Episode 22: Brenda Bridges, Divorce Myths
In this episode of the Queer Divorce Club podcast, Tera is joined by Brenda Bridges, author of "Oh Shit! I'm getting divorced," and a seasoned divorce coach, financial advisor, and certified collaborative divorce mediator. Brenda sheds light on crucial aspects of divorce while debunking prevalent myths surrounding topics like child support, alimony, and the timing of filing. Gain valuable insights and practical advice on navigating divorce with emotional resilience and clarity. Listen now for expert guidance on managing emotions and approaching divorce with empowerment and confidence.
Music in this episode is from Bungalow Heaven. You can find more music from Bungalow Heaven and singer/songwriter Gretchen DeVault at gretchendevault.com.
Brenda Bridges
You can find Brenda online at https://bridgingdivorcesolutions.com/.
Show Transcript
[00:00:00] Hi, Brenda. Welcome to the Queer Divorce Club. Hello, Tera. How are you doing today? Fabulous. I appreciate you being here today with us and I'm hoping you can get us started by just giving us a glimpse of the work you do with divorcees and your own personal history with divorce. Oh, that's, that's a lot.
I'll try to unravel it. The work I do, I guess I would sum it up saying I help people get the information that they need to make their best decisions for their particular individual situation. I find that often people are given kind of cookie cutter answers, or they are expected to fit into this.
Either soap opera version or neighbor's version, someone else's version of what divorce is. And I really believe strongly that they need to be supported. in [00:01:00] their situation with their specific information in this place and time to make their best decisions as opposed to turning over that power to somebody else.
And my divorce journey was, I had a long term marriage. I had a great life. The marriage wasn't so good because no good marriage ends in divorce. And after 26 years, we went through a really expensive, unnecessarily contentious, long divorce. It was kind of. The, the soap opera version, you know, what people expect instead of the expectation being, Oh, you can be adults and work this out.
It turned into, you know, Oh no, you're supposed to fight for everything you've got that kind of thing. After coming through that, it really did look at it and just say, there's gotta be a better way. And I don't want anyone else to go through that if they don't have to. So I was at the time of financial advisor and became a [00:02:00] divorce financial analyst, and then a divorce coach, and then a mediator and a collaborative divorce professional, which just means all those other trainings.
Plus the collaborative training allowed me to do work as a collaborative professional, which is a different process than a traditional divorce. So that's kind of how I landed where I am. You're hitting divorce from all angles. I feel like that's awesome. No, I'm actually not. No? Okay. I am all but legal.
Because I'm not an attorney. Right, right. So when you think about it, when I think about it, most of the decisions that we make no matter what are family and financial, they're not legal. We're not making legal decisions. So an attorney in divorce is really useful and I believe necessary, unless it's the simplest of situations to make sure there aren't any legal mistakes in dissolving the divorce contract.
'cause that's what's happening here. Mm-Hmm . But for your life. The decisions that are going to shape [00:03:00] it are the financial and the family ones. So I'm not the legal part. I'm the other part. So all but the legal, the financial and family. That makes so much sense. And I really love as you and all of your work, how you talk about avoiding being an emotional, emotionalist robot, you know, like entering into that, like you were just saying that divorce that everybody thinks you should have the divorce that is just technical Being filled with emotion and like getting what you need through the divorce.
So what does that mean to you to have like an emotion, full divorce? I think there's a tendency to either say, well, I guess you bucket it to, to say, no, you need to make logical decisions. So we're recognizing there can be a lot at stake, but being told just be logical, make sense. Well, you're dissolving your life.
You're changing everything you're pivoting and whether you're the one who wants the divorce or the one who is being asked for a [00:04:00] divorce or told you're going to get a divorce. There are a lot of motions involved in that, you know, there's a lot to unravel and our emotions impact our decisions. No matter what, you know, we are not logical creatures.
We are behavioral creatures. We are emotional creatures. So as much as it sounds good to say, I guess, you know, just it's a business decision. Well, yeah, it's a business decision, but if you spent half of your life with this human and you have all these experiences impacting your decision. It's really not a business decision.
It's a balance of trying to make good sound choices with good information and acknowledging all of the emotional stuff and baggage you might be working through that are impacting those decisions. So I think rather than ignore the emotions, it makes more sense to. acknowledge them and then understand how those things are impacting the decisions you're [00:05:00] making, you know, and I've not walked in the shoes of any of my clients.
So they might sometimes make decisions that to me are not logical, but they have really good information. They've lived their lives and they're making their own decision. So it's kind of honoring that process. Rather than, you know, basically telling people they're not doing smart things because they're not making what a spreadsheet says in their decision.
Right. Yeah. You have to be able to balance. I like how you're talking about that. So how do you, how do you know if you are balancing? How do you know if it's not, if you're putting too much emotion in, or if you're making too gut, you know, gut decisions versus logical decisions, you know, how do you know when you've That's a really great question.
I love that question. My answer is I don't know, but I'll answer it with a story. Way back when I was getting my master's in education at the same time, I had my first child and I wrote a paper [00:06:00] and in the paper I alluded to, and it was, so I had this baby and I was taking a child development class and it was just enough to kind of mess with your head.
Right? Like, Oh, no, am I doing anything right? And her answer to me in this paper was, if you're even thinking about it, You're good enough. It's like this good enough concept. So I would apply to that, that to the balance in divorce. If you're thinking about it, you're doing the best that you can at that time.
Now you might look back and go, Oh, I was overly emotional or, Oh, I wasn't emotional enough, or I did not acknowledge my emotions. I think all you can do while you're going through this is be present, be as thoughtful as you can and get the correct support. Yes. Yes. I love that. We're all doing our best. And yeah, I think that, yeah, I was connecting a lot to, as you were saying, like when it comes to parenting, you know, [00:07:00] one, if you're thinking about it, if you're getting the information, then you're, you're likely doing what you're supposed to be doing.
And you have to figure that out along the way. Yes. And there's, there's still probably going to be mistakes or we all look back and go, wow, I would have done that differently now. Right. You know, be present and think about it and then you're doing, you're doing the best that you can. It's when you check out and don't give thought to it or do what someone else tells you to do.
That's when you're probably not doing the best that you can. Right. I'm guessing that if you're here listening to this podcast right now, that you're also already a step ahead of doing the best you can, right? Getting the information you need, thinking about what you're, you know, what you need in your divorce.
And so that's good. You're on the right path. Right. Right. Sure. I think part of that and what I want to talk to you for a chunk of is like, in order to take some of, you know, to be logical and emotional at the same time, we have to debunk some of the myths that come with divorce. Cause I think as we all start I, not all of us, I can't [00:08:00] be generic, but I know when I started my divorce process, I had no freaking clue what to do.
I only had an idea of like what my parents did. My parents had gotten divorced. My ex's parents had gotten divorced and it was just a completely different process in the eighties. Right. Like this is. The new day, this is, you know, a new life we have and there's all these other factors. So I'd like to walk through, yeah, so many changes.
It's different. I'd like to walk through some myths and see where, you know, see if you can help me debunk some of those and what they mean. So when I hear really frequently, frequently is should I get an attorney right away? And do I need to like beat my spouse to filing? Is it like important for me to file first and to get ahead of it?
No, no, no. It's not. And honestly, if somewhere, somehow someone says it is, there's probably another influence in them saying that every single attorney I talked to, I'll qualify that a little bit. There might be a [00:09:00] psychological factor if you are waging war, like if you are going into your divorce All out war like that is your mindset and you want to surprise your spouse with a, you know, you've been served while they're presenting to the board at work.
I mean, that says something, doesn't it? Yeah. Is there an advantage legally? I've been told no, not at all. It doesn't mean you get to pick your judge. It doesn't mean you get a bunch of choices. They don't get, you're still in the same system doing the same things. I think that surprise filings actually can be detrimental for exactly that reason, because they, they are saying this is not going to be a process where we communicate.
We are doing this through attorneys. We are doing it through the court system and I am willing to ambush you. Yeah, I think in a lot of ways it says that I mean, even if someone needs to be served if they don't [00:10:00] forego being served, then there are ways to do it where they can be expecting it, they can be in a place where it is more private and less public, things like that.
So that's the serving thing. There really doesn't seem to be an advantage. Unless you, you, for some reason want, you're going to be X to be, you know, set back. Yeah. And then I guess that's a sign on the other end is if your ex did that to you, what that means for boundaries you need to put into place and how you handle the process.
Yeah. That doesn't mean we're going to work this out together and it's all going to be very friendly and kumbaya. That kind of means it either means I'm afraid of you or I'm out for you in, in my estimation, or it means that. You just think that's how it's supposed to be done because you didn't get the information that you have other options.
So you think, because that's kind of the soap opera TV version of it, that that's what you do. [00:11:00] You file secretly, and then you serve your spouse. And people need to know that they have many other options. They don't have to hire an attorney file And, you know, start off the process that way. And then your attorney question.
It's funny. I did a podcast yesterday with an attorney and she's like, I love that you say, don't go to an attorney first, because I say, don't go to an attorney first. I, I think, yes, get an attorney, but get an attorney that matches the process you want. The purpose you want and how you want your divorce to look.
And if you first hire an attorney because your aunt or your cousin or your neighbor or your coworker had a good experience with that attorney, but their divorce was entirely different, you might not have the right attorney. So I really believe the order is figure out. Your purpose, like, what is your situation and what do you want your life to look like after this?
Do you want to be able to [00:12:00] walk your child down the aisle together and sit at the same table at their wedding? Do you want to never speak to them again? Do you want to, you know, be able to go to parent teacher conferences together? Or do you not give a rat's ass?
You know, there's no right or wrong. What do you want? So the first thing I really think is figure out what you want and figure it out, not based on the space you're in now alone, figure it out based on what you want your life to look like when this is over and five years after it's over and 20 years after it's over.
That's your first work. I really think because then you're making yourself a goal or a target and you're way more likely to hit it if you have it. If you don't have it and you're just kind of wildly going through what you think you're supposed to do. Based on, I don't know what, then it's likely to get away from you, the process.
So first purpose, then process. So if you and you're going to be ex can still talk, you still sit at the same [00:13:00] table. I've had people who plan to live together after the divorce for financial reasons and they're good with that. Like you do you, they do them. In that case, if they had gone out and immediately hired attorneys who love going to court, they would have had an entirely different experience than they were able to sit in this office and make their own decisions within a couple of months, still be friends.
That was them, because they matched what they wanted their divorce to look like to the professional they hired. On the other hand, if you're in a really complicated financial situation or an abusive relationship, or you're not able to have those conversations, and you hire someone who is a, is used to doing really simple uncontested events, then they're not going to be the right person for you.
So you got to look at your situation and figure out, do you want to mediate? Do you want to litigate? Do you want a collaborative process? [00:14:00] And then you find the professionals that support that thing. And it might not just be an attorney. Yeah. What if you're listening now and you're like, I don't have the right attorney.
I need to turn this around. Like, I mean, what do you do? I mean, I guess there's ways to connect with your attorney and ask them better questions or, you know, You know, talk, slow the process down, like that sort of thing. But what do you do to switch it around? Yeah, I think you need to look at what's best for you.
I have had clients who I was coaching, not mediating, know that they were in that situation, go to their attorney and really say, like, this is what I need. This is what I'm looking for. And sometimes the attorney has gone, Oh, okay. I got your back. That's just not how I normally work. But good. I can do that.
Other times there have been attorneys who have said, I'm the professional here. You need to do what I tell you to do and I do not want to hear from you. You got to decide whether you're going to live with that or whether you say, thank [00:15:00] you. I think I need to find someone who will do this the way I want to do this.
And I don't know. That's where the information is important. I mean, sometimes people have paid that retainer and feel really stuck. And you got to weigh what, what is it worth? Like all the way through a divorce process, there's a lot of, what is it worth? Is it worth ongoing discussion and negotiation and cost and time?
Or is it something that you say, okay, I'm going to just set that aside so I can get out of this and on with life. Yeah. And then checking yourself. Throughout the way. I love that how you're saying that too, is like, do what's best for you. It's okay to switch it. It's okay. Yeah. Like weigh all the options.
There's so much decision making through a divorce process in so many different ways. There's so much. And I see people sometimes just frozen by all the decisions, get the support you need to help you make those decisions. Good support, not [00:16:00] social media support, not like. Post on Facebook and people you don't even know are telling you what to do, but support that fits you and your situation.
And sometimes people will say, Oh, you know, I can't have a coach. I can't have a financial analyst. I can't have a vocational specialist or whatever it costs too much. And I really think it costs too much to not, if you feel you need that thing, you know, if you don't understand your finances, your attorney, that's not their and leaning on them at probably a higher billing billable rate to Do your finances for you could actually cost you both more in professional fees and more in in settlement and how you move forward in your standard of living.
Mm hmm. Yeah, you really need to have a whole pocket of people around you in many different ways. Right. Yeah. And just really encourage how someone you feel. works well with you, listens to you and has your back. And if you're in this process and you feel like you're [00:17:00] not being tended to and they don't have your back, then you got to look at what's at stake.
You know, is it, is it pretty simple and you might not like them and you're not going to go out for dinner with them afterwards, but they're going to do an okay job. Or could it be that you end up in a worse off position post divorce because.
I'm just thinking about how much, as you talk, how much intuition it takes, how much you have to trust yourself, how much you keep checking in, right? It's a back and forth process. It's not just a smooth, linear line that you're going through here. It's not. It's a constant circle back in, in my book. The first thing I talk about is figure out your purpose and then as we travel through it, keep going back to that.
Because it might shift, and there's nothing wrong with that either, as long as you're thinking about it. If you're, you know, we think of mindful as kind of yogi and we're meditating, but I mean, [00:18:00] mindful, like where are you? What do you need? Going back to your percent time, what serve you now? You know, at the beginning it might have just been space you might've just needed out of that situation, midway through when you've had that space, your goals might shift, and then you have to kind of realign what you're doing.
You know, divorce can take a long time. There's a lot of, when you think of how much you can change in a year or two years, how much life can change your goals might shift. Yeah, for real. I feel like I'm, I am three years out of the legal process, but we started that process close to a year before we even fit in, like before I was actually divorced.
And then, so it's just like all of these, yeah, my life is completely different than it was then. And it's also hard to set up, like, especially if you have kids, you, I think it's a little bit easier to say, like what do they need through the whole time? But then once things start settling in, you start co parenting the other, things can even shift.
But that means that. You go back to [00:19:00] it then, right? Go back to your purpose, see what you need to shift, that sort of stuff. Mm hmm. Yeah. I think so. Let's talk about another myth, one that I feel like came up a lot, I hear also a lot that men will always have to pay spousal support and child support, and we get to pick if we get to pay child support.
So how does support actually work? So let's take them in inverse order. You do not get to pick if you pay child support. I have had many people come into me at the beginning and either one says, I'm not paying child support, or they both will say, Oh, we don't, we don't want to do that child support thing.
The court wants you to do child support. And every state, every state has a law on child support. And it's a formula and you plug your numbers into the formula and to deviate from the formula, you need to have a really good reason because I mean, when you think about it, it's there to ensure the standard of living for [00:20:00] the kids.
It's only there based on food, shelter and clothing. So it's not so the kid can go to space camp or vacation in Paris. It's really set to make sure there's a formula that says. Going between these two households, this child is going to at least be taken care of with basic needs. So to, to say you're not paying it is In my mind, kind of a waste of time because the reality check is the government, our laws say wherever you live, because divorce law varies wildly from state to state and jurisdiction to jurisdiction, but child support, while the formulas differ, it exists everywhere.
So it's not an opt in situation. You have to pay child support. All right. Check. What about Yeah, in most states or all states child support. There are child support rules in all states all [00:21:00] states. Okay, alimony maintenance or spousal support is an entirely different animal but child support. There are there are rules in all states.
They use different formulas. But it exists. Yeah. So then when it comes to spousal support, I think that it is important, right? To talk to an attorney or somebody in your state for how that works. Like if you were the one asking for a divorce, if you're the one not, you know, depending on salaries, if you work from home, you know, all of those factors, right?
And if there are formulas, if there aren't formulas, what the tendency has been in 10 years ago is not what is happening now. People try to figure out a way to sometimes, you know, how can I get out of paying it? How can I get around it? And I think that's a costly mindset because they can spend as much in the court, trying to get around paying some kind of alimony or spousal support as they would to help.
And the reason for [00:22:00] spousal support, there can be many reasons, you know, someone has been at home for decades and can't step right back into the workforce, then there's a need to either get new training. So you're able to earn a living or get support if you haven't been the earner and the other person is able to.
support you. There are a lot of different ways to look at it. Different states have formulas. I came from Illinois, which has a formula. You plug in incomes and duration of marriage. It says, here's your support unless you're high income earner, and then you can deviate from that, but you can't deviate down.
I now live in Tennessee. There's not a formula. There are just different types of spousal support. So you can kind of go well based on what seems to be going on in the courts. This is what it might look like. And then there are other states, Texas might be an example where they tend not to award much maintenance [00:23:00] in relation to other jurisdictions.
So it really depends. So good to know what your jurisdiction offers and ask all those questions. Yeah. And that can help set expectations. And the other thing you said was, you know, the man always pays. No, they don't. It's really income based versus gender based. Yeah. So usually. If there is a formula, it's going to be a percentage of the higher income earner, less a percentage of the lower income earner take into account the duration of the marriage.
And that is your number. If there's not, then we're going to look at like, what is the Disadvantaged or economically disadvantaged spouse. What's, what's their life going to look like? What do they need to have a decent standard of living? If they're really high income earners, then the court might want them to maintain their standard of living.
So that's kind of the backdrop where, you know, if someone is earning seven figures. And they're used to living that [00:24:00] lifestyle and they've been married for a long time. They're much more likely to be awarded alimony or spousal support. That's going to keep them in the way they've become accustomed rather than say, no, you need to go work.
I used to say bed, bath and beyond, but they're no longer around, you know, you need to go work target and that, that is how your life is going to unfold. So I guess the caution there is just get it. It's based on income. Not gender. And you need to understand how your particular jurisdiction treats. alimony in order to know what might happen if you go to court.
If we're sticking on this conversation about finances, I think one of the things that we hear a lot is that divorce really costs a ton of money, right? So you're going to now be paying for two mortgages. Some people, somebody is having to pay child support. Somebody is paying, you know, alimony potentially, you know, whatever, all of those expenses that go into it.
But does divorce have to be super expensive? And like, how [00:25:00] do you, is there a way to avoid that? You know, what do you, Well, I think there are two ways to look at the expenses. There are the expenses of going through the divorce itself. And then there are the expenses of supporting two households as you move into what's next in life.
Divorce costs can range anywhere from, you know, 199. Or court filing fees or, you know, DIY paperwork to hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars, depending on people's net worth. So the cost of divorce itself is driven, I think, a lot by net worth and profit. The process that you're using, so if you're mediating, it's probably and mediating in that not a court ordered mediation, but a really, you've signed up with the mediator and that's how you want to come to your agreement [00:26:00] mediation.
That's going to cost less probably than the collaborative process where you have more professionals involved, but it's still out of court. You're making your own calendar. You're figuring out your own schedule, your own goals and whatnot. If you're litigating. You're, you're kind of turning it over. You're, you're, you're still the one who says I accept her.
I don't accept, but you're doing it in the court system. Again, the attorney I talked to yesterday, she said, it's going to be 18 months before you're even on a docket. And then I spoke to someone else recently who said, yeah, in our area, you're going to get scheduled in nine months, but you're going to get continued because something is going to come up.
So we just look at it. Like it's probably your third time you're scheduled that you're actually going to be heard for the first time. Yeah. Oh, during all those processes, there's still a lot of behind the scenes stuff going on. There's discovery you're paying for that. Attorneys are having conferences, you're conferencing with your attorneys.
There might be other [00:27:00] professionals. There's unless you really put a budget to it, it costs what it costs. The average, I think is around 17, 18, 000 right now, but that's going to include the expenses all the way down to the DIY ones. Do it yourself, kitchen table kind of divorce. Yeah. And then the after divorce, I mean, that's a really good question.
It just depends. I don't think there's an answer I have for that. It depends on the situation. If they're high earners, there might just be a little blip in splitting households. If one person was the primary breadwinner and they didn't make a lot of money and the other person stayed home. There's going to be a serious hit on the standard of living for that household and anywhere in between.
Yeah. You have to be prepared for that as you're going through the process. And how, like, it's part of what the way life changes as you're going through divorce. Right. Right. And what I find, I go through my clients, we go through [00:28:00] projecting their expenses post divorce. So they know what they can live on.
They know what a minimal standard of living is. And what I find is when they're just talking vague numbers, the person who will be paying support or helping reestablish the person who earns less, they're much less likely to feel good about. Giving that, then if you're able to say like, look, this is how they're going to be living.
This is our budget. These are their expenses or their money worksheet, whatever we call it. And they can look at it and go. Wow. You know, they, they are not taking extravagant vacations based on this. They are living, you know, they might go to a movie or have some money in for going out, but they're not spending a ton of money than the other person is much more able to empathize and feel okay about paying that support.
It's putting it in context. Yeah. Instead of just like where to get that number, it seems like a lot. [00:29:00] Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And I feel like as we talk through this, I, I know that there's so many different factors, right? So we're talking a little bit about, like, how do you want the process to be talking about support and finances?
Like this is, you know, going in depth of these, but I appreciate the, the way you're talking about how to structure it for yourself and going back to your purpose and like what each of these means. And, I think one of the other questions, like, on the next level of that is that one of the things that comes up or a myth that comes up is that you can't date while you're going through divorce.
And I think one of the things, especially in queer divorce there's higher levels of people who are living in polyamorous communities or people who are, or maybe are leaving their They're straight marriage for queer mar a queer relationship or you know, like there's lots of different factors that play into why that divorce might be happening.
And so there's a lot of mess mixed messages about that. So like, can we date during divorce? How do we know if we can, like, how does that all go? This really good question and there's no one answer [00:30:00] again. So much of it depends on where you live. And what the views and laws are where you live. In some places they just don't care.
Like, so we're the backdrop for all of this is what would happen in court. You're getting divorced. They're really busy systems as is evidenced by how long it takes to go through the system and get divorced. They don't care who is dating whom, what gender or sexual identity they are. When they start, like, they just don't care.
Let's process this divorce and move on to the next one because there are hundreds lined up behind you. There are other states where that is cause and that can severely impact whether you get alimony or not, whether you have to pay alimony or not. So you really have to know what's going on where you live in order to make that decision.
And if you make the decision, you know, you're getting [00:31:00] divorced and you make the decision to date. and you're in a place where you would have been getting alimony and it can be held against you, then you, you could lose that support because you did. It's always less messy to not date, but life is messy.
Yeah. Are there situations where the spouse can bring it up? Like, I know, I think I'm in Michigan and we kind of have a no default, no fault divorce process. So in my state, likely it wouldn't matter if, you know, if you were dating somebody, but there could be a case, could there be a case where I guess when custody comes up, if you don't have a good connection with your spouse, where they could use it against you, but that would be like, Way down the line, if you're in court, right?
Like what's the custody, it's going to depend on the nature of the relationship and the person, the relationship is. with most likely. [00:32:00] So if, if someone is dating someone and custody is in question because of whom they're dating, it's more likely to be because they have a criminal record. They do drugs.
Like there's some, there are pedophile, you know, there's some danger to the child in that situation. They're violent. You know, it's more likely to be that that's going to come into play with custody than There's just another significant other in the picture, you know, there, there's more likely there needs to be a reason to question custody and more and more the trend in custody is 5050 the, you know, every other weekend for the, the dad is, is, you know, If it's not gone, it's certainly going.
Yeah. And I think as you're, as you're saying that too, I'm thinking that there's really, the issue is that [00:33:00] the court has to be a good reason for something, right? The court, if you're in litigation, if you're going through the process, the court's not going to really, you know, unless there's a legal standard in your community, like you can't date or You can't leave for another spouse or infidelity or whatever unless there's a big issue for the kids or a big issue for you, it's not even going to be brought to the table as something that's important or considered.
In the process, if it's a safety issue, and we are just now starting to see if it's a parental alienation issue, which hasn't, it can be a touchy subject. Some people don't even believe in it. Others think it's rampant, but it's starting to be addressed by the courts in a way it hasn't been before. And that is not necessarily physical safety for the child, but it is undermining the relationship with the other parents and courts are starting to hear more about that.
[00:34:00] Yeah. Can you explain that a little bit more? What is parental alienation? Parental alienation is where one parent undermines the relationship of the child with the other parent and they do it purposefully and it causes a significant amount of damage. And it's, it's hard to spot because it doesn't have bruises, you know, but it might be that the child now doesn't want to go see the other parent anymore.
They don't want to have their parenting time with them. Or when they do, they start making comments and that parent is like, where is that coming from? And it might be there, you know, it's derogatory. So that means when the parent who is doing the alienating is spending time with the child, they're saying things like, you know, Oh, you know, your mother never loved you.
She didn't want to have you. She's so glad not to have you around or, you know, she's a cheat. She, whatever. It's planting seeds of bad things [00:35:00] that can be really impressionable. And then when the child goes to mom's house and is like, you cheated. Mom might be like, I have no idea what you're talking about.
And maybe didn't cheat. Right. And that's where the alienation comes in. It's like a campaign to alienate, to turn the child against the other parent. Right. And so that's put in place to support people who are going through maybe domestic violence struggles or emotional abuse issues with, with the person that they're divorcing, right?
There might've been none of that with a parent. It's played out with a child, right? So obviously they have a grudge. But they might not, the one who's doing it, the parent who's doing it, they might not even recognize that they just might not be thinking they might be hurt and angry and they might feel like they need the child in their side.
And they're not being really cognizant of what they're doing. They're just saying what they're saying. So sometimes it can come out of, it can [00:36:00] come as a surprise. Other times not, but it doesn't, it might be a new behavior, like something that didn't happen in the marriage at all. But now that they're divorced, that parent is like, Oh, I see the opportunity to have this, this one on my side or these kids on my side.
Yeah. Yeah. And I think that sometimes what I've been hearing from others in the podcast and from other people who are in the Queer Divorce Club group is that sometimes that can happen where maybe the person that was being left or the person, the parent is having an emotional struggle afterwards and they're putting it on the kid unintentionally, right.
Or the kid is seeing that from them, you know, yeah, it's hard balance to, to find if you're in a really emotionally unstable space following divorce. It is, and there's kind of a difference there too, where a lot of, it can occur before the divorce, but a lot of that plays out after the divorce, where more of the safety and custody issues tend to play out during the divorce.
Not that they can't [00:37:00] happen after, but a lot of that happens before. And that's when they might get a guardian ad litem involved, who's going to represent the kids and figure out what is in their best interest going through this process. Okay.
And in the process we should remember too that most states have the ability after you've put your custody agreement in place to have a review of that custody agreement, right? I know in Michigan it's every three years it automatically happens for both child support and for your custody agreement. I think child support is automatic and you can also bring then the custody changes up at that time but other states have more frequent options too.
Yep and sometimes people elect a more frequent review. You know, I've had people write up their agreements when they have very young children that they're going to review them every three or six months. Because And they're doing it thoughtfully because the needs of the child may change significantly from a one year old to even a three year old or four year old.
So even if they're changing their [00:38:00] parenting schedule or what have you, they're looking at it more consistently until the child is older. Yeah, it's interesting to think about putting that stuff in place to be able to check back on it. I don't think that I thought about that as I was going through my process that there's these markers that I could change what our agreement was.
That if we actually put them in place to be intentional about shifting it for the kids or shifting it based on our life agreement. I think some of that's in there, but not a lot. Mm hmm. And most states, in my experience, don't have that. I do an addendum with the folks I work with because the state agreements.
tend to be who has decision making power and what the schedule is and what child support is going to be. And we talk a lot more about the qualitative things that pop up that cause bumps in co parenting, like disciplining before, between households or communications or tattoos or what have you, just how are you going to treat this religion?[00:39:00]
What if they want to go to a regular church group and someone turns into an atheist? How are you going to handle it? So it's more just the walking down the road of how do you want to handle these things when they come up? And those, yeah, that feels really secure to me to think about. Like if you're on the page of talking and maybe things are contentious right away at the divorce and you don't necessarily know what's going to happen in three to six months and kids change as they grow in so many different ways and your life's splitting up, you don't know what it's going to look like.
So having some of those safeguards in place seems like that can be really good. Yeah, you don't know. And then people go on and have other significant others and new families and that all impacts it again. So there's a lot to navigate. Yeah, so much. So how do we leave people with, we're like, there's all these things that you have to think about, there's so much, what would you leave our listeners with if you said like, what's the most important thing to think about as you're navigating this process?
Stay centered on where you are and what is [00:40:00] best for you in the moment you're in. And keep checking back in on that. Just keep checking back in on it. Look at where you're getting your information. You know, are you going to sources like this? You said at the beginning, people are becoming informed just simply because they're tuning into this.
They're looking for information, but you are also vetting the people that you're presenting, you're not, you know, hauling someone in off the street and say, and let's come chat about this. When you're getting your information or your advice from Facebook or some other social media connection, you might not even know who's posting and telling you what to do, but I've seen posts around here where someone will ask a divorce question and they'll get a hundred responses.
They don't even know who the people are responding to them. Be very careful about taking, and a lot of it, when I read through it, it's just wrong. It, don't take legal [00:41:00] advice or get legal advice or financial advice or coaching advice, parenting advice to, to a degree, I suppose from an unknown on Facebook, vet your sources.
Yeah. So know where you are and what you want and what's important to you now. And it's okay if what's important to you is to take a break and step away. Maybe that's what you need. Or it's okay if what's important is to, you know, concentrate on your career or what your new vocation will be. It's okay if just check in with you and what you need and then make sure you're getting advice from good, reliable resource.
Not from some unknown, I don't know, yeah, so it's good to share stories and get support, but then double check if you're, when you're making decisions to make sure it's right for your space, make sure that you have somebody that knows legally, financially what is right in your, okay. And you're staying in [00:42:00] your situation.
And then go from there. Yeah. And I think I look at the difference being like you said, share stories. That's beautiful. You are not alone. You are part of a community and a crew and you have support sharing is one thing when someone is telling you, Oh no, you're wrong. You have to do it this way. That is not sharing.
That's telling. And they might be telling like, I'll, I'll see people, for example, here say, Oh no, you don't understand. It's a 50 50 state, and no matter what you do, everything will be divided equally. Well, we're not a 50 50 state, we're an equitable distribution state. Whole nother story there, so it's wrong.
So, be careful about what you take as fact, or the, you know, he's gotta pay you spousal support or alimony for, you know, 20 years. Well, no. Yeah. So people can start counting on that. Like, no, I heard that you have to pay me. And maybe the answer is yes. Right. But [00:43:00] everybody has an opinion about what you should do in your divorce.
Yeah, and I guess that's the, that's the third thing, who you surround yourself with makes a big difference. And if you surround yourself with, you know, people who have a negative outlook or are bitter or angry, that's, that's the space that you're allowing yourself to be in. And if you surround yourself with people who are going to help you move forward and support you and empower you, then that's the space you'll be in.
I love that. I love that. Such good advice. I really appreciate you being here with us today and talking through all these myths and there's, you have so much information. So where can people go to find out more of What you have. So a couple things. My website is bridging divorce solutions.com.
And there are blog posts and things like that on the website. I have a book on Amazon and that's, oh shit, I'm getting divorced. The guide to Keeping Your Dignity and Dollars, which started out as How to Divorce with Dignity and Grace, [00:44:00] and everyone was like, that's not what it feels like. . I wish that I'm getting divorced.
So we changed the name. And then with that, sometimes folks do not want to order that on Amazon because they don't want it to show on a joint account. So they can just contact the office and we can either send it electronically or physically. Awesome. That is a good a good thing. There's these little things that happen in divorce that you don't always think.
Like I also was like sharing an Amazon account and needed to like, not, you know, I don't know. It's the weird things they have to split up in your life that you don't think about. I love that you have a solution for that. Yeah. And there's a follow up list that we give our clients. That's, you know, often we look at the day your divorce is final, you're done and you still have a lot of work to do afterwards.
Dang it. Oh shit. I got more to do. It's important. It's true. All right. Thank you, Brenda. I really appreciate it. I appreciate you having me to talk. Thank you.