What is Co-Parenting, and Why Would We Do It?

To me co-parenting means two parents who, though no longer together, are able to cooperate with each other in jointly parenting their children. Many separated parents seem to operate in different spheres - each is parenting during their time with the children entirely independent of the other. Ea...
January 11, 2016
Young girl in pink jacket

Using a Child Specialist in Your Divorce

We often have a Child Specialist on the team in our Collaborative divorce cases. However, a Child Specialist can be very helpful in any divorce with children where the parents hope to be able to continue to work effectively together as co-parents after the divorce. A Child Specialist role is very...
September 27, 2015

Divorce Coaching

When couples want to have a more amicable divorce process, Divorce Coaching can help turn that hope into reality. We regularly use Divorce Coaches on Collaborative teams, but a Divorce Coach can also be very helpful to couples engaging in mediation or using a kitchen table approach. Divorce Coach...
September 17, 2015

Karen Bonnell on Holidays with Children

Karen Bonnell, a Bellevue based Collaborative divorce and co-parenting coach, was recently featured on King 5's New Day Northwest.  Karen is a co-author with Kristin Little of the book The Co-Parent Handbook.  In this video she talks about helping your children through the holidays after a parental...
January 28, 2015

Collaborative Marriage Planning

At the annual Forum of the IACP (International Academy of Collaborative Professionals) this past weekend, I ran into a concept I really liked - Collaborative Marriage Planning, although it might better be called Collaborative Relationship Planning as it is really intended to help couples plan for th...
October 30, 2014

Dr. Phil on Co-Parenting

A friend recently pointed out an article with some good advice for divorcing parents.  In "Dr. Phil: Dos and Don'ts For Co-Parenting With Your Ex", he makes a number of points about putting the children's best interests first.  Some of my favorites are: Don't disparage each other or allow the child...
October 10, 2014

Divorce and Children

I recently was alerted (thanks Daniel, Paul, and Rachel!) to an article on the Diefenbach, PLLC (New York divorce attorneys) website. The article is entitled "Divorce and Child Custody: It’s About the Child". It offers some good advice for divorcing parents. Some of the points I particularly liked w...
August 25, 2014

Can We Reach Our Own Agreements?

I am often asked whether a couple can reach their own agreements, or whether a Washington State court is going to refuse the accept those agreements and substitute its own decisions. As a general rule, a couple is able to make their own agreements as to things that are just between them. I have neve...
August 8, 2014

Tips for Reducing Conflict

Divorce has a reputation of being all about conflict - before, during, and after. It does not have to be like that, however. Here are a few tips for reducing conflict in your relationships: 1. Focus on what is important. Sometimes we just get in the habit of conflict - we'll argue with ANYTHING a c...
July 4, 2014

Split – Divorce From the Child’s Perspective

Split Trailer - splitfilm.org from ellen bruno on Vimeo. On October 2013, the movie Split (www.splitfilm.org) was premiered at the annual IACP Forum. This documentary looks at divorce from the perspective of the children involved. As they point out on their website, in the US almost half of all chi...
October 25, 2013