Change is inevitable – in life and in parenting plans.  An initial parenting plan reflects the time of your life when you created the agreement, and a parenting plan that worked for your newly-divorced family when your children are toddlers will continue to work ten years later when they are teenagers.  Yet, many people do not develop a process when first writing the plan to review and adjust the plan as the children age.

A May 19 article in The New York Times addresses this very issue. The author suggested that all parenting plans should be subjected to a mandatory binding review every two years.  The review would allow the children to speak privately with a mediation-trained lawyer, giving them an opportunity to speak up for any needed changes.  After meeting with each kid, the lawyer would then meet with all family members, individually and as a group, to ensure that the child’s wishes are respected in the next two-year cycle of parenting plan. 

Is all this extra process necessary?  Maybe not. If you choose to mediate rather than litigate your divorce, you have more control over how you want to structure your parenting plan now and in the future.  You can decide at the onset of your divorce process that your parenting plan needs to be reviewed every 6, 12, 24 months.  You choose.  If at that review time you have difficulty agreeing to any changes, you come back to mediation to work out the next phase of your parenting plan. Statistics have shown there is better follow through with agreements made in mediation then decisions forced upon you by the courts. Mediation keeps you in control of the process, while taking into consideration that you and your children’s needs change over time. 

In mediation, we view your parenting plan as a work in progress, making it easier to make any adjustments along the way when you, or your kids, feel it is time for a change.


- Michelle Weinberg

Divorce is both an end and a new beginning, and many couples are marking the end of their marriage through a parting ceremony that allows them to close one chapter and begin another.  An April 27 article in The New York Times described this new trend noting that the ceremonies run the gamut from a woman tossing her wedding ring into the Seine to another holding a party at a dance club for 80 friends and family members where they affirm their love for her.  Other couples choose to end things in a ritual designed for just the two of them, where they recount their story and vow to remain close and to care for their children. 

While the ceremonies vary, mental health experts agree that they each play an important role in allowing a couple to say goodbye and move forward. 

Of course, it’s easier to take these steps if you have already minimized the drama of divorce.  One way to preserve relationships is to use divorce mediation instead of litigation to create the agreement for your divorce.  Divorce mediators work with divorcing couples to come to a fair agreement on issues relating to parenting, division of assets, and child and spousal support.  The goal is to plan for the future, rather than rehashing old arguments.  Instead of the win-lose nature of litigation which pits one partner against the other, in mediation, couples work as a team to create a plan that they can both live with.

Through mediation, divorce becomes less confrontational and angry, and it is easier to plan the ceremony that will celebrate your passage to a new stage in your life.

For more information about divorce mediation contact Randi M. Albert, JD, or Michelle Weinberg, LMFT, at Westfield Mediation, LLC, at 908.913.0373.  View our website at www.westfieldnjmediation.com or email us at info@westfieldnjmediation.com.