A step-by-step approach to peacefully restructuring your family
Divorce doesn’t need to create damaging emotional conflict. Your divorce process can actually improve your relationships! If your goal is to create a positive future without conflict and pain to you, your children or your grandchildren, the divorce process you choose will make all the difference.
The collaborative process will guide families of all levels of conflict, education, confidence, and emotion to uncover the best solutions to meet your long-term needs. The formula is simple.
- Commitment: Couple mutually agrees on the goals of the divorce process and identify areas of greatest hope & concern.
- Gather & Organize Information: Couple identifies and gathers financial, legal and family documents to be organized in a way that allows them to make fully informed decisions
- Brainstorm & Evaluate Choices: Couple meets together with specific agendas to create transparent plans which focus on hopes, concerns, and family needs.
- Reach Agreement: Couple codifies agreements in a transparent, mutually agreed upon document
If it sounds like hard work, it’s because it is! But the positive results make the work worth it. The process can work in as little as two to four mediation sessions and is built to be accountable, durable, and mutually beneficial.
Simple Ground Rules for Success
The difficult work is made manageable by your mediation/collaborative professionals guiding you through the process. Spouses agree, up front, to the following simple ground rules.
- Address the problems/concerns at hand
- Express yourself in terms of needs, interests, and outcomes
- Commit the time required to meet and be fully present
- Be prepared for each meeting
- Be patient… delays can happen
- Act in good faith
- Work for the most constructive and fairest agreement
- During settlement meetings:
- Listen without interrupting
- Listen carefully, without judgment
- Use non-inflammatory words.
- Be respectful
- Avoid using language that blames or finds fault
- Speak for yourself (use “I” statements).
- Use each other’s first name and avoid “he” or “she” words
- When you raise a concern, follow it with a constructive suggestion as to how it might be resolved
- Ask for clarification, when needed
A Peaceful Divorce means both spouses are:
- Empowered, heard and valued
- Supported by legal, financial, and mental health/coaching professionals
- Educated on legal, financial, and other aspects of their marital estate and family topics in order to make informed agreements
- Engaged in co-creating agreements
The Family Peacemaker process is led by attorney mediators who have diligently and extensively studied and trained in the legal processes of litigation, mediation, and collaboration. The process is effective for marital estates of all sizes, families broken by infidelities, abuse, the loss of a child, addictions, special needs children, and much, much more.
Family Peacemaker has helped couples peacefully restructure their family since 2002. We help struggling families de-escalate conflict and restore family peace DURING and AFTER the divorce process. Contact us for a free, one-hour joint consultation for you and your spouse to receive an honest, personalized assessments of your best next steps.
