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Do:

1. Put your children first – and think about where they would be most comfortable.  Understand that just because they want to stay in “their house” and play with their toys on Christmas morning instead of driving with you to see your family who lives 4 hours away per the holiday parenting plan, that’s not a slight on you.  It’s a kid being a kid.
2. Behave like an adult - because guess what? You’re a grown up and your children are counting on you to act like one.  If I have to explain to you what it means to be an adult, please talk to someone.  Call me if you need names of people who can help.
3. Spend the holidays together – if you find yourself in the middle of a divorce.  Life is going to change for your children soon enough so why not keep things together for the sake of the children if you can?  Please understand I’m not advocating this if it’s going to turn into a holiday disaster but if you can abide by rule #2 above, then this one might work for you.  Make sure to explain to your children (at an appropriate age) that you are still a family and you are still their parents and love them very much even though you may not love each other the way mom’s and dad’s are supposed to.

Don’t:

1. Shuttle your children from place to place – in the interest of satisfying relatives or executing a holiday parenting plan.  Now that there are two families to see and two houses to visit, make sure more of your day is spent spending time with family and friends rather than in the car going from house a to house b to house c to…
2. “Out gift” each other – so when it comes to Hanukkah or Christmas shopping, be sure to talk beforehand and coordinate your purchases so that one of you doesn’t buy them a pony and one of you buys them socks.  This is especially true for couples with an income disparity post-divorce.
3. Be a time stickler – as with so many variables come holiday season (gift opening, traffic, family dynamics) this is the one time of year you may need to relax a bit on the time pressure.  If your holiday parenting plan says the kids come by your house at 10am and they get there 10:30am, cut the other party a little slack as I’m sure prying kids away from their toys on Christmas morning or interrupting their Dreidel game to go see Aunt Sue isn’t exactly high on their to-do list.

Keeping these somewhat obvious yet critical rules of the road in mind during this and every holiday season will make for a memorable time for the right reasons and not the wrong ones.

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Joseph Dillon is a NJ divorce mediator and Managing Partner of Equitable Mediation Services – a New Jersey based firm that provides divorce mediation to clients throughout New Jersey and divorce coaching services to clients throughout the United States.  Mr. Dillon may be reached at (908) 864-2177.

Joint custody and parenting plans can take a number of different forms and we can get to a joint custody arrangement in a number of creative ways.  For example, while most people tend to focus on where the child sleeps, isn’t it just as important that you are there for their waking hours?  Like I remind my clients, what’s more fun – going to the swim club during the day or managing the monster in the closet in the middle of the night?  By focusing on the waking hours with your children, the concept of where do they actually sleep becomes less important in the scheme of the parenting plan (although it is an input to the NJ child support calculation so it’s important to consult with a NJ divorce mediator to understand the implications) and you can design a parenting plan that has both of you spending equal amounts of waking time with your children, even though the number of overnights may not reflect the same pattern.

The bottom line is this:  as a society we’ve evolved and in my observation as a NJ divorce mediator with the couples who sit in front of me and who I mediate with on the telephone, the stereotypical gender roles surrounding child rearing have dissolved.  So it is with that in mind that we as a society and both of you as a divorcing couple recognize that it is in your children’s best interests to spend as much time as is reasonably practical with each parent.  Does that mean bouncing them from house to house every night or arguing over a missed day here and there?  No it does not.  It means that over the course of a year, that your children have unfettered access to each of you as well as regularly scheduled time with each of you as outlined in your parenting plan so that they can benefit from each of your unique perspectives on life.

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Joseph Dillon, MBA, APM is an Accredited Professional NJ divorce mediator and the author of this article.  He can be reached at (908) 864-2177.

Managing Partner and Equitable Mediation founder Joseph Dillon said “I know I speak for everyone here at Equitable Mediation when I say that we’re pleased to be able to assist divorce mediation clients in an office location that’s convenient for them during their time of need and by expanding into Paramus, Saddle Book and Hackensack, we’re able to do just that for Bergen County couples.”

Until recently Equitable Mediation Services focused mostly on Central NJ and the lower part of Northern NJ with office locations in Bedminster, Bridgewater, East Brunswick, Iselin (Metropark), Morristown Princeton, Short Hills, Red Bank and Roseland.  With the expansion into Bergen County and the towns of Paramus, Saddle Book and Hackensack, clients in those areas will still be able to obtain the benefits of mediation in NJ but in a location that’s much closer to their home.  This is especially convenient for those individuals who may live in New Jersey but work in New York City which many Bergen County resident do.

“Our clients come to us from all over the state and up until recently, for those individuals who phoned us seeking mediation services in Paramus, Saddle Book or Hackensack, the best we could do was offer them a meeting in one of our other office locations which for some, wasn’t convenient.  Having these three new office locations is going to make it easier on our clients in Bergen County to get the services they need from a firm they can trust.  We’ve been mediating for a long time and divorce mediation is our full time profession.  Using an unknown firm without Accredited Professional Mediators just isn’t something clients should want to take a chance on.”

Because the laws of the State apply to all clients who are eligible to file for divorce in New Jersey,  Equitable Mediation Services is able to service clients no matter where they live.  Adding three new Bergen County office locations is in line with the Equitable Mediation philosophy of reducing the stress of an already uncomfortable situation by being where the clients need divorce mediation services the most. For information on the new Equitable Mediation Services office locations, please see the addresses below.

• Paramus Divorce Mediation: 140 East Ridgewood Avenue – Paramus, New Jersey
• Saddle Brook Divorce Mediation: (the Park 80 West building)- 250 Pehle Avenue, Suite 200 – Saddle Brook, New Jersey
• Hackensack Divorce Mediation (opening winter 2012) – 401 Hackensack Avenue – Suite 200 – Hackensack, New Jersey

If you have any questions about divorce mediation in NJ or our services, please call us at (908) 864-2177.

For those of you unfamiliar with a little company called Google (maybe you’ve heard of them?) they offer a free online suite of tools which allows parties to create, share and edit documents online as well as manage a shared calendar that you both can have access to.  What I recommend to my clients is once their Parenting Plans are in place, they each sign up for a G-mail account and create a family calendar to place all of the children’s events on.  Then as part of the calendar’s function, they can each get reminders sent to them via e-mail or to their smart phone so they’ll always be in the know when their child has a school play, soccer game or birthday party to go to.  It then becomes their responsibility when they have the children to check the calendar and ensure they attend the relevant academic, athletic or social event.  No more “I told you Bobby had karate on Tuesday at 6pm!” angry conversations.  Now it’s just set up, set reminder and away you both go.

Also helpful if you’re a finance guy like me, is the spreadsheet tool.  Set one up to track extraordinary expenses related to the children and have each of you get in the habit of logging in once a week to see what expenses are being made and which ones are coming up.  Like with your own fiscal life, I strongly encourage parents to think about a budget for their children’s expenses so each of you will have an idea of what monies you will need to come up with as outlined in your Parenting Plans.  Nothing like getting an e-mail from an ex-spouse saying “Oh by the way I signed Susie up for violin lessons and bought her a Stradivarius so I’m going to need $12,000 for your share.  Tomorrow.”  Ideally you really should be able to talk as parents about your kids but if you find it difficult (even if only for a little while as you move through the pain of divorce) then using these free online resources can be a terrific way to facilitate the necessary communication to effectively execute your Parenting Plans.

If you have questions about Parenting Plans or Post-divorce Parent Coordination, please give us a call at (908) 864-2177 as were always glad to help.

I use the term parenting styles to describe the intangibles associated with raising your children.  Examples may include:

• Do you allow sleepovers either away from your home or with other children in your home?
• What kinds of foods do you allow them to eat?  Is it strictly organic or do you allow for the occasional trip to a fast-food restaurant (and I use the word restaurant loosely!)
• What if one of you smokes and the other one doesn’t.  Is it permissible that you smoke in front of the children?
• What about alcohol use?  Is it OK that you have an occasional drink when you are with the children?

It is items like these that while difficult to document in a parenting plan, can cause the greatest headaches.  For example, I am not a smoker but to someone who is, while you were married and living together, one of you could be inside with the children while one of you went outside to have a smoke.  Now that you are the sole caregiver, you can’t exactly step outside and leave a 2 year old unattended yet I would imagine you wouldn’t want to expose your children to second-hand smoke either.  So how do we handle this? Or take for example the issue of bedtime.  Maybe at dad’s house, bedtime is at 8pm while mom let’s the kids stay up until 9pm.  In this example, does dad want to be known as the strict parent while mom let’s the kids have all the fun?

While I am no mental health professional, there is one thing I know and that’s as much as kids resist routine, they need it.  They crave it especially during a divorce.  For example having a set bedtime no matter which house they’re sleeping in will provide the kind of structure that is not only necessary for their health and happiness, but for each of your sanity as well.  Ever try to argue with a 4 year old about what time they need to go to bed?  If you have, you know exactly what I’m talking about.  So when it comes to parenting styles, divorce mediation and the parenting plan, be sure to think about not only the issues that are documented on paper, but those that are not as well.

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Joseph Dillon is an Accredited Professional Divorce Mediator in NJ and Managing Partner of Equitable Mediation Services a New Jersey divorce mediation practice with offices in: Morristown, Roseland (Livingston), Short Hills, Iselin (Metropark), Bedminster, Bridgewater, East Brunswick, Red Bank and Princeton.  Mr. Dillon may be reached by calling (908) 864-2177.

I’m guessing that for many of you reading this article right now, you’re going through divorce mediation for the first time and are doing your best to empower yourself with knowledge so that you can feel more in control of what can feel like an out-of-control situation.  That is a terrific first start, but like any topic that is new to someone, self-education can only get you so far.  You need the assistance of a professional who not only has information but answers and that’s where someone like a mental health professional can really come in handy.  I’m sure as parents we all feel the same compulsion to have all the answers.  Hey, we’re Superwoman and Superman to our kids, right and how could we not have every answer and at the same time be able to leap tall buildings in a single bound all while dealing with our own emotional turmoil?  This is where the assistance of an outside party can really come in handy.

First by seeking services for yourself, you’ll be better prepared to handle the questions that will undoubtedly come your way from your children.  Next if your children ask a particularly harrowing question, you’ll have a resource to turn to which may be able to provide the guidance you need to answer the question in a through yet age-appropriate manner.  And when things get really complicated, I’m hoping that the person you’re working with will have created an environment for you in which you feel comfortable enough in bringing your child to see them.  As much as we like to think our kids tell us everything, I’m guessing there are times when they may not feel like being particularly honest with us and while you’re going through divorce mediation may just be one of those times.

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Joseph Dillon is an Accredited Professional Divorce Mediator in NJ and Managing Partner of Equitable Mediation Services a New Jersey divorce mediation practice with offices in: Morristown, Roseland (Livingston), Short Hills, Iselin (Metropark), Bedminster, Bridgewater, East Brunswick, Red Bank and Princeton.  Mr. Dillon may be reached by calling (908) 864-2177.

It is true that the law hasn’t caught up to the modern realities of parenting plans in that both parents these days are more or less equally responsible for the care of the children.  Sure in “ye olden days” when mom stayed home and dad was the breadwinner, things may have been different but now with both parties working outside the home, both mom and dad are (hopefully) equally responsible for the care of the children and so when the time comes to divorce, as a NJ divorce mediator I have to ask the parties to consider their current arrangement and work to put together a similar arrangement for when they are divorced.  The idea with designing good parenting plans is to minimize the impact your divorce is going to have on your child.  By staying focused on what’s best for them (which may not always be what’s best for you) we can design a schedule that works for all of you and allows each of you to spend as much time as possible with your child, regardless of the number of overnights he or she spends with each of you.  Easy ways to do this?  Coach one of their sports, become a volunteer at their dance school, do their homework with them, take them to dinner twice a week, etc.  There is plenty of parenting you can do in the waking hours that will let your children know you’re there for them and that they are loved and really isn’t that the most important thing?

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If you need assistance in designing parenting plans that will work in your particular situation, please give Accredited Professional NJ divorce mediator Joseph Dillon a call at (908) 864-2177.

In these parenting plans we can use school holidays and vacations as a way of offering the PAR additional time with the children which won’t upset their school schedule.  Perhaps in summer it switches and the PAR now has the children 12 out of every 14 days while the other parent has them for 2 out of 14.  There’s 8 weeks right there.   Or On weeks when the children are off from school like the week between Christmas and New Year’s or the Spring Break, the PAR has the children.  How about extending weekends with unusual days like the 1/2 days around exams, holidays, parent-teacher conferences and my favorite the 2 days in November when all NJ teachers go to Atlantic City for their annual conference?  By using these alternative schedules during down time with the children, we can even out the parenting plans a bit and get the “other parent” more time with the children which is in everybody’s best interest.

Naturally this being divorce mediation there has to be agreement and this is acceptable to both parents but by taking a look at the big picture instead of the day to day parenting plans, you would be surprised at how even parenting arrangements can be.

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Joseph Dillon is an Accredited Professional Divorce Mediator in NJ and Managing Partner of Equitable Mediation Services a New Jersey divorce mediation practice with offices in: Morristown, Roseland (Livingston), Short Hills, Iselin (Metropark), Bedminster, Bridgewater, East Brunswick, Red Bank and Princeton.  Mr. Dillon may be reached by calling (908) 864-2177.