Michael A. Mastracci

Coping With Divorce During the Holidays

Coping with divorce during the holidays is hard. Find out what you can do to help your children copy and learn about the collaborative divorce process that builds relationships instead of tearing them down. You can protect your children from the impact of a divorce.

Coping with divorce seems especially difficult during the holidays. Sadness, anger, and regret can overwhelm you at a time that should be exciting and happy. Memories of happier times emphasize the unwelcome changes divorce brings. You may dread holiday get-togethers that you used to anticipate with pleasure. It's difficult enough to deal with your own emotions; facing family and friends is often too much to bear. Financial uncertainty may create worry where once you enjoyed generosity.

For children, divorce turns the holidays upside down. They are torn, wanting to be with both parents. They worry that the holidays won't be the same. Will they see Grandma? Will Santa find them? Will they get any presents? They hide their bigger fears about how divorce will change the family behind a litany of fears about holiday activities and traditions.

Other than perhaps the death of a parent, divorce is often the single most traumatic event in a child's life. In America 60% of all marriages end in divorce and a third of those divorces involve bitter conflict. One million children in our country are involved in divorce each year.

As typically practiced in America, divorce rips asunder the very foundation of a child's world. It shatters the family structure, destroys communication between the parents, and irrevocably changes the child's relationship with each parent. Children suffer not only their own fears and misery over the loss of the family but, too often, are used as pawns by one parent to hurt the other. Out of anger or emotional need, one parent may seek to monopolize the child's time and affection to the exclusion of the other parent. There are no winners in a divorce. Everyone loses, but the children lose most of all.

How a couple divorces has far greater impact on their children than the actual separation, researchers have found. Weary of acrimonious divorce battles and the expense and emotional damage they cause, legal professionals sought a more constructive way to dissolve marriage, giving birth to Collaborative Family Law in 1990. Collaborative law focuses on divorce not just as a painful ending but as an opportunity for a new beginning. Stressing cooperation over confrontation and resolution over revenge, collaborative divorce is transforming how couples dissolve their marriages, divide their assets, and reinvent their post-divorce parenting relationships.

Taking place outside the court process, collaborative practice uses a cooperative team approach in which both parties and their respective attorneys meet together, sometimes advised by financial or child experts. During meetings, parents learn and practice open communication, self-management and negotiation skills that can form the basis for successful future interactions. They learn to manage and reduce conflict and the anguish and divided loyalties it can engender in their children. Through collaboration, parents have the opportunity to lay a foundation for the respectful, cooperative parenting of their children. Agreements are reached jointly in the collaborative process and seek to accomplish the goals of both parties while preserving the welfare of the entire family, particularly the children. Through collaborative divorce, couples have the opportunity to emerge with a fair settlement and peaceable relationship that minimizes the negative effects of divorce on their children. That's a holiday gift more precious than gold!

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