Suzy Miller

Suzy Miller is the Alternative Divorce Guide - keeping divorcing people out of court and away from adversarial lawyers

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How to Survive a Divorce using EFT

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Suzy Miller www.thedivorcemagazine.co.ukIn this interview with EFT expert Susan Cowe Miller, she explains to Alternative Divorce Guide Suzy Miller, how EFT Tapping can help with divorce stress; one of life’s big emotional challenges.

How to Survive a Divorce using EFT

Divorce Stress is one of life’s big emotional challenges.  Feelings of frustration, anger, helplessness, injustice all come high on the list.

A need for increased confidence, stronger self-worth and self-esteem seem necessary but sometimes they appear out of reach.

I share here the first of two easy to follow self-help Tapping videos; hugely effective in lowering stress and anxiety.

EFT can help clients deal with overwhelm, deep stress, self-sabotage and as a result they benefit from improved physical health and positive emotional well-being.

So how can EFT Tapping help you?

EFT (Emotional Freedom Technique) works to release trapped negative energy blocked within the body’s energy system. EFT has been called ‘Psychological Acupuncture’ because you tap on energy channels and voice your distressing issue, event or pain. When you are happy your energy flows easily through the energy channels but when you become stressed by a negative emotion blockages then appear within the energy system and potentially cause physical illness and pain.

The negative energy released by EFT Tapping has been stored since the specific negative event, statement or issue first took place, months or many years before.

EFT works at a conscious and subconscious level. It clears negative experiences from your past so that you change your emotional reactions today; you live and react in the present – not repeating negative patterns of learned behaviour from past stressful events.

It can be used as a self-healing tool but it is advised to work with a practitioner if troubled by big trauma.

Tapping is a powerful tool and you now have it, at your fingertips!

Suzy Miller of The Alternative Divorce

Follow Suzy on Twitter

Susan Cowe: EFT (Tapping) practitioner and author of ‘Survive and Thrive after Trauma’

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How to Get Approved for a Mortgage Post Divorce

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Suzy Miller www.thedivorcemagazine.co.ukIn this interview with financial advisor Sheila Bailey of Willow Private Finance – in my role as the Suzy Miller of Alternative Divorce Guide  asked Sheila how to get approved for a mortgage post divorce.

“Are the new mortgage rules going to make life even harder for separating families, trying to buy new homes on stretched incomes”?

New mortgage rules have come into force – will it make it harder for you to get a mortgage? How to get approved for a mortgage?

“When starting over from divorce, buying a new home is often part of that process, but will these new rules make it harder?

As of the 26th April 2014 new rules regarding affording your mortgage have come into effect. This means that we will have to prove to lenders that you can afford your mortgage now and if interest rates were to increase.  Financial advisors will usually take into account your affordability in the future to ensure that you are able to remain in your home.

The new rules are designed to stop home owners from over stretching their incomes. The new rules will ensure that anyone buying a new home can not only afford the initial cost but also the cost if interest rates were to increase. During an application financial advisors will continue to use each lenders affordability criteria to ensure that you can maintain your payments. The criteria will include the cost of potential higher interest rates.

The Money Advice Service published their survey findings on 3rd April 2014 suggesting that three in four first time buyers admitted to over stretching their budget, because they had “fallen in love” with their dream home.

They also found that more than half said that the total bill for buying their home was almost £1,300 more than originally budgeted for. Again more than half of the first time buyers asked said that the day to day maintenance and bills turned out to be more than expected.

Make sure you explore and discuss in full the cost of buying your new home and the day to day running and complete a comprehensive budget planner to hopefully eliminate any surprises, in either area.

 

Changes in the information required by lenders:

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Explore and discuss in full the cost of buying your new home and the day to day running

There has been some press reports that lenders will now require more evidence for incomes etc. However, some advisors will always ask that you provide 3 months payslips if employed or 3 years signed trading accounts and SA302’s; 3 months full personal bank statements; and of course a fully completed budget planner.

All of these requirements have previously been as standard and will continue to be so (unless the lender requires any further evidence).

When you meet with your financial advisor do remember to discuss the “what ifs” with them.  For example what if you lose your job, were to be unwell, have children or get divorced. This will help you and them to ensure that you can afford your mortgage not only now but also in the future.

Remortgaging:

If you are looking to remortgage, you will need to meet the lenders affordability criteria. However, this has always been the case and you could still potentially save money by moving lenders.

Suzy Miller of The Alternative Divorce

YOUR HOME MAY BE REPOSSESSED IF YOU DO NOT KEEP UP REPAYMENTS ON YOUR MORTGAGE. THE FINANCIAL CONDUCT AUTHORITY DOES NOT REGULATE SOME FORMS OF MORTGAGES. 

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LOOKING AFTER YOURSELF
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Dealing with Divorce in 3 Steps – Looking After Yourself

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Looking After YourselfIn this interview with Sandie Martel of Be OK Therapy, the UK’s Alternative Divorce Guide Suzy Miller interviews her about the third of 3 key pieces of advice, taken from Sandie’s personal story to help you cope with your divorce in the best possible manner.

Looking After Yourself

“The last piece of advice I would like to give in this series of three articles, is that you learn to love yourself and to take care of yourself”

“I know we lead such busy lives, going to work, running our own businesses, looking after the kids, the home, the car, making sure everything is in order…

What about you?

What do you actually do for yourself?

Do you take time just for you (without feeling guilty!)?

OK you might watch TV once in a while to relieve the stress in the evening, but do you actually spend time with yourself at all? Take time to listen to your own desires, learn to know yourself, deal with your own issues?

It is important that you do so regularly and rather early on during the divorce process.

Because divorce will drain you physically and emotionally and you need to be able to deal with anything that comes your way, taking time to look after yourself is critical.

I was glad I had all the tools I needed to BeOK when receiving my Decree Absolute, first because it is an important step, but also because the official divorce date was stated as 14th February.

What a great date for a divorce!

 

Help yourself to help your kids and claim your life back.”

Suzy Miller is the creator of Divorce in a Box and Divorce First Aid Kit, The Alternative Divorce Guide 

Follow Suzy Miller on Twitter and Facebook

Follow Sandie Martel on Twitter and Facebook

Check out Part 1 and Part two of Dealing with Divorce in 3 Steps.

 

 

 

 

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dealing with divorce - change lawyers www.thedivorcemagazine.co.uk

Dealing with Divorce in 3 Steps – Change Lawyers

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SuzyMillerBW-WebDo I need to change lawyers?

In this interview with Sandie Martel of Be OK Therapy, the UK’s Alternative Divorce Guide Suzy Miller interviews her about the second of 3 key pieces of advice, taken from Sandie’s personal story to help you cope with your divorce in the best possible manner.

Change Lawyers If You Need To

Change lawyers if the one you hired does not meet your expectations.

I know it can be costly but it could cost you so much more if you do not follow your guts on that. If the person you choose does not correspond to who you are and wants to influence you in a direction you did not want to take – then change!

You might even consider going for Mediation if you believe this is what is more suitable for you, since Mediation allows you to take more control of the divorce process, reduce conflict and save money.

You are going to have to meet or speak to this person for a few months at least, so make sure you get on well and he or she does what you expect them to do.

I was OK and felt very confident when I first started the process and met my lawyer in London for the first time on a Friday. I left the meeting in tears and spent the most horrible weekend (without my kids) in bed, crying.

This person was very vindicative and bitter and it did not work well with me. I know this person wanted the best for me financially, but I did not want my divorce to become a battleground.

I had no intention of ruining my ex-husband’s life, neither my kids’, nor mine.

After the weekend, I decided to search for another lawyer, someone who really listened to my needs and worked with me, without pushing me in any direction.

I was given advice, and I sometimes followed and other times I chose not to do as I was told.  It was my divorce – my choice. And I did not feel forced to do anything against my will.

Isn’t that how it should be for everyone?”

Look out for part 3 of Dealing with Divorce tomorrow!

Suzy Miller is the creator of The Alternative Divorce Guide 

Follow Suzy Miller on Twitter and Facebook

Follow Sandie Martel on Twitter

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coping with infidelity

Infidelity? – It’s none of my business

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SuzyMillerBW-WebThe shock of the breakup was so sudden, so extreme, that normal behaviour would have seemed inappropriate.

The events that lead up to it should have left clues, but they didn’t register: The bank letters addressed in his name that I didn’t open because I’d learned that it was, apparently, none of my business how he kept missing the payments on the credit cards.

The time he spent at the local pub which was natural for a hard working man, to need space away from our three young children after a long day on the factory floor.

I, remote and oblivious to the inebriated courting dance he was playing out across the bar room tables with the publican’s girlfriend, while I breastfed on the move, trying in vain to create a comfortable calm space for their tired father to return home to each night, rambling on when he finally did deposit himself on the sofa inert to my words, to drifting past him like distant lights.

I was unaware in my lactating, nappy changing, 10- cups- of- cold- tea- littering-every-mantlepiece daily life, that a monologue does not constitute a conversation; waffling on about the latest gleaning from Radio 4 heard only in snippets due to the constant interruptions from child no 1, 2 or 3 – the eldest only recently having turned 6, and the youngest just having finally decided to move under his own steam.

I had learned over the 10 years to listen intently to his tales of door manufacturing, details that after a day with the children, seemed quite fascinating – but to mind my own business when it came to more esoteric concerns such as what dreams were held for the future, what adventures lay ahead, until the future became a place I felt in no hurry to get to.  Which is why I now thank God that it was so abruptly pillaged.

And then one night it all exploded.  The infidelity. The shame. The utter confusion. The end.

My response was not normal behaviour.

I forced myself to return to the Pub where the young woman who had stolen what I had mistaken for my life – then promptly returned the goods, spoiled – would scuttle upstairs as I took courage from a friend at my side, refusing to use the other perfectly good pubs in the village when I could show my resilience by using this one.

I did not scream or rail at her – but instead made it plain that she had ‘done me a favour’ and pretended to ignore the agony of guilt that tortured her every time I walked into her domain.  It was a civilised sort of revenge.

Nine and a half years later, I’m dancing with my friends at a local hooley.

Love and pain and joy has moulded my spirit and form these last years in such a way that it is now impossible for me to regret any of it, even the parts that caused all that agony of 9 and a half years ago.  Forgiveness foiled by a lack of forgetting, yet a shift in consciousness that made the person I had once been seem like a stranger to me.

Infidelity
We had to sell the house for debts. Debts I didn’t know we had.

And now there she stood in front of me.  Breathing a little too heavily for someone who had been standing still for an hour building up the courage to come up and make her approach.

I stopped dancing, and recognised her immediately as the lost girl who had come so close to taking everything I had – which at the time did seem like everything.

Physically she had taken him, and had been about to run away and marry him, leaving me with my name not on the mortgage and no marital bonds to protect my interests, with three small children living in a house that, with one swift secret runaway to Gretna Green, she would have then owned half of.

But luckily, as I suppose it was luck, my children’s father confessed to his new love that he had hidden debts, the gnawing canker of which was eating at his mind and spirit until running away to Scotland with her had actually seemed a good idea.

That night 9 and a half years ago the truth came out and, as the truth invariably does, it changed everything.

He had confessed his debt, first to her, and then later to me.  Unloaded it as if it were a terrible curse, and yet it was the performance around it that had caused the real injury.  And she had decided swiftly that he should return home, and she returned to the bed of her partner as if nothing had happened.

But it had happened, and I was never one to stick my head in the sand or put on dark glasses when the truth was glaring me in the eyes like the eruption of an exploding supa nova.

I was now a single mum, and he was equally alone, flailing around in the shock and confusion that is the territory of family breakup.

“I’ve been watching you for an hour” she said, her voice trembling, out of sorts with the joyous dancing of adults and children that surrounded us.  “I was too afraid to come up to you”.

‘Afraid’ I thought.  It seemed odd.  After all these years of working through the anger, the hatred, the indignation.  She was the one who was afraid?  We had not ended our relationship on angry terms.

“He’s yours if you want him,” I had told her that night before I moved out to begin my new life.  “Just make up your mind.

He’s losing the plot and I need him to keep his head together.  We have to sell the house for debts.  Debts I didn’t know we had.”  And neither had she known, for if she had perhaps the incentive for that illicit temporary love would have remained a bar-room daydream.

Before the mountain of loans and unpaid credit cards were laid out on the table, for that one night it seemed she had all that she so wanted.  The package was meant to include a house, and children ready made and no doubt more to come.  It is not unusual for a woman longing for what she has not got, to try to substitute herself for a woman who does have what she wants.

Infidelity
I carried on dancing. There was no need to forgive…

And yet ironically, in the destruction that followed, I found slowly over the years that my precious treasures were not attached to any bricks and mortar, nor pension plan, nor sharing a bed with my children’s father.  I had gained, not lost, over those years.

Without a second thought, I hugged her, and immediately shouted in her ear above the roar of the band “It’s all water under the bridge”.

“You look amazing” she said.  She must have expected my nearly 49 years to have left me more scarred.

“I’m happy!” I roared, and carried on dancing.  And I meant it.  There was no fakery here.  There was no need to forgive either.  I had acceptance, and that was doing the job nicely thank you.  I was driving home later that night so alcohol can not be blamed for my actions.

I read once that “happiness is the best revenge”, and I remember years ago longing for that revenge to come to pass – and now it had.  And yet something nagged at me over the following days.

Why after all this time, would she be so afraid to come and say hello?  I had given her no reason to feel that fear.  It had all been most amicable – apart from torturing her with guilt by my persistent presence in the pub all those years before.  And my true rage and pain had found other ways to express itself over the ensuing years.

It bothered me, that she should be carrying that unease for so many years, while I had shed mine.

It gave me no pleasure, to see no tangible sign of her having attained those treasures that must have seemed within her grasp, which I had kept in the bank with added interest despite the destruction of my world as I knew it.  A sense of annoying arrogance nibbled.

And then I remembered something.

All those years of wondering why.  Of wondering how I could have loved a man who so easily seemed to transfer his love – temporarily – to another.  Why she had crept into my house when I was out, to be with him, the children asleep upstairs.  Why such sacrilege?  Why me?

But learning to leave the victim’s soft mink-lined slippers at the temple door, and walk barefoot instead as the creator of my own life, responsible not for all the events that befall me, but at least for the way I respond to them, this had led me to many teachers.  And one recent workshop had offered a real gem.

When wondering about an ex partner, or any other person who tramples on your heart, remember this mantra as you go around in circles making up stories about how they think or feel, or what motives them:

“I don’t know”.  

Because we don’t know.  We can create a thousand theories but really, we just don’t know why another person thinks or feels or acts the way they do.  Because they are not us.

I hope that the trembling woman, now in her forties, who seemed partly relieved, partly unnerved by my reaction to her appearance after all these years, will not let the past hold her back from her future.  But the fact is, I don’t know, and the truth is, it’s just none of my business.

Suzy Miller

Creator of Alternative Divorce Guide

 

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Changing Your Name After Divorce
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Dealing with Divorce in 3 Steps – Take your Time

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SuzyMillerBW-WebIn this interview with Sandie Martel of Be OK Therapy, the UK’s Alternative Divorce Guide Suzy Miller interviews her about the first of 3 key pieces of advice, taken from Sandie’s personal story to help you deal with your divorce in the best possible manner.

Divorce can be a very messy and devastating experience – so when dealing with divorce ……

Take Your Time!

The first thing you wish for when starting the process is a quick divorce, in the hope that it will help you start afresh sooner, so that you can finally leave the past where it belongs.

We all want that.

However, my advice to you is to take your time.

Why?

Simply because our state of mind constantly changes as time goes by and the divorce carries on. You are going to have to deal with lawyers, the stress your children are going through, pressure from your job, your ex maybe and your new life.

To start with, you really wish to be done with this extremely stressful and painful process. You are even ready to leave the financial side behind and do exactly as your ex wishes.

I know you want to keep a good relationship with your ex. But you can still do so while actually taking the time to consider all your options and think about the future, your future. Even more so if you have children.

I personally did not want to hear about the financial implications at the start of the process, but as time went by, I realised how difficult life on my own with 2 kids was, and I had to think about my kids first.

When you are dealing with divorce, it’s not about having the quickest divorce. It is not a competition, it is not a game.

It is better to listen carefully to what your lawyer and financial adviser have to say, however you don’t have to do exactly as told obviously.

But trust me, if you don’t consider the finances, you might end up regretting your decisions and chances are it will have a huge impact on your life, your childrens’ life and your future relationship with your ex.

Think about it.”

Look out for part 2 of Dealing with Divorce tomorrow!

Suzy Miller is the creator of Divorce in a Box and Divorce First Aid Kit, The Alternative Divorce Guide 

Follow Suzy Miller on Twitter and Facebook

Follow Sandie Martel on Twitter and Facebook

 

 

 

 

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Unplanned Solo Parenting

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It’s a January morning in 2003 and I can’t bring myself to take the kids to school. What will I say when someone asks me “How are you?” The answer, you see, is just not the stuff of polite conversation.

“W E L L… My partner of ten years has just dumped me.

“I was supposed to live with him into old age. I had no idea he wasn’t happy.

“I loved the bastard.

“But that was only the half of it – he has dumped me with three kids under seven.

“With not enough savings to build a realist future…..

“With no job.

“With a house that was going to be sold to pay off debts.

“With no pension.

“With a fortieth birthday coming up that year…..

“Fuckin’ hell.”

Its now almost a year later. I’ve been in the bath, listening to Alanis Morissette and her passionate angry lyrics, and trying to cry. This is one of my latest self-help ventures, a continuation of productive attempts to turn a major emotional disaster into a life enhancing success. Getting to where I am now has been an interesting process.

Alanis is singing it all for me – “I recommend getting your heart trampled on to anyone” (in my case it felt more like a machete job); “waiting for deliverance” (the “oh God somebody please come and rescue me” stage); “I don’t want to be a band-aid if the wound is not mine” (Jesus – how can he save me – he’s got more emotional baggage than I have!); “The cross I bare that you gave to me” (No-one can do that victim-thing better than a woman scorned).

Anger and pain that seemed to shred me from the inside out. A slow, crippling, crumbling of the core of my body that I didn’t even know existed within me. For me, this was my first taste of bereavement.

Obviously, after all that had happened, my shattered sense of self worth was screaming for a shag – but fortunately, the offers on hand were by people who seemed even more lost and confused than I was. I managed to steer clear – more by luck than judgement – through that first clichéd hurdle.

I went through the “oh, he’s bound to realise what he’s done and try to make another go of it” phase. But he didn’t. Meanwhile, I was experiencing the early stages of panic attacks, and a weird sensation that time was moving far more slowly than it ever had before.

It finally dawned on me – I was in grief. I had never had any one truly close to me die before, but this was the closest thing. I had lost a whole life – past and future. Gone in an incomprehensible instant. Always thinking it might reappear around the next corner – but gradually realising that that part of me was gone forever. So I did what my many wise friends were encouraging me to do – I got real.

I had the blessing of so many fantastic friends – friends I didn’t even know I had – who gave so much more than just emotional support and the time to listen.

They were brave enough to be honest with me – comments like “God, what’s happened to you is so awful I can’t help laughing” were strangely helpful.

I also loved the response from one dear friend, after the guilt I had been feeling of dumping such awful news on my family and friends. When I told her that I was now joining the club of single motherhood, she said with great passion and absolutely no tact – “FANTASTIC!”

But my friends also prevented my tackling of the mundane realities – possible financial holocaust; children torn out of school – from leaving me devoid of hope, and they helped me to believe that the world still had some good stuff waiting for me up ahead.

I was fighting. I moved out, got a place to rent, started panicking about my future.

But I was still the victim fighting against the odds – and the trouble with that is you just never get your act together, because it’s always someone else’s fault. It’s only when you face up to the horrifying reality of a situation that you can truly take it in hand – and own it.

You make it your own.

It’s no-one else’s fault or responsibility if you don’t make things work out. I looked the worse case scenarios of every aspect of my life right in the face – and made whatever provisions I could.

And somehow, by making that appointment with the loan parent advisor with my youngest child screaming throughout most of the interview (no toys provided or changing room), applying for State Benefits and enrolling the kids in schools I hadn’t previously wanted them to go to – took the fear away.

It didn’t mean “that was it” – it just meant I was taking back some control. And you know the amazing thing? Even though it took a real leap of faith, and a good helping of black humour, to really start taking control of my life, the more I did it, the more I believed it was going to work out somehow.

And the most amazing thing for me was, that other people seemed to be drawn in and they began to believe it too.

unplanned solo parenting
Applying for State Benefits and enrolling the kids in schools I hadn’t previously wanted them to go to – took the fear away

Strange as it may sound, but it was the children who helped the most, because they forced me to take back control of the present.

I didn’t have the luxury of descending into total emotional freefall. There were these very strong brave little people who needed me to make things work out for them. They kept me sane in other ways too.

When your partner has acted as if the past ten years was merely a passing of time without any emotional consequence, you really begin to question whether you have imagined the whole thing. But the children lie as physical evidence of something beautiful that no mid-life crisis can obliterate.

A good friend sent me off on an excellent motivational course. Boy was I ready for that. It was like someone had handed me a load of really useful tools to continue turning my life around even more dramatically than I already had done – and getting rid of all those stupid self-limiting beliefs that I didn’t know I had.

Now that I wasn’t a `mother of three in a stable relationship with a house and two cars”, I had the opportunity to become anything I wanted.

Of course, I could have done all that before, but oh, the children are so exhausting and the house has to be finished and the list of excuses for not thinking about my own personal growth were endless. People would ask me “how do you cope on your own”. But strangely, having one less adult to care for actually made my life easier.

Also, not having to bear the burden of someone else’s unhappiness that neither of us had really been able to acknowledge – well that was like a massif weight lifted from my shoulders. I got rid of all my excuses and allowed myself to dream of what I wanted with ambition instead of frustrated regret. I had become free. I had become myself again.

I did have one tricky problem for a while. No one tells you what to do with your ex-partner.

You’re supposed to hate and despise them – they are the reason behind every sorrow in your life. It was all so horribly negative, and somehow, the children took me from the bitterness of the usual break-up mentality and gave me every reason to fight for something better.

When you have a living reminder of unconditional love each day, it makes you question the quality of the love that you think has now broken your heart. And that was yet another revelation – it’s not `love’ that causes the pain. Love is a good thing. What causes the pain – and so many problems within relationships of all kinds – is being `needy’. That was not a person I wanted to be any longer.

After ten years of learning to live with someone in love, it seemed so crazy just to give it all up because I now wanted to find a new way to live with them – albeit separately.

I finally realised that posing ‘unanswerable questions’ and re-examining the past ad nauseum were clearly not getting me anywhere.

I decided to let the love that had kept us together for ten years be the guiding factor with keeping us healthily and positively apart. The children were a constant reminder that anger and self-pity and doubt and fear – in other words, parenthood – can all be balanced with, well, love.

I was lucky enough to be able to put down a deposit on a house and get out of the Benefit trap – thank god for interest-only mortgages. I make the house `work’ for me by taking in lodgers, though some of my friends are keeping a book out on how long each one will last.

I enrolled on a training course that takes up almost every Saturday for the next two years and THEN organised the childcare, knowing that was the only way I would make it happen. I am home schooling one of my kids and loving it.

I would not change anything in my life.

I never realised that being single was such a natural state, and the more I enjoy it, the more I know that I will end up eventually with someone who is happy and motivated and probably want to hang around for a while, because they will be with me because they want to be and not because they are afraid to be alone.

Meanwhile, I am enjoying a social life I would have felt was positively indulgent during my previous life as happy housewife. Of course I do sometimes miss man-cuddles, and I definitely miss sex. But God, if there wasn’t anything to miss everyone would stay single forever.

The kids and I had a drink at the pub today with their dad. And I played him at pool – and lost (but not badly). It was good. I still get those deep unremitting pains sometimes – especially when the first Christmas and New Year struck – but the pain starts to take on a familiarity that makes it somehow less debilitating.

I don’t know what the future might bring, but I know that at least the past is not going to fuck it up for me.

I’ve been lucky to have an ex-partner who has been financially supportive and taken on the role of fatherhood with an ever-increasing confidence and enthusiasm. Things could have been a lot worse for me and for some people they are.

I have learnt that being with three young children, either in or out of a relationship, is not a chore or a burden. Even though it is hard sometimes, it does not stop you from living your life to the full. Parenthood, in any form, is a gift.

So I’m sitting in the bath and I’ve finally managed to blubber a bit, and I’m wondering how to describe that odd feeling I have when I’m all alone in the house and the kids are quiet in their beds. A kind of familiar feeling that seems to be growing stronger all the time – that precious time that I have for myself. I think I can only describe it as – “Freedom”…

Suzy Miller is the creator of  Alternative Divorce Guide 

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Divorce Mediation vs Collaborative Law

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Suzy Miller www.thedivorcemagazine.co.ukInterview by Alternative Divorce Guide Suzy Miller with Mediator and Collaborative Lawyer Kim Beatson of Anthony Gold Solicitors

 

What is the best way to go through divorce?

As the Alternative Divorce Guide I often get asked if my role is to guide people back into their marriage, and away from divorce.  I explain patiently each time that people need to be allowed to make their own decisions about whether they divorce or not – all I do is to wave the flag for doing it in a way that doesn’t destroy their family, even though that family is now changing it’s form.

Collaborative Divorce and Divorce Mediation are both roads that lead away from the courtroom, but some may see them as in competition.  One includes lawyers by the sides of the divorcing couple, and the other relies on an impartial Mediator (sometimes more than one) helping the couple to create their own settlement and plan a new future.

Mediator and Collaborative Lawyer Kim Beatson of Anthony Gold Solicitors is experienced in supporting couples through divorce, and knows that the choice of dispute resolution method is a very personal one:

“I would say to anyone: ‘Here is my options leaflet, giving you the choices of Mediation, Collaborative Law, lawyer-led mediation or the court system. It’s your choice. Think about those options carefully.’”

 

Why don’t people know more about it?

What continually shocks me is that so few members of the public have ever heard of Collaborative Law, let alone know what it means.  Kim explained to me why this is the case:

family mediation vs collaborative law
Kim Beaston

“Mediation awareness was funded by the government for a time, and Divorce Mediation has been around in the UK since the mid 80’s. Collaborative law has only been around in the UK since 2003.  The main people who have to take responsibility for the fact that the public are mostly unaware of Collaborative Law, are the lawyers. Most clients still come to lawyers as the gate keeper, and the onus is on the person taking those initial telephone calls and making those appointments to let them know that court is the last resort, and that there are preferred resolution options.  That is what I am trying to make sure happens in my own practice at Anthony Gold Solicitors.”

 

What happens if you’re not legally married?

Having gone through family change having not been legally married, I am fully aware of the lack of legal rights for cohabiting couples to protect them if the relationship fails.  This is why I am so persistent in spreading the word of dispute resolution, as a court-based approach is even more unsatisfactory for such couples as it is for those who are legally married.

With the increase in people not getting married and then breaking up post-children, I asked Kim why those couples need to become more aware of the choices open to them:

“Dispute resolution processes, whether Mediation or Collaborative, can be very useful for couples who separate having been cohabiting and who are not legally married. In this country people do not always realise that they have few rights for themselves which can be very unfair after a long relationship with children, with career and pension sacrifices.

So Mediation and Collaborative Law are perfect forums for dissolving that sort of relationship because the importance for both parties is that they are bringing their idea of fairness to the table.  They are not trying to emulate the court system and the uncertain outcome that could be achieved.  They are able to set the agenda and create their own solution to their family dispute.”

 

Does Dispute Resolution make business sense for law firms?

A phrase I often hear is: “Ah, well, law firms don’t want to encourage Mediation and Collaborative Law because they make more money from adversarial processes”.  However, I personally believe such views are very short-sighted, and I brought this question up during my interview with Kim: “I think there is a sound business model for all forms of dispute resolution.  It’s good for the client, but ensures a good cash flow for the professionals as it’s so much quicker than remuneration from court-based cases.

So there is every reason for regarding it as a complementary practice, and it creates a much more authentic solicitor-client relationship if you are not only able to offer clients the most expensive option – that of going to court.”

 

What does the future hold for dispute resolution?

My own belief that lawyers are going to lose their status as the gatekeepers to divorce is not always a popular one with divorce solicitors, but Kim had some thoughtful insights into how Dispute Resolution is evolving in the UK:

“I think this government has missed an opportunity with Mediation with no further funding to support the encouragement for clients to use MIAMS.  Solicitors and all family law professionals are responsible for getting the word out there for all forms of dispute resolution, and for encouraging the client to access them. It is an accident that family lawyers are dealing with finance and parenting arrangements during family breakdown.  So we have to be quite humble about the power of our roles. Research does show that clients prefer independent financial advice and having their own independent lawyer.

But I think there will be a day when couples enter the separation process through a variety of services and that family lawyers really should not to take it for granted that they are necessarily the best person to deal with every aspect of the divorce process, or that they should be the natural gatekeepers to divorce.”  

 

Kim Beatson: Mediator & Collaborative Lawyer

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