Stay out of court if you can

To best ensure future and effective co-parenting after separating, you simply must try and stay out of court if at all possible. A contested hearing between parents produces a toxicity that inevitably damages the children and creates tremendous barriers to positive communication between the parents.

The nature of our legal system, the advocacy system, where each parent has a lawyer advocating for them only, can create a monster in itself. Each side is building up their “good” side and minimizing all their own faults. At the same time, each side is magnifying the faults of the other parent and minimizing the positive characteristics of the other parent. This scenario leads to battle, where each side is convinced that they are Right and the other side is Wrong. It creates a black and white myth, filtered and distilled from a complicated, interwoven tapestry of many colors and many shades of gray.

Do you think parents ever stretch the truth in their pursuit to win the court battle? You bet they do. Once you move beyond the truth, you are locked into that exaggeration, that lie. Inevitably, after a contested court hearing, each parent believes the other one lied on the witness stand. Things get said that can never be taken back. It is so much more difficult to work well with that parent in the future for the best interests of the children.

Here’s a wonderful website: http://www.uptoparents.org/

The main message is:

Parents –
If you are in conflict,
Your children are in danger.
And only you, their parents, can
Protect them from that danger.

Please visit this site. If you are a divorcing or divorced parent, working through the material on this site will be invaluable.