“I’m not sure our marriage is working and feel that I need some space to decide whether we should continue to try to make it work” said Linda at the start of our first mediation session. “However, I don’t want to sell our house and move the children if we are going to stay together so I’m not sure what to do.”
“Well, you can leave any time you like, but you would still have to contribute to the expenses of keeping up the house since I can’t do it all on my own” responded Michael. “While I don’t want to stay together if you are unhappy, I don’t feel that I should be the one to leave if you are the one wanting to separate.”
How did Linda and Michael reconcile this between them?
Once they realized that neither wanted to stay married to the other unless their relationship changed, they decided on a trial separation. This would help them determine if they should stay together by allowing each of them to have time away from the other and the responsibilities of the family.
In nature, the young are often left in the nest while the parents go out and find food. By deciding to have the children remain home in the “nest”, Michael and Linda were able to rent an inexpensive apartment and take turns living in it. This gave each of them a quiet place to stay and think about what they wanted, and whether they should stay married to each other.
By working together with a divorce mediator and defining their goals, Michael and Linda were able to craft an agreement that worked as well as could be expected for each of them, and their children, without the legal battle that would have certainly ensued if each had held on to the positions they had when they first started to talk about separating. As a result, they minimized the impact the separation had on their children and gave themselves time to make a well-considered decision.
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Dan,
Thanks for writing about nesting. It is the perfectly mediated solution. My parents nested in the 1980s when my brother and I were teenagers. We stayed in the family home while our parents each had a small rental, swapping in and out on Mondays. This arrangement lasted 3 years, until my father remarried. By then I was 15, my brother away at college and the acute feelings of the “broken home” mostly gone. This cooperative parenting arrangement is what I think led me to become a mediator. I saw very clearly the benefits of respectful co-parenting and a solution that fit my parent’s needs while also keeping our best interests at the forefront. I understand nesting is not feasible for everyone, however the process of mediation allows parents to arrive at a resolution together that does fit their lifestyle while most importantly considering the needs of the children. Funny enough though, their arrangement did not come as the result of a mediated divorce, just progressive parents and a father who didn’t want to see us only on the weekends.
Alison Block Gerson