Divorce: Does It Have to Be Destructive?
by Nancy J. Ross, LCSW
Their story was all too familiar. Several months ago the couple now sitting in my office had begun a divorce process. Each had hired an attorney to represent their interests. Now, many thousands of dollars later, with no end in sight, they were enmeshed in a family court service process attempting to determine how to divide custody of their two children.
Unable to even look at his wife Susan, John began by saying that each of their attorneys had instructed them not to talk to each other and had expressly forbidden them to see a mutual psychotherapist, fearing it could jeopardize their respective cases. Only the fear that their children were being seriously damaged by an increasingly adversarial process had brought them to my office. "How can we resolve anything," he asked, "if we're not supposed to talk to each other?"
