Divorce TV is being born as we speak. Here are some experts who will be at The Best Way To Split Retreat talking about divorce-related issues that may make sense to quite a few of you who are dealing with family separation:
You Don’t Have To Be Friends For Mediation To Work
(Less than 10 minutes)
Scene 1:
Janet: I tried mediation already. It didn’t work.
Mediator: And why was that, Janet? What was it about mediation that didn’t work for you?
Janet: The mediator asked him about his financial disclosure and HE admitted to having a load of cash in bank accounts I’d never heard of. He’d ferreted it all away as soon as he knew I was leaving him. I was disgusted. He’d lied and deceived me for months.
Mediator: And what happened next?
Janet: Well I walked out of the mediation. How dare he have deceived me all that time.
Pause.
Mediator: Janet I’m just trying to understand what you’re saying. So your husband admitted to hiding assets and came clean on everything. And you walked out. And for you that mean’t that mediation doesn’t work? (more…)
He’s drunk again
Bit wobbly. Eyes not quite focused
On this plane of existence. (more…)
Women In Business Radio Interview with Suzy Miller (more…)
I’ve just read an excellent, brilliant expose of the very poor reporting and bias of some reporters when reporting on Divorce cases. Over the years, I’ve explained to several journalists who specialise in covering divorce, what a Collaborative Lawyer is, how mediation works and why financial planners are more useful than lawyers in helping couples with assets to work out an initial plan of action.
I have had endless requests – almost annually – of “Divorce Parties are the new thing – do you know anyone who is having one?”. After explaining that I have been receiving the same requests for several years, so divorce parties are in fact, not ‘news’, I suggest that they might instead want to focus on the rise in children self-harming due to their parents nasty divorce, or the increase (at least double I believe) in suicide rates for men after divorce. At which point they usually splutter something about ‘oh yes it’s so much better if it’s all done in a friendly way’ and the conversation grinds to a halt.
I was almost on an ITV facebook live Q&A tonight – and my blog post was to be shared giving real-life guidance on how to keep a divorce nicer than it might otherwise be – but the ITV lawyers decided they wanted a ‘Psych’ instead. Sadly, a ‘Psych’ (Psychotherapist I presume) is unlikely to be sharing information about the value of getting financial advice from experts, or the power of coaching if you want to break out of the ‘victim’ mentality, or even have much clarity on how mediation works and that collaborative law and family arbitration even exist. (more…)
You might think that asking someone who has been divorced for advice about how to get a divorce would be a good thing to do. But often it is a very bad idea indeed.
Because it depends how their divorce went. If it was messy, expensive, traumatic – getting their advice is a bit like asking a gun owner to show you how to use a gun – only he’s got a bullet in his leg from when the gun misfired. And he can’t quite understand how it all happened because he was doing everything he should do just right – so it must be the fault of the gun, or the gun manufacturers.
Meanwhile he has a bullet in his leg and he is an ‘expert’ on how to use guns because he (mis)fired one, once.
Just because someone has experienced a divorce, that doesn’t make them an expert on a better way to divorce. (more…)