Murrieta Legal Blog

The holidays are one of the most difficult times for California families going through a divorce. Children as well as their parents will be dealing with a number of difficult emotions that range from anger to sadness. However, parents need to deal with these emotions in a way that allows them to make the children their priority.

Therapists or friends and family can provide the emotional support that parents may need during this time. This can allow them to focus on the children. Parents need to have a plan for the holidays that they share with the children. This will reduce stress. In addition, parents need to encourage their children to enjoy their time with the other parent. To that end, they should avoid trying to prevent the other parent from spending time with the children or view the time as a competition.

When parents in California divorce, they have more than their own emotional well-being to consider. They must guide their children through the transition, and birdnesting has emerged as a strategy that eases children into the reality that their parents will be caring for them separately. The concept involves keeping the children in the marital family home. The parents typically split their time between the children's home and an apartment shared with the ex-spouse. The parents essentially live separately as they trade spots on a rotating schedule.

One family attorney said that the approach could offer benefits in the short term. Children experience little environmental disruption as they become used to the fact that their parents have divorced. Only people undergoing an amicable divorce have a chance at succeeding with this approach because it requires parental cooperation and shared living quarters. The attorney emphasized that parents should only view birdnesting as a temporary strategy before the parents establish two truly separate households.

Getting a divorce can have a negative impact on a person's finances in many ways. However, California couples who are ending their marriage can take certain steps to avoid having their financial future adversely affected.

One important step to avoid during and after a divorce is spending extravagantly. Many people may be tempted to go on a shopping spree in order to celebrate the change in their marital status. Others may feel the need to spend in order to cope with their emotions. Before making any purchases, they should take into account that they will be solely responsible for the bills.

California couples who do not live together before marriage might be less likely to get a divorce if they make it through the first year of marriage. A study that appeared in the September 2018 edition of the "Journal of Marriage and Family" reported that cohabiting couples were actually at a higher risk for divorce in the long term.

This contradicted findings in other studies that living together before marriage led to a lower divorce risk. Researchers said this was due to bias by other researchers. They also said that those studies failed to look at the long term; in the first year, couples who had not cohabited were more likely to divorce. According to the study authors, this was probably because they had to suddenly deal with a number of negotiations and adjustments that were already in place for the cohabiting couples. However, for the years after that, the couples who had cohabited showed a higher divorce rate.