“Promises, promises. I’m all through with promises now. Promises I made myself fell apart.” You may remember this song by Dionne Warwick, Burt Bacharach and Hal David. Lies spoken or unspoken can ruin a marriage. Some couples can go to marriage counseling and try to rebuild the trust. You may feel that you want to save the marriage for the benefit of your children or you may have stayed in the marriage for the benefit of your children. Sometimes trust cannot be rebuilt enough to save the marriage, and you just need to end the marriage.
If you need to end the marriage, Collaborative Practice gives you the chance to move past the lies and the broken promises – the ones told and the ones discovered. With the assistance of Collaborative attorneys, coaches, mental health professionals, and child specialists a safe place can be created to speak the truth, offer apologies, forgive yourself and begin to take steps to rebuild some trust.
Collaborative Practice provides you the opportunity to redefine your family relationships so that you can share in your children’s birthdays, graduations, and other celebrations without becoming the main attraction yourself. Collaborative is a transparent, confidential, child-focused process, where you, your spouse and the Collaborative Team commit to reaching an agreement that works for you and your family moving forward.
You may never trust your spouse, soon to be ex-spouse, again, but Collaborative can help you begin to put the broken promises behind and move on with your life. “Promises, promises, my kind of promises can lead to joy, and hope, and love. Now I can look at myself and be proud.” Dionne Warwick.
A Collaborative Attorney can tell you more and help you decide how to proceed.
by Margaret Oliver
