Custody Issues? Get a Fair Deal Without Losing Your Career or Kids #54

Hey friends, this one’s for all the hardworking parents out there trying to figure out how to juggle a busy career and the emotional rollercoaster of divorce and custody.

Let’s be real: divorce is tough enough, but when you’re the breadwinner, it can feel like you’re being pulled in a million directions.

You’ve poured a lot into your career—long hours, late nights, sacrificed weekends—and now you’re asking, “Is all of that going to work against me when it comes to custody of my kids?”

This week, we’re tackling the real struggles of balancing work and family during a divorce. I’m breaking it down in plain English, including what the courts actually look for in custody cases and how to set yourself up for success—while staying connected to your kids.

Here’s what we’re talking about: 

• How to build trust with your kids, your co-parent, and the court. 
• Joint custody, sole custody and physical custody - what do these terms really mean and how do they affect you? 
• “Status quo” in custody cases (and why it’s a big deal). 
• Parenting plans that actually work for you and your kids. 
• Why staying close to your kids’ primary residence could make or break your case for more parenting time. 
• How tech tools can help you stay connected, even when work takes you away. 
• The lowdown on mediation vs. court battles, and how mediation can save you time, money, and stress (while keeping the focus on your family’s best interests). 

If you’ve ever felt overwhelmed by the tug-of-war between work, divorce court, and quality time with your kids, this episode is your realistic guide to getting through it. 
 
Hosted by Kelly A. Bennett, Esq., a family law attorney and mediator with over 30 years of experience in the family law trenches.   


RESOURCES:

Struggling to bring up mediation with your ex? I have a free resource that gives you easy scripts, smart tips, and a quick video to help you start the conversation.

Get it here

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Victim Is Not Your Name: Remembering Your True Identity In the Midst of Life Challenges

Transcript

So you've worked really hard over the years to provide a really nice life for your family and all of a sudden you find yourself in the midst of a divorce or just about to start one. Well, I'm talking today about something that can be highly emotionally charged and challenging and that is how do you balance your work life when you're a business owner or a high performing executive. And maintain a really strong relationship with your children both during and after divorce. These are minefields that so many people wander through and it's very frightening and challenging at the same time. I mean, after all, when you're the primary breadwinner in the family, it can feel like when you get into a divorce scenario, like you're getting punished for all that hard work. Because after all you spent a lot of time in the grind and sometimes it really means that we have to spend a lot of time away from home while the other parent cares for the children so that you can make things happen. 

And now in the midst of a divorce you worry that your busy, hectic, career is going to actually be a negative for you when it comes to custody of your children.

Well, if you've ever worried about this issue and you want to know how the court views this and how you can properly position yourself to get that relationship tight with your kids and meet the requirements of the court, well, this episode's for you. Before I get into the key strategies on maintaining a good relationship and getting good positive custody orders, I want to help you understand first, how does the court view custody and timesharing when it's about to make orders and let me make a distinction for you. Now we're in the state of California, but this will hold true in many states.

If you're not in California, you're definitely going to want to get the advice of a local attorney. In California, there are two types of custody generally and you'll hear us talking about physical custody and legal custody.

What the heck's the difference between physical custody and legal custody? Well, generally when you hear people arguing over, I want joint custody with the other parent or maybe a parent is saying, I want sole custody, what they're typically talking about is if they ask for sole custody, they want to have 100 percent of the decision-making responsibilities for the child and have the child 100 percent of the time. 

We talk about physical custody. The court will make orders for sole physical or joint physical custody of the child or the children. Now, typically, our courts in most cases order joint physical custody so that both parents are sharing time with the child. That's the general standard, that's what the court and the legislature are going for here.

So, joint custody is our most common physical type of custody order that we see in the family law court. Now, what is legal custody? What's the difference? Legal custody means who makes all of the big life decisions for the child or the children. We're talking about where they go to school. Do they attend church? And if they attend church, what religion are they participating in? What kind of medical procedures will they have? Who are their doctors? These are the big life decisions. Now, again, typically the courts lean towards joint physical and joint legal custody. Because, again, we want both parents participating in the children's lives.

Unless there are some exceptional circumstances where the child's best interest will not be met. Okay, so how does the court look at custody, joint physical, sole physical, or legal custody, custody in that box, and how does the court look at timesharing, or what some people call visitation. Well, in deciding on custody, who the child lives with the majority of the time, whether it's joint or sole to one, and legal custody, the court is going to look at what is in the best interest of the child.

That is the standard. I know it's the standard in many other states. I know Texas, that's the standard. So these are very common. I'm talking to you from California when it comes to the exact standards we have today at the time of this recording. So the court's going to say, when it comes to custody, what's in the best interest of the child?

Same thing for a time sharing or visitation schedule. We like to call it time sharing because really, you're the parent. You're not visiting your child. You're having time with the child. Or the child is having time with you. So, when we start to look at custody and time sharing issues, the court says, what is the arrangement that under these circumstances for this family and this child are in the best interest of this child.

So you can see each situation is different and there are a whole host of subjective factors that go into that. Each case is unique. So as you are looking at custody issues, you want to be thinking, what's in the best interest of our children? And that's where the courts expect the parents to come together and make those decisions.

And if they can't, the man or the woman in the black dress will make those decisions. But they don't like to do that because they don't intimately know your family and your children. The next piece of consideration for the court is status quo. What's the status quo? That means what have we been doing up to this point where now you're coming to the court and asking the court to make an order for custody and/or timeshare?

So, if your children have for the last eight, nine years gone to the exact same school with the same group of friends, and they've lived in the marital residence where they can, you know, where the parents can walk them to and from school, if you were to come in and suggest that they go to a different school and move out of the school district because you want to move somewhere else, the question's going to be, is that in the best interest of your child in light of the status quo? What has been going on over time? Because children need stable, predictable environment. So, again, as we're looking at custody and time sharing, what's the status quo? And you want to keep that in mind in order to be successful on getting a positive custody order or an agreement with your with the other parent on custody. 

The other pieces are, there's two other ones, there's the child parent bonds, okay? So if you're a parent that has, maybe you and your spouse or the other parent have kind of been together on and off over the last couple of years, but you've lived in New York and the children are going to school and live primarily with the other parent in California and you come into the children's lives and spend a lot of time with them on maybe every other month basis for a weekend, the court's going to look at that bond, and while the bond may be moderately strong, the court is not going to be inclined to disrupt the status quo in light of a bond that's not as strong as it is with the other parent. Doesn't mean you won't have time with the child.

But, that bond is going to be something that the court really looks at. So you want to be thinking, do you need to strengthen that bond with your child? And then the last piece that, not the last thing, but the last big thing that courts are looking at from their perspective is, what is the ability of each parent to meet the needs of the children and to prioritize the children above their own needs?

So this is very important. we often see, where we've got a parent that is wanting to do what we would call a time grab because they, we call it that in a situation where a parent ordinarily has not been around and not shown a lot of interest in spending a lot of time and being involved in the children's lives.

And all of a sudden they want to have, maybe instead of they've had a 5 percent time share by choice with the children. And then when they realize the amount of child support that's paid is directly tied to the percentage of time you have with your child. All of a sudden that parent wants 40, 50, 60 percent timeshare.

Because if they don't get a higher timeshare, they're going to be paying a lot of child support. And so let's say that happens. And you get a much bigger chunk of time so that your support goes down. Except you like to party in all of your off time. If that means that you're at work and then in all your free time, you're not doing any homework with the children, their grades start to suffer and they're being offloaded to friends, family, and nannies who are not helping keep their health up, keep their homework up.

All of those things that are so important. That's a scenario where you might not be prioritizing the needs of the children over your own needs. So keep that in mind. Super important. The court will look at that in making those decisions. The court does view the roles that people had in their relationship or their marriage differently than they used to 20, 30 years ago.

A lot of times dads come into our office and they say, "Oh, I know I'm, I'm totally screwed on this because the court always favors the mothers." That's not true anymore. You know, there is a very strong legislative mandate in the state of California, and again, this is very similar in most of the other states in the United States, and that is that the parents need to have frequent continuing contact with their children. Children need both parents. There's a recognition of that by most of our legislatures in the United States of America. And so we're really past the good old days where mom's hands down would get primary custody of the children and the majority of the with the children and dad's barely got any time.

That's not the goal at all. In fact, it's really common, except in cases where it's impractical, for the court to look to, can we award 50/50 custody so the children have, if it's in their best interest, as much time with mom as they do with dad and vice versa. So, the court's view of traditional roles has really morphed over the years.

So don't assume that's occurring to this day. Really don't assume that. So that's a myth that's still out there. Let's dive into the three key strategies. So when you are the breadwinner, I know this by the way, because I've built a business or two and boy it, it takes a lot out of you. And I have to tell you, my husband, most of the time when my children were growing up, he was the parent at the PTA meetings.

He was the parent that was involved in helping in the bake sales and all the fundraising when I would, you know, get myself on campus to attend some of these things, they would say, Oh, who are you? So I understand there is a lot of time that it takes to invest and get a business going or to really dive into your career.

And it's really a blessing when you have a partner who is willing to pick up the slack to enable you to, to do that career. The first strategy when you are the breadwinner and you are really concerned about custody is to prove that you're committed and establish a track record of consistency in the child's life.

Well, what does that mean? Again, not just overnight because we want child support to drop. This is about really building that track record. Let's first talk about the importance of consistency and follow through. Why is this important? Well, first of all, it builds trust with the court. Because, like I said, We all know, the attorneys and the judges, that when a parent comes in and has been really absent in a child's life, and especially after the parents have separated, and there's that absence is still going on, and then a parent, the other parent, files and asks the court for a child support order, if this other parent who hasn't been around all of a sudden wants a 50/50 timeshare, the court looks suspiciously on that, and for good reason, because there's no track record.

So it builds trust with the court if you can start building that track record of consistency and follow through. It has meaning to the court when you say, it's really important to me to be in my children's lives, and I do want to prioritize them, and I will, over my needs. Okay? The second reason consistency and follow through is so important is it builds trust with the other parent. Now It's not unnatural for let's say a mom who has been raising the children while you're you know building your medical practice or you're going through law school you're getting your degrees you're studying for your boards and then you're building your practice or you're starting in your career at some big firm and there's a lot expected of you.

 It's normal for a mom who's had all of the duties of the children in her lap while you do all that heavy lifting on the career side to support the family. And now all of a sudden when there's a break and a separation, for those parents to say, Hey, you don't know how to do homework with the kids. You've never done it, or you rarely do homework with the kids, or can I trust you to 

make sure that they come home with clean clothes. Are you going to bathe them on a regular basis? This sounds ridiculous, right? But let me tell you, it is absolutely not ridiculous because these things do happen and the parent that's been the primary caretaker for so many years often times hears from the his or her friends, the horror stories of kids coming back in dirty clothes, not coming back from time with the other parent bathed or with the clothes that they were sent with, with their homework going to pot, and all of a sudden now you have to do triple duty to help the child get their grades back up.

These things do happen. And so know that when you're building this track record of consistency, frequency, reliability, that you're also building trust with the other parent. And just before you get really offended over that, understand that that's human nature. Put yourself in that parent's shoes. And parents, especially mamas, right, they worry about their babies.

So, put yourself in their shoes and know that, let's build some trust so that we can make this easier and get agreements together instead of having to run to the court all the time for custody orders. And the last reason consistency and follow through is so important is it builds trust with your children.

Look, we've all heard the stories and we see it in the movies from time to time. Where there's a divorce going on and the children are ready to have the other parent come and pick them up and they're sitting out on the front porch all washed up and they're excited and they've got their fresh clothes on and they can't wait for mom or dad to come because they haven't seen them for a while and they wait and they wait and they wait and no one comes.

That's not just Hollywood, folks. That really does happen. And it is really hard from the other parent's perspective, not to mention the children, to have to deal with the disappointment and the heartbreak. Because I'm here to tell you, I've said it before, you'll hear me say it again in these podcasts, children have a way of making everything that's wrong between you and the other parent all their fault.

They have a way of making it about them. That's just how their little brains work. So. If you're not reliable, you're not consistent, if they're waiting for 20, 30 minutes and all of a sudden there's a call that you're not coming after all, that's just another chink in their heart. Another chink in their heart.

I can't trust this parent. So you're doing that, you're developing that track record with the parent and the child. Those are really hard things to overcome. So know how important it is that you build that trust with the court, the other parent and your child. Now, how do you do this? How do you build this track record of consistency and reliability?

Well, the first obvious thing is, and it is obvious, but it's not always the easiest thing to do is make a point of getting in the habit of attending all or the school events, the extracurriculars, the doctor's appointments, the important life events wherever you possibly can.

So this is back to that prioritizing piece, right? So if your kids can start to count on looking out in the crowd and seeing mom there, "Oh, she made it. She took a little time off of work to come to my presentation." They're looking for you. Haven't you seen them do that when you're at any of the school events?

They're always looking and they're looking for you, right? So prioritize it. And the nice thing is, when your kids start the school year. The schools always have a, you know, calendar of all the big events and when school's going to be out and the presentations and talk to the parent or the teachers about when are all the big presentations. And if they don't know it all up front at the beginning of the year, stay in constant contact so that you can plan that out. And if you run your own business, you can make the time in your schedule and book things around that. And if you work for someone else and you're in a high powered career, same thing. The more advance notice you give your boss or you can put into your planner, the more likely you're going to be successful at this.

But really the messaging that it sends to your children is amazing. They will remember it for the rest of their lives when they can say, my dad was always there at every game. My mom was always there. Now it's not going to be 100 percent of the time. Stuff happens. But for the most part, you're going to be able to talk to your children in advance if you embrace this practice of planning so that they won't be let down, right?

But be there whenever possible and for the majority of them if you can. Now, during your parenting time, another way you can create this consistency is to create solid routines during your parenting time.

Let me tell you, this is where you're going to get a lot of friction. These parents who, one parent says, "Well, it's going to be fun time with me, and because it's so much, so many rules over there when you're with the other parent."

When that happens and there's no structure, your kids will react, and they won't do well. So, kind of back to what I said earlier about you're going to also tick off the other parent because if they're not getting their homework done or they're coming back with not enough sleep or you haven't taken them to the doctor that's no good.

Children will respond the best to now living in two households and having time with both parents when they have a predictable routine. And really the best scenario is when you and the other parent can agree on what the rules are going to be so that consistency is across the board. If you can't agree, it doesn't matter.

Create some routines at your home so they know exactly what to expect. That provides a lot of comfort to your children. We've talked about showing up reliably. Please be reliable. I'm going to emphasize it again. Be reliable. Show up when you say you're going to show up. This is kind of that thing that we talk about in business.

 A lot. We talk about it a lot at Sapere. And that is under promise over deliver. You know that phrase. You're a business. You're a high performer, right? Under promise over deliver. Practice that with your children so that you can really bolster your reliability. . Here's another way you can do it.

If at all possible, if you are no longer in the marital residence, move closer to - not further away from - the children's marital residence, or their primary home, and where their school is. Don't come in and say, I'm going to move to another county, and I think the kids should change schools and move closer to me, and we can just shuttle back and forth.

You see, now you're upsetting the status quo. That isn't consistency for your children. So if it's at all possible, do your very best to stay in your children's lives physically. Be close. Live in the same neighborhood if you can. Live across the street from the school. Whatever you do. Those parents who choose to prioritize that, they do really well with the custody arrangements.

And remember, it's not forever, right? It's just, you know, these kids are going to grow up in a blink of an eye. The other piece of this that will really help is, hey, we're in a different day and age now. Leverage the technology you can for connection, right? So, If you can't be there on a regular basis because maybe you travel a lot for work, what you can be on a regular basis is a phone call away, or a FaceTime away, or a Zoom call away.

Make that a habit. If you travel a lot, make it so every night you have FaceTime with your kids. Be super available to them. And so there's no reason you can't leverage that time through technology. It's way better than doing nothing. And then lastly, in order to create this record of consistency, keep a record. Keep a record of your record. We advise our clients all the time, as you're starting out and as you go along, keep calendars, print blank calendars. Particularly when we're gearing up, if we can't get agreement on time sharing and custody, you know, joint custody and which home is the primary residence.

We say, keep calendars of how often you visit. Once you do get orders, in order to protect the orders, or if, let's say, you come in and you are only able to to get agreement for maybe a 25-30 percent timeshare. Or you get orders for a 25-30 percent timeshare. But really, you want to do 40-50 percent with your kids of the time.

Well, if you're starting off with a lower order, a lower percentage, here's the idea. After building your track record, and you can prove it to the court or to the other party, then you can bolster your ability to ask for more time and prevail on it. So what we want you to do is print blank calendars.

If you have orders, write in there what the days are and times that who's supposed to have the children when, and make sure you mark down every time you exercise your time period with the children. Write down every time you exercise when the other parent maybe says, "I want to go to Las Vegas this weekend."

Can you take the children even though it's not your weekend? Just mark it down because what you're doing is, you don't want to weaponize this per se, but what you're doing is showing that you're active and you're consistent. So nothing beats having a written record. Okay. So, a few challenges you're going to have in this arena to overcome when you're asking for custody, and you're the breadwinner, and you've had a really busy few years dedicating it to your career.

There's going to be some skepticism about your availability. 

So that's why these things are so important to start doing right away. When you are confronted with skepticism about are you truly going to be available if we enter into this agreement, or maybe if you haven't gotten an agreement and you're going to court, how are you going to convince the court? If the other side is saying, "Look, she hasn't been here for the last three years."

And she's consistently been working 80 hours a week, right? There's going to be some skepticism by our judges about your availability. So you need to show to the other parent or the court how you've adjusted your schedule, what changes you have made ahead of time in order to create that availability. So you want to be thinking about this.

The other thing that you may experience along the way is guilt, personal guilt over missed activities, because let's face it, as you're going into this new world of custody agreements and time sharing agreements, your career is not going away, right?

It might have some adjustments to it, it probably should have some adjustments to it, so you can prioritize your children, but your business or your career are not going away. So those demands are still going to be there. They'll show up in different ways. So sometimes you may have to be on a business trip where you just can't get around missing the school play that month.

How do you counteract ? Well, for yourself, you need to be able to look in the mirror and say, I've done everything I possibly could and reasonably could to make this work. And I prioritize my children by making sure that the time I do have with them that I have maximized that time. That I'm 100 percent present for my children.

That I've put the boundaries in place to keep them safe. Make them feel safe. The predictable schedules. In that time, I'm all theirs. That's how you help yourself get over some of those guilty feelings for when you're not there. Alright, strategy number two, and it really dovetails a lot into what we've already talked about, and that is be thoughtful and realistic in your proposed parenting plan. Look, avoid over promising. If you over promise to your spouse, or your partner or your over promise to the court on your availability in order to get a 50-50 or 40-60 time sharing plan and custody in place.

You're going to fail. You're setting yourself up for failure. Because if it's not realistic and you honestly can't do that, if it's just wishful thinking, Then, now again, like we talked about, you've lost trust with the court and the other side and the likelihood of the court pulling it back goes up, right?

So you don't want to go backwards. It's better to be very realistic about what you can do and be super consistent with it than to be unrealistic. 

How you propose a reasonable time schedule looks like this. You're going to assess your work schedule honestly. So, if you've already got a super heavy schedule, and there's just not a lot of leeway into that, then what you want to do is, well, admit that, but propose more time on weekends, on holidays, or maybe over the summer and the winter breaks from school, where you get a little bit more time to kind of make up for this, this heavy 9 to 5, or, not 9 to 5, 6am to 10pm sometimes. Five, six days a week. Show flexibility and prioritize your children's needs over financial considerations. So look, maybe you're so busy in your schedule because you have to be in order to get the next tier on the bonus plan or the profit sharing plan. Well, perhaps it's time to scale it back. Like I said, they grow up really fast.

They're only under 18 for a few years. Maybe it's time to scale it back and don't put the financial priorities over your children. That's one way to get a lot more reasonable on your timeshare schedule. And if your schedule changes frequently this happens a lot like with firefighters. I they're not, corporate executives and all that, but firefighters often have this trouble.

If there's a lot of change in your schedule and it's completely out of your control, then build in some contingency plans. Talk to the other parent to avoid these last-minute disruptions. Alright, so you're going to have to get a little bit creative there. Collaborate. Collaborate, collaborate.

This is all about working together to ensure that your kids are well cared for and they're not bouncing between caregivers. So one of the things that we do on a regular basis when we're coming to agreement or we're going for orders and we ask the court to put this in, if one parent has a lot more flexibility, maybe they only work part time. 

We'll often write into these agreements or orders that here's what the schedule is and if either parent should need childcare for more than three hours or four hours while the children are with them during their time, they will call the other parent and give them the opportunity to have the children instead of sending them to daycare.

Or to have a nanny come over, a babysitter, right? So you can see how that builds a lot of trust, that's flexibility, that's collaboration. So this is why it's really important for you to establish and keep an open line of communication with the other parent. I know it can be hard sometimes. So, what are some of the challenges you're going to face?

Well, the other parent might have some comments for you or concerns about your work commitments because, like I said, you've already built a track record of being really dedicated and committed to the job, right? So how do you overcome that? Well, you present a detailed plan that you can do, make sure you can do it, of how you're going to do things differently.

And again, show that other parent what you've changed with your work and your schedule in order to make it happen. It's going to take some time to build that trust. And then the other parent may just naturally have doubts altogether. And again, like I said, it's all about show them, don't tell them. The doubts will go away and the trust will increase over time.

And now we're on to strategy number three, and that is leverage resources to advocate for a fair agreement.

Now, what does that mean? That means it's time to use professional resources. If you and the other parent are just, you know, absolutely over the moon about collaborating and you're just so civil, there's no problem even though you're divorcing or separating. There are some parents like that and it's fabulous.

If you're in that group, you don't even need this podcast, right? But most of you aren't. So, professional resources, experts, can help ensure that 1) You can talk to each other and collaborate, and 2) That you can enter into a parenting plan that reflects both parents' and especially your strengths and your capabilities, right?

Because you've really got to establish that. So the professionals that we're talking about, there's three general kinds that I want you to think about. First is a knowledgeable family law attorney. If you've got someone on the other side that is absolutely not going to collaborate whatsoever, you can't have a civil discussion, you're probably going to need to hire a crackerjack attorney to get in there and ask the court for orders because they will be able to navigate that system for you. They don't have all the emotion and the upset that is built in that you have with your spouse. Okay? But the problem is If go down the attorney route and you go into court, remember court is an adversarial arena.

It just is by nature, right? You go in with an attorney, the other spouse is or parent is either going to go in with an attorney to battle you and now everybody's spending a lot of money in this extra stress or they're going come in on their own and feel attacked and really go after you.

If you have some really good attorneys who are in it to get this thing together for you and try to get agreement early on and make lots of efforts to do that, that's what you want because too many of our family law attorneys are out there they make their money when they go to court. Right, because there's a lot of time involved.

So this is a tough one. The other thing you risk when you go to court, I will say, is if you, if both sides come in with some horror stories that they're telling the court about the other parent, most of the time the court is going to say, "Okay, I got to figure out what's in the best interest of these children here. I've got concern because Mom, you're telling me that Dad has three heads and you know, has all of these vices and that could be dangerous to the children and, and Dad, you're telling me that Mom leaves the children at home all day long and, you know, they've burned the house down three times." You're telling the court these horror stories in order to advocate for your own position.

When the court gets stuck with that scenario, nine times out of ten, they're going to do what we call appointing a custody evaluator to your case. That means they're going to appoint a third-party professional, typically a therapist or a psychiatrist who will go in and they're an arm of the court.

They're neutral. They work for the judge, not for you, not for the other side. And their job is to say, "All right, I'm going to interview dad. I'm going to interview the children. I'm going to interview mom. I'm going to interview all the family members and people who know them. I might even talk to the teachers and the school counselors."

This gets expensive folks, because We're, now we're spending a lot of time doing this, right? And then I'm going to write a report back to the court and tell the court who I think is the better parent where the child should spend the most time and what the time-sharing schedule should be. I can tell you that the average cost of that here in Southern California, and the court orders one or both of you to pay that expense, to split it usually, is $7,500 to $10,000 to start.

And we've seen them go upwards on a very regular basis to $15,000. And if you're really getting nasty with each other, $20,000, $25,000 just for that expert. Okay. So you can see attorneys have their place. They're important, but there's a lot of risks involved in that. The other probe that I want you to consider is mediation.

Of course, you knew I was going to talk to you about mediation. I'm all for it because this is what we do on a regular basis. And we see so much success. And it is so much better for the families. Now, this requires a modicum of civility where we can sit down together at the table and a good mediator is going to help you together, parents, get real, look at what's in the best interests of the children, and figure out a custody and time sharing arrangement that meets that primary focus of what's in these kids best interests and how do we accomplish that.

That's where we can get really creative because we have a lot more time to think about this than a judge that is just seeing the line of cases next, next, next, they've got about 10 minutes to hear your case, they don't have much time to read your paperwork, right? But in mediation, you can really give your children the attention they deserve and work something out that makes sense.

And oh, by the way, it gets done faster and at a lot less cost. So engage in mediation. That's a really good way to go. And then the last one is if you're civil and you're not at the court level yet and you're not where you think you need orders yet, engage a family therapist. If you have a family therapist, you might have some children that have some special needs or they've got some special emotional needs.

Maybe they've already been in therapy. As parents go to the therapist and say, help us navigate this. A good family therapist is experienced in this. So that is also an option. That's the much less expensive, less adversarial option than having the court appoint a custody evaluator. Let me go back to mediation for just a moment now. That probably sounds really good to you, right? Mediation. You can mediate your whole divorce if it's a divorce and not just a custody issue. You can mediate all the issues. But you may be in that kind of awkward place where as you research what mediation is all about and what it can do for you and how it keeps you out of court and it's private and all the things, all the great things about mediation, there's still a reason you're not with this other parent anymore, right?

Because you've had disputes, you don't see eye to eye, and so there's going to be some distrust or, you know, it's not going to be all a bed of roses. So the question we get all the time is, "How do I pitch mediation to the other side? How do I get them to get past their anger at me, or whatever it is, and really consider mediation?

Well, I have created a special resource just for this issue because it is so important. This is a resource where I'm going to put a link to this in the show notes, and you can click the link and you can sign up for it. It is a short little video where I talk to you about how you can introduce the concept of mediation to a soon to be former spouse or ex partner, whether you want to mediate the entire case or just the custody portion or modified orders. It doesn't matter, but I'm going to show you how you can introduce the concept in a way that it doesn't look like you're trying to railroad somebody into mediation. You really want them to take a real honest look at it. Some sample scripts. So if you want to send an email, I'm giving you some sample scripts on how to write a non-controversial encouraging email with some links on what mediation entails and how it works. So this little resource that I'm happy to provide to you is all about how you can get the other side to consider and consider this and get the two of you to the table, or at least to a first consultation with a mediator in order to see if mediation is right for you and your family.

It'll save you a lot of time and money. Promise you. All right, well, let's recap the three strategies we've talked about. Number one, prove your commitment and establish a track record for being consistent. Number two, be realistic and thoughtful in your parenting plan. And number three, leverage resources to advocate for a fair custody arrangement.

And mediation there is the power move. I want you to focus on the long-term benefits of maintaining a strong relationship with your children. You really are writing on the slate of who they are, right? You really are. So this is your opportunity and don't miss it. Divorce and separation are hard, but this is your opportunity to really enforce to your children how important they are in your life and the fact that you're going to be there forever for them.

Do this thoughtfully, do this prayerfully, do it kindly and lovingly. It takes some time and it takes some work, but I know you can do it. And I'll see you next time on the Splitting Smart Podcast.