Communicating in Divorce: Tone Matters

One of the biggest challenges that many clients face in their divorce is how to communicate with their spouse or ex-spouse.  This especially important when a couple will be co-parenting down the road.

When children are involved, productive communication is crucial to protecting the kids from the ravages of a divorce.

That is easier said than done.  So, the question becomes how to productively communicate?  There is a lot of information about how do to that.  But, in my experience, a lot of it is somewhat hard to really grasp and put into practice in the heat of the moment.

One suggestion that I use is to speak to your spouse or ex-spouse the same way you would speak to your child’s teacher at a parent-teacher conference. 

After all, there are some strong similarities in the conversations.  The goal of a parent teacher conference is frequently the same as communication between divorced or separated parents: discuss issues regarding the kids and possible ways to address those issues.  Further, you may disagree with something the teacher says, you may be offended, and you are certainly emotionally invested in the topic of the conversation, i.e. your child.

Think about how you would speak to your child’s teacher.  What tone would you use?  What things would you say and not say, even if you were thinking them?  What would be your goal?

I suspect you would adopt some combination of the following techniques in a conversation with your child’s teacher:

            Ÿ          Paying attention

            Ÿ          Politeness

            Ÿ          Asking questions to clarify information

            Ÿ          Making an effort to understand what the teacher is saying

            Ÿ          Acting respectfully

            Ÿ          Working together

            Ÿ          Acknowledging the joint interest in your child’s well being

By contrast, you probably would not do the following in a conversation with your child’s teacher:

            Ÿ          Blame the teacher

            Ÿ          Accuse the teacher

            Ÿ          Yell

            Ÿ          Insult the teacher

            Ÿ          Threaten the teacher

            Ÿ          Act rudely

Why?  Because you understand that the teacher has a lot of influence over your child and spends a lot of time with your child.  Because your relationship with that caretaker is very important to your child’s well being. Because you know that you’re going to have to see that teacher again.  Because you actually want to have a productive meeting.  Because you want what is best for your child. 

That being the case, why would you treat your child’s other parent differently?  After all, isn’t your child’s other parent going to be at least as influential and important for your child as the teacher? 

Yes, there may be emotional reasons for treating your ex-spouse differently than your child’s teacher.  But, are your emotional issues more important than your child’s well being?

In my experience, having a parent adopt a tone appropriate for a parent teacher conference sets the stage for a productive collaborative conference or mediation.  And it gives clients an easy reference point, a convenient “go to” mode when they feel themselves struggling to communicate well.   

In my experience, this technique frequently helps, and rarely, if ever hurts.

Fighting Well is a Key to a Good Divorce

Perhaps the most important skill that Collaborative Divorce attorneys provide and teach their clients is fighting well. 

 (Cue my wife raising an eyebrow).

Actually, it’s not fighting.  It’s resolving disagreements and conflict between divorcing spouses in difficult and tense situations without fighting. 

Fighting well is really the art of communicating your viewpoint, needs, and interests in a way that can be effectively heard and received by your spouse.  After all, the validity of your concern is invisible if it’s wrapped in anger or criticism.

In fact, the most important thing in communication in a divorce is not what is said, but what is heard. 

So, fighting well often means first figuring out what you want the other party to hear.  Then you have to form your words to ensure that your spouse will effectively receive the message. 

Usually, this means that the words that impulsively come to mind need to be revised.

Many people are far more concerned about saying what they want to say, regardless of how it may be received.  In fact, this is by the far the most prominent, if not effective, style of fighting in a marriage or divorce.

This discrepancy between what is said and what is heard may result from people arguing from different sides of their brains. As pointed out in this recent Wall Street Journal article and Today Show story, people have different fighting styles.  And, some of that is determined by which part of your brain is doing the fighting. 

The article points out that left-brain fighters tend to become blind to non-verbal information when they are fighting.  They lose the ability to perceive and judge emotion, tone and body language.

Right brain fighters can become flooded with emotional reactions to words, and lose the ability to hear the actual words that are spoken. 

So, in order to fight well, or rather to effectively discuss any point of conflict, it helps to know how you fight, and what information you may be missing from your spouse.  At least that way, you can pay more attention to what you may be missing.

And, knowing how your spouse fights can help you communicate your concerns in a way that your spouse will actually hear.

This is one of the skills that we, as collaborative attorneys, work to build in our clients.  It is one of the “secrets” to resolving divorce issues without creating more hostility and destruction.

In fact, if spouses can master this skill during their marriage, then they may never need to work on it in a divorce.

Talking About Divorce May Save Your Marriage

As this article from CNN shows, discussing a possible divorce can save your marriage. 

For the Richards, the conversation about how to break the news of their divorce to their kids led to an open and honest discussion about their marriage.

That, in turn, led to a discussion about how they communicated with each other, and why it was not working.  That conversation saved their marriage.

In my experience as a Raleigh divorce attorney, I have heard client after client explain why their marriage fell apart.  Frequently, they describe little problems that were never effectively addressed.  Five, ten or twenty years later, those little problems had become major problems; just like the problems the Richards describe in the article.

I frequently work with couples that have lost the ability to effectively communicate with each other.  My perception is that many of these couples could have avoided divorce if they had worked on more effective communication during the marriage.  The Richards’ story is a perfect example of this idea.  From countless conversations with marital and family therapists, I understand that their experiences support this idea as well.

I am not a marriage counselor or a mental health professional.  But, I am married and I work with divorced and divorcing couples every day. 

As shown by the Richards’ story, and my own work with divorcing families, you may avoid divorce by having a difficult but important conversation with your spouse that begins something like this:  “If we ever get divorced, what would be the cause?  What can we do to address that now?”

Better to explore these issues now, rather than years down the road in my office.

Randolph (Tré) Morgan III is an experienced family law attorney accepting cases in Raleigh, Cary, Apex, Garner, Fuquay-Varina, Clayton, Smithfield, Wake Forest, RTP, Durham, Chapel Hill, Holly Springs and surrounding areas.  He focuses his practice in divorce, child custody, alimony, child support, equitable distribution, property division, paternity, guardianship and other family related matters.  

A DIVORCE CONUNDRUM

In my last post I explained a few of the benefits of effective communication in divorce and other family law matters. In a recent discussion with our pastor on this topic, he made a great point: If a couple could communicate effectively, then they likely would not need a divorce in the first place.

That one had me stumped for a bit.

But, as I thought about the conundrum, I realized that his statement assumes that effective communication is like your vertical leap; you either have it or you don't. The truth is that effective communication is more like your jump-shot; anyone can develop it with dedication and practice. (I apologize for the basketball metaphors, but with UNC in the Final Four they are coming naturally).

In fact, even if a lack of effective communication contributed to the end of the marriage, it does not have to contribute to problems with co-parenting, the resolution of legal issues in divorce or the future relationship between the parties.

The natural question is how two people that have been communicating in a deficient manner for years suddenly learn to discuss issues in a productive manner. The answer, to a large extent, is that their attorneys can teach them the communication skills that they will need.

Many attorneys will not do this either due to a lack of their own communication skills or a belief that fighting is somehow more productive than cooperating. However, I strongly believe that one of the roles of an attorney in a family law dispute is to teach their client how to communicate effectively.

Obviously, this will involve some direct discussion of the best ways to communicate effectively. But, it also involves modeling effective communication for the client. If an attorney communicates with opposing counsel in a hostile, position based, threatening manner, then the client assumes that this is the most productive technique. In fact, it is not. No matter how contentious the case, threats, position based negotiations and aggressive postures rarely move the parties closer to a resolution, and almost always push the parties further from their goals. Thus, attorneys can head off a lot of wasted time, money and emotional fatigue by teaching clients how to effectively communicate.

So, the answer to our pastor's conundrum is that past communication techniques do not have to continue. New, more effective techniques can be learned and used to resolve the legal issues in divorce. Attorneys can and should play a large role in that process.

The Benefits of Effective Communication in Divorce

In this article, I am picking back up on the discussion of the importance of communication in divorce matters. In the last post, I discussed the problems that poor communication causes and described the communication techniques that best promote effective communication. The next logical topic is how parties actually benefit from learning to communicate effectively.

The short answer is that effective communication saves time, money, energy and potentially a lifetime of conflict with your ex-spouse.

Most importantly, however, is that effective communication significantly raises the odds that the parties will reach an agreement at all. Many cases are forced to litigation when the parties' lack of effective communication torpedoes settlement negotiations. People that want to avoid litigation need to learn to communicate with each other.

In addition, when people communicate effectively, they reach agreements faster. This is usually because tangential issues, emotional roadblocks and counter productive negotiations are avoided. This effect can lead to agreements that are reached in weeks or months as opposed to years.

When clients are dealing with their attorneys, there is one cardinal rule: Time is money. Thus, the reduction in the time it takes to reach an agreement provides significant savings for clients in legal fees. The money that clients save when they learn to communicate effectively can go to their retirement funds, monthly cash flow, rainy day fund or to their kids. As I tell clients: You can either put my kids through college, or you can put your kids through college. In fact, the number one thing that clients can do to reduce legal bills is to learn to communicate effectively with their spouse or ex-spouse.

One of the most underrated benefits to effectively communicating in a divorce matter is the reduction of emotional trauma to the parties and their families. Everyone has heard the horror stories about ugly divorces and their affect on children, relatives, friendships, careers, etc...People rarely realize that an ugly divorce takes a huge emotional toll on them until it is too late. No divorce is pleasant. But, every divorce need not be emotionally devastating. Effective communication can greatly reduce the emotional toll of divorce. This emotional toll is often the difference between people who bounce back after a divorce and go on to live their lives to the fullest, and the people who never seem to recover from a divorce.

Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, divorcing parents have an obligation to learn how to communicate effectively for the sake of their children. Co-parenting children requires effective communication for a happily married couple living in the same house. Communication becomes even more important for divorced parents trying to co-parent from different households. Raising children of any age requires dozens of decisions each day. Many of those require the input of both parents. If the parents cannot put aside emotional issues between themselves and communicate effectively, their children will suffer the consequences. I have seen children miss out on extracurricular and other great opportunities simply because the parents could not stop fighting long enough to discuss the issue.

Divorced parents often ignore the long term affects of ineffective communication on the lives of their children and their own lives. Parenting does not end when a child turns 18. Parents will be involved in graduations, birthdays, holidays, weddings, the birth of grandchildren, etc...More than likely, both parents will want to be involved in these events. That means that parents will be tied to each other, and will have to see each other for the rest of their lives . Or, they will force their children to choose which parent gets to participate in the events of their lives. This being the case, the only reasonable long term solution is for parents to learn to get along. The biggest part of that is learning to communicate effectively.

There are countless benefits to effective communication between divorcing or divorced parties; far too many to address here. They impact every part of a client's life: financial, emotional and even physical health. More importantly, the ability to effectively communicate affects the lives of children, friends and family. Divorcing parties owe it to themselves and everybody that they care about to learn to communicate effectively when ending their marriage.

In my next post, I will address a great point made by my pastor recently: "If people could communicate effectively, they would not get divorced in the first place."