Collaborative divorce process is a relatively new way for couples to divorce.

In this process an interdisciplinary team is created to accomplish the problem solving required in the divorce process.

 

The collaborative divorce process involves an attorney for each party, one or more mental health coaches, and sometimes a neutral financial specialist. Working with you together as a team, they seek to contain conflict and to help you restructure from a single-family system into a two family system. This team system forms a safety net that helps you through difficult situations, emotional struggles, conflictual problem-solving, and joint planning for the needs of children.

Each professional does his or her respective job. The attorneys look out for your legal interests, the mental health coach helps manage the emotional well-being of you and the children, and the financial specialist works to reconfigure your financial arrangements. Such support for the family offers the knowledge base for dealing with the issues, a balanced approach to problem-solving, and a support system necessary to care for individuals in the middle of a terrible time.

 

Advantages of Collaborative Divorce

The collaborative divorce process seeks to conserve both your emotional and financial resources. Mental health coaching can address the emotional forces that drive conflict. Consequently there can be a more effective use of the professional skills of all involved, including the more efficient use of your legal services. The mental health coach can save the enormous legal costs of a child custody evaluation or battle.

Divorce is an emotionally complex process which generates a range of intense feelings.. Given that this process occurs at the end of a long and painful struggle in the marriage, people bring a wide array of emotional upset to their divorce process. In this most difficult time people are expected to make the most significant financial and child care decisions of their lives.

 

DeMaio Collaborative Divorce Coaching

No two collaborative divorces are the same; people need individualized support tailored to their situation and circumstance.

My training is in the interdisciplinary collaborative divorce process. As a seasoned clinician, I have experience working with family systems, individual dynamics, and the post-divorce needs of parents and children. As a consultant to organizations, I am a team player in an interdisciplinary process.

Mental health coaching focuses on helping divorcing couples get through the process in a healthy and productive manner. I am comfortable coaching an individual or acting as a neutral party serving all members of the family. The coaching process includes:

 

• Assessing the basic dynamics that operated in the marriage and mitigating their consequences in the divorce endeavor.

• Determine behavioral and emotional goals for getting through the divorce and growing afterward.

• Helping participants come to terms with the losses they face in the divorce. These losses usually include companionship, family, time with children, and money.

• Examining options for solutions to difficult problems.

• Constructing the “divorce story” for your children. Creating healing discussions with the children. Establishing healthy custody arrangements.

• Moving forward in life.

 

As a psychologist and consultant, I am aware of the subtle distinction between psychotherapy and coaching. Participants may already be working with a therapist. Such relationships can be maintained and coordinated in the divorce process. Coaching generally takes a more immediate problem-solving approach, though it may include help with ending emotional battles.