May 8, 2012

  • Listen to Our Children in Need: Special Needs Children and Divorce

    Parents of a special needs child know that caring for their child involves an often overwhelming and demanding lifelong commitment that also introduces an added strain to the parents’ own relationship. Divorced or never-married co-parents of a special needs child may face additional and substantial challenges, especially when their child requires lifelong care and support.

    Many states in the U.S. have laws that obligate parents to provide financial support for their child only until the child reaches the age of 18 or 21 or until the child graduates from high school (for example, New York and Ohio), yet individuals with special needs often require financial support throughout their lives for expenses such as tutoring and private education, medical care and therapy, testing and assessments, vocational training, assisted living arrangements and supplemental income for basic living expenses when social security disability is not sufficient.

    Other states have enacted legislation that permits courts to order continued support for individuals unable to live independently due to a mental or physical disability, like Florida, California and Illinois. However, until all states have adopted such laws, parents of special needs children will have to negotiate their own solutions without legislative backing or judicial recourse.

    via Sherri Donovan, Esq.: Listen to Our Children in Need: Special Needs Children and Divorce.

    posted to Divorce,Mediation,Parenting,Paternity @ 8:48 pm


  • Divorce Over 50

    These steps will help to ensure stability and security in the divorce outcome:

    • Get the financial help you need. Work with a financial expert to educate yourself about what you’ll need now and in the years to come. Be clear about the future impact of the financial decisions you must make now.

    • Get the emotional support you need. Divorce is a complex emotional process — for most, the death of something hugely important in their lives. Feelings of grief, anger and fear are the norm. Processing these emotions and reaching a place of greater self-understanding is possibly the most important work you will do in divorce.

    • Consider which divorce process will best support your needs. Collaborative divorce, for example, offers comprehensive legal, financial and emotional support and keeps you out of court. You will be able to focus on what is important to you, and your children, in a personalized and in-depth way.

    • Give yourself time. Marriages, particularly long term ones, cannot unravel overnight. You need to give the divorcing process the time it deserves. As one 58-year-old client said to me, “We were together 30 years — we’re not going to figure out our entire divorce in a few months.”• Be compassionate to yourself. Allow yourself the space to repair the pieces that have been bruised in divorce. The courage to be self-forgiving and self-loving is a gift to yourself during and after divorce.

    via MaryEllen Linnehan: Divorce Over 50.

    posted to Divorce,Mediation @ 8:45 pm