I just finished watching another heart-breaking loss by my favorite professional football team – but what has me torn up more than that was how one of the announcers was telling the story of one of the players and what a great person he was be cause he just finished a two year custody battle in which he “won” custody of his child.
Why is it that in the traditional legal arena, one parent has to “lose” in a custody fight? If you ask me, both parents and the kids lose when a family has to go through a custody battle. When you are talking about child custody in Cary, North Carolina, or anywhere else for that matter – you are talking about slowly and painfully losing years of your life that could be spent working on your relationship with your child and your ex-spouse.
The thing about kids is that even though you may have “won” a child custody battle, you still have to find a way to parent this child for the rest of your life. You still have to figure out how to deal with the other parent. You both want to take part in your child’s wedding, you both want to see them at holidays, and you both want to go to their activities and see them succeed. The fact that a court has ordered one parent more overnights than the other doesn’t change any of that.
If you consider collaborative divorce, you child custody battle becomes a prolonged therapy session in which you learn how to cope with the other parent and work together to “co-parent” your child – which is the way it should be.
Nobody should be proud that they have won a legal battle regarding the custody of their kids – because everyone loses in that situation. I hope you will consider a collaborative divorce for your child custody dispute in Cary or Raleigh – and call our office if you have more questions about the process.