Divorce Help for Parents

Divorce help for parents comes in many flavours. Did you seriously try to save your marriage? What resources can you access to help you and your family in the divorce process? Do you need a lawyer, a mediator or do you file for divorce yourself? Where can you find support groups to help you with practical things and with your emotions? This article also explains the help you can get for your children and how you can get support from friends and family.

Save your Marriage

We stressed it over and over. It is worthwhile doing the effort to save your marriage. In some countries, you have to wait for a year before the marriage will dissolved. The idea behind this is that during this year the couple has time to cool down and to think it over. All marriages go through difficult periods now and then for many different reasons. Many divorced people report that they finallly regret being divorced.

At the time of the divorce they reacted very emotional. The main reason of the divorce becomes clear after months or years only. Only then they found out that the reason of the divorce was lack of communication. That is what drove them apart. Not the fact that one of the parents had a relationship with somebody else. That was not the problem, but the consequence of the lack of communication.

Yes, you have work on yourself and on your relationship to keep it healthy and challenging. Read more about save your marriage here.

Divorce Help from Experts in the Field

There are many experts out there that help many parents going through a divorce. They provide on-line and off-line assistance. They bundle their years of experience on their web sites and in (e)books. They are available for one-to-one counseling and for group counseling sessions. Some of them organize seminars. You can check them out. Here are some of them:

USA

Rosalind Sedacca
Helen Taylor

New Zealand

Jill Darcey - The Complex Family Foundation

Divorce Help Resources

Divorce counselors

Divorce help is also provided from the government in some states and countries. For details by state and by country, visit Divorce Forms

DiY / divorce lawyer / mediator

There are many Divorce Lawyers and Mediators specialised in divorce. They can help you through the process. Some of them are focusing on the juridical aspects of a divorce only. They advice you on the do's and dont's and they help you with the paperwork and filing for divorce.

You and your spouse can also hire one divorce lawyer to handle your case. In this case, the divorce lawyer operates as a mediator. This approach and mediation saves you money and makes the duration of the divorce process much shorter.

The third option is Do It Yourself. In many places you can get the divorce forms to be filled in from the courts or from online services. Many people take this approach which seems to work satisfactorily. Check it out on Divorce Kits and Divorce Forms.

Divorce Support Groups

Support Groups are a group of people with similar issues that get together at regular intervals. A Support Group is often assisted by a facilitator. In support groups the participants tell about their experiences and emotions. You can ask the other members how they managed the problems you are struggling with.

There are divorce support groups for parents and for children.

Here are a few ways to find a support group near you:

Through a Support Group Clearing House
Through an organization or a professional in your city
Ask your divorce lawyer or mediator
Search the internet
Check out the little ads section in your local newspaper
Ask friends, family and divorced people that you know

On-line Divorce Support Groups:

There are many on the internet. Here is one:

Online Divorce Support Group

Divorce Help for your Children

Divorce Counseling for Children is one of the things you can do.

There is also Divorce Counseling for parents. Do not confuse this with marriage counseling. Divorce counseling is about helping divorced people going through their divorce emotionally.

In most situations, the parents want their children not to suffer from the divorce and they take action. If things go out of hand, children might need a therapist to cope with their emotional problems.

What you can do on Divorce Help for your children yourself, you can find in this web site, like on these pages:

Divorce Help from your Friends and Family

Your friends and family can be of much help to you and to your children. Your children could benefit from having someone they can trust and they can talk to about their thoughts, doubts and emotions other than their parents. This person can be a grant parent, an oncle or an aunt that lives close by or a close adult friend. Discuss it with your children and make the connection and the necessary arrangements.

Ensure that they meet regularly and help them to overcome hurdles, like bridging the physical distance or providing a private place where they can talk on the phone or through Skype freely.

You could do the same for yourself. Avoid talking about the divorce with other people as much as possible. If you talk about the divorce too much, your friends and family will just walk away from you.

Your friends and family should not keep talking with you about all the negative stuff of your ex and how miserable you are. That does not help you. It will even make things worse for you. If they do so, please tell them that it does not help you and tell them how they can provide divorce help instead. If they do not change their attitude, you can better keep them away from you.

Your friends and family can be helpful with practical things, like picking up the children from school during a limited period, preparing dinner once a week or helping you moving to your new home. If they really want to support you, they are willing to do the things that you need.

Divorce Help: Custody and Visitation

Custody is a subject on which many parents fight a lot. Quite often both parents try to get sole custody. However, children need both their parents. They have the right to see both of them on a regular basis. If possible, joint custody is in favor of your children. that your ex spouse is living in a different way is not bad for your children. They get richer experiences and they will learn more while they live in 2 different environments.

If one parent gets custody, the other gets visitation rights. Respect this regime. It is important for your children that they see and do stuff with their other parent regularly. Do not try to keep the other parent away from them.

Parenting

The way you parent your children after the divorce affects your children much more than the event of the divorce itself. See Effects of Divorce on Children for more details.