty, and the fear. It’s the only way to move through it to what is waiting on the other side.

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Photo by ABDULLA M on Unsplash

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A conversation with Michelle Sarao: How to organize homes and lives after a divorce

A conversation with Michelle Sarao: How to organize homes and lives after a divorce

by | Apr 26, 2021 | Guest Posts

A conversation with Michelle Sarao: How to organize homes and lives after a divorce

In the Collaborative Divorce process, we build a team of professionals who can guide the divorce process in a fluid manner. Recently, I met a woman whose business fits so perfectly into this idea of a divorce team.

Michelle Sarao, through her business Divorce Rx, helps divorcing people organize their homes and their lives. Based in New York, Michelle recognizes that a divorce is a complete upheaval of a person’s life – emotional as well as physical.

Michelle Sarao

What better time than that to welcome an organizer into the midst of the unraveling, and let her guide you to a more methodical approach to the separation and rebuilding?

This type of organizing can focus on the divorcing people – helping them rearrange their physical space or divide up their shared belongings. It can also help the newly single adults get organized in their new life – manage their children’s schedules, learn how to be focused in managing all the activities and responsibilities as a solo parent.

Basically, Michelle helps people prevent the logistics of their life from falling through the cracks.

“When you are going through a divorce, the first thing you do is start assembling your team,” says Michelle. “Financial, legal, mental health, parenting coordinator, divorce coach. But then the physical space and coordination of what happens with your children, and the transition from one household to two, those details and ideas can slip through the cracks. That is where I felt there was a need to step in.”

Every situation has a unique imprint, says Michelle. She meets clients where they are, looking at what will be most helpful in this moment, right now, taking it one step at a time. A divorce can create confusion and stasis – she helps people move forward, one step at a time.

As an entrepreneur myself, I felt this concept was brilliant and definitely needed! In speaking with Michelle, I thought it would be helpful to gather some of her best tips in this blog to share with people contemplating divorce – or who have already been through one but still feel a sense of disorganization. Here’s what Michelle has to say:

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Regarding your physical space, a divorce begins with dividing your things. “Oftentimes, even in the most amicable divorces, people are emotionally tied to their stuff,” she says. “You’re already experiencing loss. No matter what you’re feeling about the divorce, it’s a loss. People have a hard time letting go of things. To have someone work with you and your soon to be ex-spouse as a neutral party to help divide things can be helpful, to help you stay on track.”

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Dividing up physical belongings can stall a divorce – and it’s senseless to pay lawyer fees to have them sit in your home while you divvy things up.

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Whether moving to a new space or staying in your current space, going through what you have and purging can be cleansing.

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Get rid of the storage unit idea. Not only is it another expense, it’s the place people put things and forget about them. You will eventually have to go through it all – and likely discard most of it – so why not do it now?

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If you just can’t part with goods but you don’t want to go through everything, label your boxes and mark your calendar for three or five months later to actually go through the items.

Michelle Sarao

Organizing is not just for physical items, Michelle says. It’s important for financial documents as well as for calendaring.

“It’s often the women who have no idea where the financial stuff is that they’re asked to bring into the lawyers,” she notes. “They’re paralyzed; they don’t even know how to find it or what questions to ask.”

While divorce coaches can help with that part of the process, Michelle can support clients through it as well.

“The biggest thing I do with people is just have a plan that is realistic and broken into manageable steps.” Once someone leaves the marital home, there is empty space to fill. That’s part two of Michelle’s work. She comes in to help the person who stays rearrange the furniture and fill the space – and she helps the person who left fill the new space where they will start their new life. “If you were not the one who wanted the divorce, it smacks you in the face when you see the couch is gone,” she says. “It’s a reminder of your loss. There are a lot of physical empty spaces – a whole closet that’s empty, drawers where silverware has been taken, empty walls. I help that person reimagine and arrange what you have before buying new things.” It’s better to move around what you do have and live with it for a few months than quickly buy new items, she says. For the person leaving, “talking it through is the first step,” Michelle says. “Then, it’s about finding resources – realtors, designers, etc.”

A member of the National Association of Productivity and Organization and of the National Association of Divorce Professionals, Michelle has resources far and wide.

Divorcing couples don’t realize all the details of this split when they embark on it. As granular as the photo albums and shared photographs – who wants to let go of their baby’s earliest pictures, or that family vacation they took to Hawaii?

Michelle Sarao

Michelle finds solutions. “Both parents want all the pictures. I have someone who is fantastic and will scan the pics and set them up for both parents,” she says.

A divorce is a transition from one stage of life to the next, but it’s not without heartache and emotion, and those very heavy phases can cloud judgment, obscure clarity. Michelle works with people at a vulnerable time to make the details easier – and less painful.

“There are areas of life you might not have thought of – who has the kids’ passports, can you get a second passport, do the children have toothbrushes at both houses? You don’t know what you don’t know,” she says. “I tell you what’s coming, I can help you get prepared, save time and money, relax and exhale.”

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Support Can Keep Us Together

Support Can Keep Us Together

by | Apr 8, 2018 | Kids & Co-parenting

Support Can Keep Us Together

It was uplifting to read this article in a recent edition of The New York Times to validate what I’ve always known: in order to succeed in our relationships and in our parenting, we must have support.

Of course, when it’s two Olympic medalist-moms in question, many officials will move mountains to make their athletic careers work. But it wasn’t always easy for women athletes wanting to start families.

The athletes in question – Kikkan Randall and Marit Bjorgen, elite cross-country skiers who recently won medals in Pyeongchang – wanted to succeed in juggling work and family, even though that “work” entailed hours every day of intense training, a need for more sleep than the average mom and a travel schedule that would be difficult for non-parent seasoned travelers.

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The world can be a small place. It needs to be when you want something and you can’t do it alone.

It’s incredible on a personal level as well as a professional one, how these moms formed an alliance to support each other and their families across nations.

After recent pregnancies, Randall and others in her league shared advice on parenting and how to get back into shape for their sport. She and Bjorgen ended up in South Korea for the Olympics; two other athletes in their circle came close to joining them.

Together, these women formed a powerful conglomerate of moms who persuaded the International Ski Federation to support them, too. Randall and Finland’s Aino-Kaisa Saarinen persuaded the Federation to provide credentials for caregivers and find space at the Olympics for babies, rooms filled with diapers and toys from www.makeafort.fun.
The women talk about how they called on each other, their partners, their parents and in-laws, to help with caregiving so they could succeed at their sport. They faced questions that all mothers face, like: “How do I be the best mom I can be while succeeding in my career, too?”

And they’re blazing a trail for future generations – of athletes, and of moms.

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If we don’t stand up for one another, no one will stand up for us. We are always stronger together.

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