Dallas Divorce Law Blog by Michelle O'Neil

Talking to your kids about your divorce is difficult, to say the least.  Try the following tips to help both the child and yourself with the challenge and stress of the conversation:

• Do not keep it a secret or wait until the last minute.  Kids tend to know more about what’s going on than parents given them credit for.  Tell them far enough in advance to allow them time to let it soak in and give them time to adjust.
• Tell the kids together.  Having the conversation together allows both parents to be involved in the conversation and gives each parent the same opportunity to participate in the discussion.
• Do not discuss the adult reasons for the divorce or talk about the other parent’s faults or problems.  Keep adult topics between the adults and let the kids know just what affects them.
• Tell the kids that the divorce is not their fault and both parents still love them.   Kids tend to take divorces very personally.  They think something they did or didn’t do was the cause of the break-up.  Reassure them that both parents love them, they just can’t live together anymore.
• Give the kids some idea of what life will be like after the divorce.  Even if you don’t know the specifics, maybe because custody hasn’t been settled yet, you can tell them that they will live some of the time with Mommy and some of the time with Daddy and Mommy and Daddy will both go to their games and events like they do now.

Also watch for signs of distress from your child.  Divorce is hard enough on adults, and many adults need counseling — it’s the same for kids.  Many kids will need counseling too, if for no other reason than to have someone safe to talk to that’s not mom or dad.

What happens to the ring when an engagement is called off?  Is it an unconditional gift so the chick keeps it?  Or is it a conditional gift and the dude gets it back?  That question was addressed in a recent New York Times article.  Some states’ views differ, but in Texas, if the chick says “hold the weddin’” then the dude gets the ring back.  In this situation the ring was a conditional gift… conditioned on a weddin’.  But, if the dude calls it quits, and therefore he breaks the condition of the gift, he cannot benefit from that bad act, so he doesn’t get it back.   Of course, there may always be exceptions to the general rule, like what if the ring is the dude’s great-grandmother’s ring.  And, generally speaking, the cost of litigating over who should have the ring would almost always outweigh the cost of the ring.

Continuing with the myths of divorce post from Rutgers University’s National Marriage Project:

8.  Myth:  “Because they are more cautious in entering marital relationships and also have a strong determination to avoid the possibility of divorce, children who grow up in a home broken by divorce tend to have as much success in their own marriages as those from intact homes.”  Marriages of children of divorce actually have a much higher rate of divorce than the marriages of children from intact families.  A major reason for this, according to a recent study, is that children learn about marital commitment or permanence by observing their parents.  In the children of divorce, the sense of commitment to a lifelong marriage has been undermined.

9.  Myth:  “Following divorce, the children involved are better off in stepfamilies than in single-parent families.”  The evidence suggests that stepfamilies are no improvement over single-parent families, even through typically income levels are higher and there is a father figure in the home.  Stepfamilies tend to have their own set of problems, including interpersonal conflicts with new parent figures and a very high risk of family breakup.

10.  Myth:  “Being very unhappy at certain points in a marriage is a good sign that the marriage will eventually end in divorce.”  All marriages have their ups and downs.  Recent research using a large national sample foudn that eighty-six percent of people who were unhappily married in the late 1980s, and stayed with the marriage, indicated when interviewed five years later that they were happier.  Indeed, three-fifths of the formerly unhappily married couples rated their marriages as either “very happy” or “quite happy”.

Extra Myth:  “It is usually men who initiate divorce proceedings.”  Two-thirds of all divorces are initiated by women.  Reasons for this vary and are somewhat speculative.  Women tend to receive custody by agreement in many cases, so they have more reason to file the divorce.  Also, husbands are more likely than wives to have problems with drinking, drug abuse, and infidelity, creating the impetus for the wife to initiate the divorce.

More about the myths of divorce from Rutgers University’s National Marriage Project:

4.  Myth:  “Divorce may cause problems for many of the children who are affected by it, but by and large these problems are not long lasting and the children recover relatively quickly.”  Divorce increases the risk of interpersonal problems in children.  There is evidence, both from small qualitative studies and from large-scale empirical studies, that many of these problems are long-lasting and may even become worse in adulthood.

5.  Myth:  “Having a child together will help a couple to improve their marital satisfaction and prevent a divorce.”  Many studies have shown that the most stressful time in a marriage is after the first child is born.  Couples who have a child together have a slightly decreased risk of divorce compared to couples without children, but the decreased risk is far less than it used to be when parents with marital problems were more likely to stay together for the sake of the children.

6.  Myth:  “Following divorce, the woman’s standard of living plummets by seventy-three percent while that of the man’s improves by forty-two percent.”  This dramatic inequity, one of the most widely publicized statistics from the social sciences, was later found to be based on a faulty calculation.  A reanalysis of the data determined that the woman’s loss was twenty-seven percent, while the man’s gain was ten percent.  Irrespective of the magnitude of the differences, the gender gap is real and seems not to have narrowed much in recent decades.

7.  Myth:  “When parents don’t get along, children are better off if their parents divorce than if they stay together.”  A recent large-scale, long-term study suggests othewise.  While it found that parents’ marital unhappiness and discord have a broad negative impact on virtually every dimension of their children’s well-being, so does the fact of going through a divorce.  In examining the negative impacts on chidlren more closely, the study discovered that it was only the children in very high conflict homes who benefited from the conflict removal that divorce may bring.  In lower-conflict marriages that end in divorce — and the study found that perhaps as many as two-thirds of the divorces were of this type — the situation of the children was made much worse following a divorce.  Based on the fidnings of this study, therefore, except in the minority of high-conflict marriages, it is better for the children if their parents stay together and work out their problems than if they divorce.

An article from Rutgers University’s National Marriage Project lists the Top Ten Myths of Divorce 

1. Myth:  “Half of all marriages end in divorce.”  That may have been the case several decades ago, but the divorce rate has actually been dropping since the early 1980s.  In the early 2000s, the chances that a marriage contracted this year will end in divorce before one partner dies has been estimated to be between 40 and 45 percent.
2. Myth:  “Because people learn from their bad experiences, second marriages tend to be more successful than first marriages.”  Although many people who divorce have successful subsequent marriages, the divorce rate of remarriages is higher than that of first marriages.
3. Myth:  “Living together before marriage is a good way to reduce the chances of eventually divorcing.”  Many studies have found that those who live together before marriage have a considerably higher chance of eventually divorcing.  This may be, in part, because people who are willing to cohabit may also be those who are more willing to divorce.

To upload a copy of the article, click here:  Top Ten Myths of Divorce

A recent national survey of divorce lawyers notes an increase in the number of mothers paying child support.  According to the survey, 55% of attorneys said they have noticed a shift during the past five years in which more mothers are required to pay child support. 

This mimicks the trend that Dallas divorce lawyers are also seeing locally.  Many years ago, the Texas Family Code eliminated the gender bias from the language of the law, equalizing the rights of mothers and fathers.  Over the years since, the Texas Legislature has continued to support an increase in fathers rights overall.  We could have a spirited discussion on why this is… is it because many of the Legislators are fathers that have been involved in custody situations?  or is it because many of the Legislators are male?  Regardless, there has been a definite trend toward equalizing male and female roles related to children of divorce.  This, likewise, means that when a mother is not the primary parent, she will be required to pay child support.  In years past, when a mother did not have custody of the children, most often she was not made to pay support, presuming that the father made sufficient income to support the children financially without assistance from the mother.  But, some women more than or equal to their husbands (baby’s father) and therefore are required under the law to take equal or greater financial responsibility for the children.

Texas has standardized guidelines for the payment of child support based on the income of the paying parent… For example, 20% of the net income of the parent if there’s one child, 25% for two children, etc.  The formula becomes more complex if there are children from multiple relationships, where the parent paying the child support is given a credit for support paid to the children from the other relationship.

Regardless, there has been a trend recently in Dallas area divorces where mothers are being required to pay child support.  This isn’t necessarily because of some inherent unfairness in the legal system, but more because of a trend toward equalizing treatment of each parent regardless of gender.

According to an article on KSAT website out of San Antonio, divorce lawyers nationwide are seeing a trend away from divorce in light of the recent economic woes.  We are seeing the same trends in Dallas divorces.  Usually bad economic times increase the stress on marriages, causing a rise in divorce rates.  But this time, it seems that couples are not splitting up as a result of the poor economy.  It isn’t that couples are rekindline their marriages, but more that they cannot afford to get divorced.  Housing values have falled, 401K values have fallen, and there is just not as much to divide.  Debt values may outweigh assets values, leaving nothing positive to gain from the divorce.  Spouses may not be able to get credit cards or personal loans to finance attorneys fees to obtain a divorce.  In fact, most credit card companies have reduced the credit limits on credit cards, leaving less available credit to borrow from.  I’ve even seen some spouses who cannot obtain new housing post-divorce, leaving them few options but to stay in an unhappy marriage just for a place to live.

Planning parenting time splits and possession/access schedules with children can be complex and a frequent source of conflict between parents, even in Dallas Texas divorces.  Fortunately, new software tools have been created to simplify the task.  These software resources assist parents in developing, tracking, and adjusting custody schedules and counting overnights.  For parents who live long-distances apart, these tools can be particularly useful. I have not actually used any of these in my practice. Please let me know if you find these useful so I can make recommendations to my clients.

• CustodyKeeper
• Custody X Change
• Kidmate
• OurFamilyWizard
• ParentingTimeCalendar
• SharedGround
• KidsFirst

Thank you to the Alaska Divorce Blog for pointing me to this.  Check out the article in the May 2008 Newsletter of the ABA’s Family Law Section for a description of each program.