Bay Area Divorce Lawyer Blog
A segment of This American Life with Ira Glass on NPR, entitled Breakup, addresses divorce from several different perspectives and is well worth a listen.
In Act Two, an eight-year-old girl embarks on a campaign to understand her parents’ divorce, a campaign that takes her to school guidance counselors, children’s book authors, and the mayor of New York City. The segment re-plays her 1986 interview on All Things Considered as a young child and how she struggled to understand why the divorce happened. In this interview 20 years later, she praises her mother for putting her daughter’s interest first by encouraging and supporting her relationship with her father, never blaming her father, and never saying anything about her father’s affair.
In Act Three, Ira speaks with a Collaborative Divorce attorney and Mediator about why it is so bad when the justice system gets involved in a divorce and the many benefits for families who can resolve the issues outside of court. The attorney speaks to the value of a process that focuses on listening to the other and seeking to understand.
Act Four looks at divorce from the dog’s point of view.
All acts highlight the value to everyone involved of a divorce grounded in respect, compassion and love. And these are the values that ground and sustain Collaborative and mediated divorces. With either mediation or the Collaborative process you have control over the decisions that are made and will be firmly supported, legally and emotionally, in achieving a successful dissolution of your relationship. This not only allows, but also encourages you and your partner to create, or leave open, lines of communication that are of enormous benefit to the whole family.
Working as a team we can achieve a successful resolution of the issues in dispute without the bitterness and acrimony engendered by the adversarial process. The Law & Mediation Office of Lorna Jaynes is based in Alameda county and serves Alameda, Santa Clara and San Mateo counties.