Boston Divorce Attorneys

Post-Divorce

• Single Parenting 101
• Letting Go and Accepting Your Divorce
• How to Enforce a Court Order
• Bad Mouthing, Bashing and Brainwashing

Single Parenting 101

As a single parent, you will need to handle a multitude of tasks for your children.  These chores were probably shared while you were married, but now it will be up to you to handle them.  The following is a list of things that should be on your single parent checklist:

• Child care.  Even if you think you can handle picking up your children from school or other activities, there will be times that something comes up.  Make sure you have a backup.  Never leave a small child home alone.

• Preparing for the school day.  Make sure you, or your children, lay out clothes for school the night before.  As for lunches, if you can’t pack an acceptable sack lunch, put money aside for lunch money.

• Catching the bus.  The prudent parent would both walk their children to the bus stop and be home once the bus drops them off in the afternoon.

• Set a bedtime and stick to it.  If you find yourself fighting with the children at bedtime, find a way to make bedtime a positive time.  Read stories to younger children, or develop the proactive skill with older ones as you discuss what might be on the horizon for the next day.

• Planning for weekends.  Sports or other special activities will inevitably begin as children get older.  Along with getting household chores done, plan ahead and save time for some fun things, too!

• Make sure your child can reach you.  Make sure your children know how to reach you at all times.  By the time children are in sixth or seventh grade, getting them a cell phone (so long as you can monitor its use) might make good sense.

• Be careful about dating.  Be selective which people you choose to bring home to meet your children.  Wait at least two or three months before introducing new friends and monitor the possible confusion of your children as they ponder who might be their new mommy or daddy.

Besides your balancing of all the things that need doing, single parenting also includes keeping the right tone and attitude in the home – especially as you work harder to raise good children despite the myths of doom and gloom.  Consider the following tips:

• Attitude adjustment is crucial.  Adults and children do better when single parenthood is perceived as a viable option and not as a pathological situation.  Start with a positive attitude and focus on the benefits of single parenting (less conflict and tension in the home, independence, etc.)

• You are the boss.  Establish firm, clear boundaries that leave no doubt that you are the boss.  Single parents (and two parent households) often make the mistake of allowing children to become equal partners or peers.  This leads to problems because children need boundaries and limits. 

• Recognize that you are one person and you are doing the best you can.  No matter how loving and competent you are, you are still only one person and you are doing a job most agree is meant for two people.  Do not allow your children to manipulate you by making you feel bad about the situation.

• Take care of yourself.  It is critical for your children’s well being for you to take care of yourself.  There are times that you will need a break.  Ask other single parents to trade babysitting or hire a parent’s helper.  Pay special attention to diet, exercise, stress management and getting a good night’s sleep.

• Think Outside the Box.  Examples:  If finding time to yourself sounds impossible, consider some creative solutions.  Get away from thinking in such black-and-white terms; find the gray!

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Letting Go and Accepting Your Divorce

Getting a divorce or ending your relationship is about more than dividing up the furniture or figuring out how to both parent your children.  When you divorce, your world changes.  You go from being part of a couple to being on your own.  This can be a difficult transition and one you must face.

Interestingly enough, children have a reputation for handling change a lot better than adults do.  Children enjoy it and take it in stride.  It’s their nature to flex, to adapt.  They readily bend, while grownups get set in their ways.  Instead of resenting the difficulties of change the way older people do, kids just treat problems like another plaything.

Adults also bog down in routine and habit, but children won’t settle for the boredom of “sameness.”  Kids insist on variety.  Change is what keeps them from getting sleepy.  They crave surprises and seek novel experiences.  They love to learn.  The very young are explorers at heart, and they are open to the unexpected.  As a result, their life is a constant stream of “breakthroughs.”

We need to approach the “new” the way we did when we were just a few years old.  With curiosity, rather that worry.  Willing to fumble our way along in the process of figuring out what works best.  Quick to abandon any behavior in favor of more efficient new-found solutions.  Relentless in our determination to learn.  Consumed with our search for mastery, for continuous improvement, intent on finding a better way everyday.

Adults try to cope with the challenge of change by “using their heads,” trusting in logic, and drawing on experience.  But as kids we followed our hearts as much as our heads.  We trusted our creative instincts, or intuition, because our logical thinking skills had not yet developed.  And since we had not been around long enough to learn much from the past, we did not get trapped by our old solutions.  We did not get hung up on tradition. 

As kids we did not dread the future, even though it was unpredictable, challenging, and full of problems we were unprepared for.  We had fun with change.  And we learned more, faster, than we ever have as adults.

Now that you have gone through a divorce, give yourself a gift:  Act like a child again – create a culture that knows how to learn – and you will give to yourself the keys to a happy tomorrow as you move toward the next stage of your life.

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How to Enforce a Court Order

Most people are law abiding citizens and follow court orders.  If your (ex-) spouse disobeys the court order (for example, the orders about custody, visitation, child support payments, selling property, etc.), you may ask the court to help enforce the order.  You may first want to try to talk to your spouse and work out the problem.  You may also ask a family services officer at the court to help you try to solve the problem.  If you cannot work out the problem, you may ask a judge to enforce a court order by filing a complaint for contempt. 

The majority of contempt cases revolve around child support.  Most people don’t realize that getting child support or alimony orders from the court aren’t that difficult – it’s getting your payments regularly that can be hard.  You may be worried about getting your support checks because your spouse is either self-employed, has a sporadic income stream or because you just don’t consider your spouse trustworthy.   

In some cases, but not all, these concerns aren’t off base.  In late 2005, it was estimated that about $10 billion dollars in court-ordered child support is not paid each year.  Non-payment by fathers is not the only child support enforcement problem.  Records indicate that mothers’ payment rates are worse than fathers’.  Fifty-seven percent of mothers pay all or a portion of their court-ordered child support payments, while 70 percent of fathers pay all or a portion of their court-ordered child support payments.

No matter what the reasons are surrounding the contempt, you must first treat the issue as a business transaction.  Although it is very personal, you cannot treat it that way.  Do not let your emotions get in the way.

If you can, it would be much easier on you if you hire an attorney.   Most attorneys focus in certain areas of law, such as Doctors specialize in certain areas of medicine.  You would not go to a cardiologist if you had a headache.  Therefore, the attorney you hire should probably not be the attorney that did your divorce.  What you need now is an attorney who can collect your support.

When you initiate a new action, the case will proceed the same way it did when you were in court on the original complaint for divorce, but this time around it will be much easier.  You will go through discovery and negotiation and even consider using subpoenas and depositions to get you the information you need to collect on the debt. 

When you are before the court, you’ll want to show the judge the accurate records you’ve kept on your Child Support Ledger or details of what may, or may not, be in the best interest of the children from your Child Visitation Record.

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Bad Mouthing, Bashing and Brainwashing

Five or six calls come to our office each week from both former and current clients who tell us how their ex-spouse is bad-mouthing them to the children, or even trying to turn the children against them.

Our conventional advice is to do nothing.  Psychologists caution parents to avoid criticizing the other parent in front of the children.  They fear that such criticism could be misinterpreting to mean “fighting fire with fire” and result in greater injury to the children.

Of course, in the severest of cases we’ll proceed by filing a complaint for contempt on the grounds that your former spouse was making disparaging remarks you.  Alternatively, we could give specific examples of how your ex- was attempting to estrange the children from you or how they were injuring or impeding the respect or affection of the children for you, etc.  As a last resort, we’ll argue that your former spouse was not encouraging and fostering in the children the respect and affection ordered for both parents.

There is no question that parents fear the effects that divorce plays on the children of the minor children, but divorce does not always damage children.  Alternatively, when children are caught in the crossfire of their parents’ hostility, it usually does.  It hurts just to stand on the sidelines and watch parents take shots.  It hurts even more when parents enlist children as allies in the battle.  And it hurts the most when one parent engages in a systematic campaign to turn the children against the other parent.  In Massachusetts, the courts call this parental alienation and they take a strong position when hard evidence of such is presented to them.

What follows represents the best advice of what you can do to protect your bond with the children.  Most important is that you not make the mistake of being too passive.  No matter what, if the poison being put upon your children makes them drift away, do not let this happen without pursuing all remedies.  Contact our Boston Divorce Attorneys, let us be your best mouthpiece and seek judicial intervention as you pursue the best interest of your minor children.

Furthermore:

• Don’t lose your temper.  Alienated children can be rude, obnoxious and hateful, but if they are succumbing to divorce poison created by your former spouse, they will be unfazed by your criticism.  Any aggression that you show will merely play into the hands of your ex- and that is the last thing you want.

• Don’t reject your children.  It breaks contact with your children, it stings children who need your love and acceptance and it sets you up to be seen by the children as the one who caused the alienation.

• Forget lectures.  They are rarely a useful response to negative feelings even with non-alienated children.  It usually falls on deaf ears and detracts from the quality of your time together.

• Don’t overreact.  If your children repeat a bad thing your ex- said about you, don’t automatically conclude that the children are on their way to becoming alienated.  They may be repeating the comments because they are troubled by it, or because they want help from you.

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