From Kristina Kuzmic: ” Some stories I share with you feel more personal than others. Some stories I’m really protective of because of the impact they’ve had on my life, and in turn, on the lives of my children. This is one of those stories.
Ever since I opened up about the struggles I went through years ago, after my divorce, the question I get asked the most is: What was your turning point? Here is my answer… ”

The article below was written by the author of “Splitting,” the landmark book on divorcing a Borderline or Narcissist. I wrote the foreword to the first edition of “Splitting,” and have admired the work that Bill Eddy has done since that time in the field of High Conflict Divorce. Here’s an excellent article that discusses high conflict communications, and the BIFF response.

Hostile email, texts and other electronic communications have become much more common over the past decade.When people are involved in a formal conflict (a divorce, a workplace grievance, a homeowners’ association complaint, etc.) there may be more frequent hostile email. There may be more people involved and it may be exposed to others or in court. Therefore, how you respond to hostile communications may impact your relationships or the outcome of a case.

Do you need to respond?

2016 brings to Illinois a revised and amended Marriage and Dissolution of Marriage Act. The new Act brings some substantive changes to the way that divorce and custody is adjudicated in Illinois, but the guideline advice for preparing for a divorce remains steady. If you find yourself headed for divorce, you should consider taking the following steps to protect and prepare yourself:

Know Your Assets & Debts – Make an effort to summarize your important assets and debts, and if you have been kept in the dark about what your marriage holds by way of assets and retirement plans, talk to my firm about the use of discovery at the beginning of your case to get at these items. If you have assets that you owned before the marriage, or that were acquired by way of inheritance or estate plan gifting, be sure to segregate these gifts or bequests from your “marital basket” of accounts.

Maintain Behavioral Balance – In other words, don’t make impulsive changes or purchases, or begin a path of active dating while the divorce is in process. Starting a divorce case puts each party under the view and control of the Court; this can be an advantage in gaining control over, for example, assets being wasted by the other spouse, but this change also puts a premium on good behavior. Don’t use social media as a confessional or bully pulpit to bash your spouse. Check the security of your email and social media accounts, and if you have any doubts about the integrity of your email, talk with my firm about steps you can take to prevent keystroke logging ( see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keystroke_logging ) or email hacking.

One aspect of my practice is helping my clients manage what can be one of the biggest traumas in life….an unexpected divorce. As a divorce and child custody attorney, I am not involved in the practice of therapy, but any experienced and dedicated lawyer in this filed understands that one has to be mindful of the traumas and difficulties our clients face in managing an unexpected divorce. Part of this caring and management involves coaching, support, caring, and, for some, a referral to a skilled clinician for therapy.

Canadian therapist Justice Schanfarber just published an interesting article on the healing process that can be undertaken when the trauma of a divorce arrives:

” The end of a relationship or marriage can feel like death. Grief is an appropriate response. This means anger, sadness, denial might all arise.

I have written in the past during the holidays on the subject of creating new traditions; the idea is that during or after divorce, creating new activities and places to celebrate the holidays with yourself and the children, versus lamenting the loss of past traditions. Trading lamentation for adventure takes work, just as working oneself out of a sense of post-divorce loneliness during the holidays takes effort. I found this article on PsychCentral today on 10 ways to combat the sense of loneliness…this article may be particularly useful during these holiday periods for people going through a divorce or separation.

” Have you ever been lonely in a crowd? Have you ever been perfectly content all alone? Me too. And I have also suffered from loneliness.

Loneliness is a complex mental and emotional phenomenon that has at its base a powerful emotion that has survival value for children. All of us have experienced some degree of abandonment, if only for a short time, and remember the painful and scary feeling that goes along with it.

One of the interesting aspects of divorce litigation is the requirement that parents mediate their child custody issues, with the judge assigning a mediator in the initial weeks of the case should the parents not have an agreement as to legal custody (joint vs sole) and parenting time. In some cases mediation is beneficial. I am a trained mediator, but I can also say that mediation is not a panacea, it is not always a process that results in resolution. Many times, mediation fails. So, when the parents are bitterly oppositional, or when the issues are just not amenable to mediation, what should a parent do?

One piece of advice that I give my clients is to be, along with a good spokesperson for their views, a good listener. Many divorces feature parents that simply don’t want to talk to each other, and avoid interaction at all costs. Even when mediation is not likely to result in global agreements on custody and parenting time, it can be a time to listen to what the other parent is verbalizing to the mediator. New facts might be learned. Partially hidden agendas might be revealed. Concessions might be explored.

Keep in mind…everything said in mediation is private and none of the matters discussed in mediation can be used in court.