Coping with divorce seems especially difficult during the holidays. Sadness, anger, and regret can overwhelm you at a time that should be exciting and happy. Memories of happier times emphasize the unwanted changes that divorce brings. You may be dreading the Christmas gatherings that you used to look forward to with pleasure. It’s hard enough dealing with your own emotions; Confronting family and friends is often too much to bear. Financial uncertainty can raise concern where you once enjoyed generosity.

For children, divorce turns the holidays upside down. They are torn, wanting to be with both parents. They worry that the holidays are not the same. Will they see grandmother? Will Santa find them? Will they receive a gift? They hide their greatest fears about how divorce will change the family behind a litany of fears about Christmas activities and traditions.

Aside from perhaps the death of a parent, divorce is often the most traumatic event in a child’s life. In the United States, 60% of all marriages end in divorce, and one-third of those divorces involve bitter conflict. One million children in our country get divorced every year.

As is typically practiced in the United States, divorce shatters the very foundations of a child’s world. It breaks the family structure, destroys communication between parents, and irrevocably changes the child’s relationship with each parent. Children not only suffer their own fears and misery over the loss of family, but too often one parent uses them as pawns to hurt the other. Out of anger or emotional need, one parent may try to monopolize the child’s time and affection and exclude the other parent. There are no winners in a divorce. Everyone loses, but children lose most of all.

How a couple divorces has a much greater impact on their children than the actual separation, researchers have found. Tired of the bitter divorce battles and the expense and emotional damage they cause, legal professionals sought a more constructive way to dissolve the marriage, giving birth to collaborative family law in 1990. Collaborative law focuses on the divorce not only as a painful ending but as an opportunity for a new beginning. By emphasizing cooperation over confrontation and resolution over revenge, collaborative divorce is transforming the way couples dissolve their marriages, divide their assets, and reinvent their parenting relationships after divorce.

Collaborative practice, which takes place outside of the court process, uses a cooperative team approach in which both parties and their respective attorneys meet, sometimes advised by financial or child experts. During the meetings, parents learn and practice open communication, self-management, and negotiation skills that can form the basis for successful future interactions. They learn to manage and reduce the conflict and anguish and divided loyalties that they can engender in their children. Through collaboration, parents have the opportunity to lay the foundation for the cooperative and respectful parenting of their children. The agreements are reached jointly in the collaborative process and seek to achieve the objectives of both parties while preserving the well-being of the whole family, particularly children. Through collaborative divorce, couples have the opportunity to achieve a just settlement and a peaceful relationship that minimizes the negative effects of divorce on their children. It is a Christmas gift more precious than gold!