Marriages don’t seem to last these days. It seems like every month we here about some long-married movie star that is getting a divorce. Latest up is Jane Seymour, who has been married to James Keach for 20 years.
Didn’t see that one coming…
Divorce for couples with children is generally more complicated than for those without children – fortunately for Jane and James, their twin boys are 17 and are not at a point where they need to be “watched over.”
For those who have younger children, there is a lot to get used to in splitting up time and responsibility, but the summer months may be the most difficult of all.
In the summer, children are outside of the structured environment of school and most of the time even if one parent was not working prior to the divorce, afterwards they are both going to work.
There are many reasons why they may struggle with coming up with a good summer plan:
1. Less money due the the division of dollars required to run two separate households.
2. The differences that helped lead to the divorce play into differences of opinion in what plans to make after the divorce.
3. If there has been too much wiggle room in how the child-responsibilities have been set up, it makes it more difficult to know what to do.
4. If one of the ex-partners is self-employed the other partner may have unrealistic expectations of how much time they can actually spend with the kids – self-employed doesn’t mean unemployed and these folks may need to spend even more time working than those with a “regular” job.
So how can these issues be overcome? Michelle Rozen presents some great ideas in her recent article on Huffington Post:
- Make sure there is a solid structure for where the children spend time and when.
- Agree in advance on what the expenses are and how they will be divided.
- Try to see the situation from the others perspective
- It is about the kids – you don’t have to make it personal or use the situation to “get back” at your spouse
Click here to read more about these and all the tips presented by Michelle.
