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Divorce Resource Services
Philip Crump, Professional Mediator
Lou Levin, Ph.D., Child and Adult Psychologist
Divorce Resource Services is a comprehensive integrated professional service designed to supplement and to support the legal process of divorce. Clients and their attorneys work in concert with a team comprised of a Professional Mediator, an Adult Coach, and a Child Advocate to facilitate a dignified closure of the marriage without litigation. Mediated financial settlement and parenting agreements are then incorporated into the final legal documents. This shorter-term, results-oriented approach can significantly reduce both the emotional and financial impact of divorce.
A fundamental strength of Divorce Resource Services is the coordination of professional resources to support clients as they create their own resolution. Unfortunately, many divorce settlement and parenting agreements are made under adversarial conditions and colored by attempts to ‘even the score’. This typically results in a protracted legal process, repeated court appearances, large sums spent on disclosure and custody evaluations, children who suffer under the weight of the process, and adults who are emotionally and financially drained. The Divorce Resource Services team approach promotes collaborative, not adversarial, conditions by emphasizing and facilitating effective communication between law, therapy, and mediation. With attorney involvement, this integrated approach maximizes legal and durable consensus agreements.
Families develop both financial and relational resources over the course of their life together. Divorce Resource Services provides a mindful reorganization of the family’s financial resources that contributes to the future well-being of the adults and children involved. The professionals with Divorce Resource Services attend with equal care to the value of the emotional resources and social connections of the restructured family. Clients who engage in this collaborative process are more likely to preserve the many relationships that continue after the divorce. They can maintain relationships with mutual friends and extended family members. They can co-parent more effectively. Both the adults and the children can meet more comfortably in the future at times of significant life passages.
Negotiating the challenges of divorce in a context that highlights personal integrity allows the adults to look back on their conduct during this difficult time with self-respect and a sense of dignity.
What professionals are involved?
Client-selected Attorneys help their clients participate with equal voice in creating a divorce that incorporates legal rights and obligations while protecting future relationships and children’s needs and interests. Because the attorneys work towards collaboration rather than litigation, they disqualify themselves from court representation.
A Professional Mediator facilitates creation of divorce settlement and parenting agreements in an atmosphere promoting personal empowerment, mutual understanding, and cooperative decision-making.
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A Child Advocate assesses the children’s needs and advocates for their best interests and also coaches appropriate parenting agreement options. The scope of the work is defined by the children’s needs specific to the legal restructuring of the family and is not intended to replace any long-standing effective therapy in which the children may already be involved.
A Financial Advisor is available to assist clients in developing two viable financial systems out of one. While not every settlement requires extensive financial consultation, the Financial Advisor provides expertise and creative planning to work towards a mutually agreeable settlement.
How would a typical case proceed?
Clients discuss with their attorneys the suitability of the Divorce Resource Services process for their situation. Clients who have not already selected attorneys will be provided with a list of family attorneys who are informed about this process and who are focused on collaborative resolution. An initial informal consultation is also held with Divorce Resource Services’ Mediator, Adult Coach, and Child Advocate to clarify services, to make an initial assessment of needs, to fully describe this process, and to determine its appropriateness for the specific individuals.
A comprehensive Partnering Meeting is convened with the Clients, the Divorce Resource Services team, the Attorneys, and a Financial Consultant as well as any other professional resources deemed appropriate. The participants identify the clients' needs and the professionals' array of services. Using this information, they create a contract that outlines their respective roles and affirms the commitment of every participant to work collaboratively toward a timely resolution.
While the clients never give up their right to go to court at any point, the agenda for Divorce Resource Services is settlement. To help promote the non-adversarial nature of this process and to strengthen the mutual commitment to a mediated resolution a contract is signed in which the clients agree that they forfeit the option to ever again call these professionals to court in opposition to the other. Attorneys and all other involved professionals also sign the contract, agreeing to not ever participate in court proceedings on behalf of one client in opposition to the other.
Consultation with each professional or group of professionals listed above are then scheduled and coordinated as appropriate to the specific needs of the clients.
The outcome is a finalized legal divorce, including the attorney-crafted marital settlement agreement and parenting plan reflecting the understandings and outcomes reached through the Divorce Resource Services process.
How does the cost of Divorce Resource Services compare with that of a typical contested divorce?
A full-blown litigated divorce might feature extensive preparation, discovery, motions, and psychological evaluations along with the courtroom activities themselves. The attendant fees for attorneys, paralegals, evaluators, and investigators may run to the tens of thousands of dollars. Litigation often results in final decisions made by lawyers and judges, rather than by the clients. This typically does not resolve underlying issues and creates the potential for expensive returns to the courtroom. In addition, the emotional scars of a lengthy battle often endure and bar any possibility of future cooperative parenting. The ongoing relationship between former spouses may continue to be abrasive, with consequent negative impact not only on them, but also on their children and their circle of relatives and friends.
Divorce Resource Services offers an alternative that is both more long-lasting and more cost-effective. With full commitment on the part of the clients, many of the features of litigation are no longer needed. With Divorce Resource Services, total expenses are minimized because the clients and the professionals share a focus of the emotional and financial health of both spouses and their children. The solutions are more complete, the settlement more equitable, and the future more promising.
What service does the Mediator provide?
The Mediator serves as coach, referee, translator, and facilitator for adults who wish to reach mutually satisfactory agreements on child care and custody, as well as financial and property settlements. This process provides support for drafting parenting plans and settlements characterized by adequate specificity, appropriate allowance for future changes, and overall clarity. When people are able to create their own agreements, rather than have them done by others, the chances are increased that each will be satisfied with the outcome and commit to its terms.
The Mediator encourages participants to articulate and share issues or perspectives in a respectful and effective manner for mutual understanding. The process supports productive conversations focused on the best future for all parties, rather than on the troubling situations of the past. Also within the mediation process, the Mediator addresses effective communication skills that may help reduce the potential for conflict in the future.
The Mediator leads the initial Partnering Meeting. He meets once individually with each of the clients to clarify specific issues and needs then facilitates several joint sessions of no more than two hours each with both clients present. There may be occasional inclusion of the Adult Coach and/or Child Advocate in developing the settlement and parenting agreement. The development of draft documents in the sessions is supplemented with “homework”, including reading resource materials, gathering pertinent information, and reviewing documents with outside advisors. The agreed-upon draft documents are provided to the attorneys for inclusion in the Final Decree.
What service does the Child Advocate provide?
The Child Advocate works to identify the emotional, developmental, and practical needs of the children. By serving as a “conduit” for the children into the legal process of divorce, he facilitates a collaborative approach to a neutral, fair, and practical parenting agreement largely based on the needs of the children. He helps the parents to optimize consideration of children’s emotional, developmental, and practical needs. As a result, there is less intentional or unintentional use of children’s activities, schedules, supplie, or access to material or emotional resources to make things “feel fair” for the parents.
The Child Advocate focuses on the needs of the children within the parenting agreement and settlement. This limited focus is not necessarily therapeutic, and does not attempt to address the resolution of any ongoing emotional or behavioral issues. If your child is currently in therapy, the Child Advocate speaks with the therapist to obtain their input and this information plays a significant part in recommendations we make. Should important emotional issues surface during the Child Advocacy sessions, the Child Advocate reports them to the children’s therapist and/or parents, as appropriate.
Along with this consultation, the Child Advocate relies on face-to-face contact with the children themselves in order to best represent them. As a result, the children are better able to trust that their needs, wishes and interests will be represented when the adults make decisions.
At times the child’s individual therapist may express a preference to represent the child to the Divorce Resource Services Mediator and Adult Coach. We invite participation of other professionals at the time of the initial Partnering Meeting. After that comprehensive meeting, we find that our Child Advocate works most effectively in this process since Divorce Resource Services is based on affiliation with collaborative attorneys, specific communication methods, and understandings developed by our staff.
In most cases, one to three individual sessions are held with each child in the family. In these sessions, the children are helped to express their needs and wishes as well as coached/ counseled about realistic expectations of this family transition.
In a family with more than one child, a Children’s Caucus is held once the individual children have formulated their views. In this meeting, each child is helped to express his/her views to their siblings, to accept that there may be different sets of needs and wishes among them, and to be assured that the Divorce Resource Services team will work to make sure everyone’s needs and wishes will be respected as much as possible. Connections and feedback to their own therapists, if they have them, are also discussed in this meeting.
A follow-up Children’s Caucus is typically scheduled once the written draft of the parenting agreement has been developed to provide the children with an opportunity to reflect on the process, to express any concerns with the parenting agreement as it stands, and to identify issues they wish to discuss with their therapists.
FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
How does the cost of Divorce Resource Services compare with that of a typical contested divorce?
A full-blown litigated divorce might feature extensive preparation, discovery, motions, and psychological evaluations along with the courtroom activities themselves. The attendant fees for attorneys, paralegals, evaluators, and investigators may run to the tens of thousands of dollars. Litigation often results in final decisions made by lawyers and judges, rather than by the clients. This typically does not resolve underlying issues and creates the potential for expensive returns to the courtroom. In addition, the emotional scars of a lengthy battle often endure and bar any possibility of future cooperative parenting. The ongoing relationship between former spouses may continue to be abrasive, with consequent negative impact not only on them, but also on their children and their circle of relatives and friends.
Divorce Resource Services offers an alternative that is both more long-lasting and more cost-effective. With full commitment on the part of the clients, many of the features of litigation are no longer needed. With Divorce Resource Services, total expenses are minimized because the clients and the professionals share a focus of the emotional and financial health of both spouses and their children. The solutions are more complete, the settlement more equitable, and the future more promising.
What if my children are already seeing a therapist?
The role of the Child Advocate is to delineate the needs and interests of the children for the purposes of developing the parenting agreement. This process is not designed to be therapeutic in and of itself. If your child is currently in therapy, we speak with the therapist to obtain their input and this information plays a significant part in recommendations we make.
The Divorce Resource Services Child Advocate is able to do extensive consultation with the child’s current therapist. Along with this consultation, the Child Advocate relies on face-to-face contact with the children themselves in order to best represent them. As a result, the children are better able to trust that their needs, wishes and interests will be represented when the adults make decisions.
At times the child’s individual therapist may express a preference to represent the child to the Divorce Resource Services Mediator and Adult Coach. We invite participation of other professionals at the time of the initial Partnering Meeting. After that comprehensive meeting, we find that our Child Advocate works most effectively in this process since Divorce Resource Services is based on affiliation with collaborative attorneys, specific communication methods, and understandings developed by our staff.
Philip Crump
Professional Mediator
1301-E Luisa Santa Fe, NM 87505 505-989-8558 phcrump@juno.com
Philip Crump has been a professional mediator in Santa Fe since 1992, serving both private clients and public agencies. He has also actively mediated, taught mediation and promoted conflict resolution in the Santa Fe Public Schools. With an academic background in social sciences and engineering, and a varied work experience, he is able to communicate with people in diverse settings. Philip's training includes more than 250 hours of classroom work in mediation and facilitation, and hundreds of hours of volunteer and professional mediations. His current mediation practice focuses primarily on situations that involve changing relationships--in the context of marriage and divorce and in workplace settings. His professional orientation is towards helping people safely communicate their needs to one another.
Phil is listed as a mediator in both the New Mexico and Santa Fe Collaborative Divorce listings.
Lou Levin, Ph.D.
Child and Adult Psychologist/Child Advocate
2078 Calle Contento Santa Fe, NM 87505 505-473-3719 www.louislevinphd.com
Lou Levin has been seeing children, families and adults in Santa Fe since 1994 in both private psychotherapy, and as a counselor and psychologist in the Santa Fe Public Schools. He earned his doctorate in Psychology from the University of Maryland, was the co-director of a family therapy training program, and has taught family therapy, child development, and counseling courses at Maryland, Southwestern College and the College of Santa Fe. He is a licensed clinical psychologist and a certified School Psychologist and School Counselor. Lou’s work with children centers around respect for the child as a developing personality, his familiarity with both traditional and newly-developing theories, and his understanding of child development within the family system. It is shaped by his many years of experience in treating children in practice, clinic, school, and hospital settings.
Lou is listed as a child advocate in both the New Mexico and Santa Fe Collaborative Divorce listings.
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