Create a new holiday tradition

Starting a new holiday tradition with you children after a divorce is a great way to move on and focus on the positive. Every year my children purchase an ornament for the tree and put their name and year on the back of it.
Does anyone else have a tradition they started after a divorce? Please share by adding a comment to the blog.

What does Joint Custody mean?

Joint custody can be defined in many ways and should be detailed in a Custody Order. In many cases, parents share joint custody with one of the parents as the primary custodian. In this case, the child lives primarily with the primary custodial parent and that parent makes the primary decision regarding the child's care and well being. The secondary custodian can usually make decisions when the primary custodial parent is unavailable, such as a needed medical treatment consent or decision needed by the child when the primary custodial parent can't be located. The important thing to remember is that there is no one answer. The Custody Order dictates each situation and the terms of custody can be modified as the parents see fit or as needed.

Call an attorney today to discuss your custody options.

Divorce and Thanksgiving

With Thanksgiving Dinner this month, I thought about the divorce issues that the holiday highlights. When we mediate parenting issues we usually allocate holidays. Very often the parents alternate holiday years. For example, the Mother may have Thanksgiving with her children in even years and the Father in odd years. But there is still the issue of whether Thanksgiving is a one day or four day holiday. If it is only one day, one parent may celebrate on Friday. There are many other issues including transportation, new significant others, and of course the menu! These issues don’t go away when there are adult children. On occasion parents decide to still celebrate together. The possibility of family dinners after divorce was recently discussed by Laurie David in an article in the new divorce feature in the Huffington Post. See the entire article at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/laurie-david/my-family-dinner-after-di_b_779277.html If this does not work for Thanksgiving there is always Christmas and Chanukah. As always, you can post any comment about this blog or Divorce Mediation, or just Mediation by following the directions at the right in the green column or at the bottom of this website. Learn more about mediation at http://www.center-divorce-mediation.com WM (195) 11/24/10

No Cost of Living Increase for Social Security Beneficiaries

For the second year in a row, the SSA will offer no cost-of-living adjustment
for Social Security and SSI beneficiaries in 2011. The COLA is determined by comparing the change in the Consumer Price Index (CPI-W) from the third quarter of 2008, the last year that a COLA was determined, to the third quarter of 2010. As there was no increase in that period (unlike the change from 2008 to 2009, which
was 5.8 percent, the largest increase since 1982), the SSA declined to grant a cost of living increase.

Passing a Baton in Divorce and Mediation

Not sure I can easily explain this but I have always been fascinated how people pass an object or a baton to someone else and usually know when the other person has it and when it can be released without the object or baton falling. I can’t explain how people know they have the object or baton but it seems to be instinctive. There may be a subtle difference in the feel of the object or baton or one of the human senses. I googled and found the following from Brainz in response to the question, “How many human senses?

“We are taught in school that the body has five senses: sight, hearing, touch, taste and smell. However, experts now believe that there are quite a lot more—and the total number depends on the expert you are talking to and the definition they give to the word “sense.”
Some say that there are nine senses. Aside from the basic five, they include thermoception, nociception, equilibrioception, and proprioception. They also include the feeling of hunger and thirst. For them, a sense must be linked to particular sense organ that registers and interprets a stimuli. Hunger and thirst are also sometimes included. They do not include any interpretations made primarily by the brain. That is why they don’t think of intuition as a sense (even though many people call it the “sixth sense.” For them, intuition does not just perceive data from real experience, but makes a quick judgment based on data gathered by several sensory organs.” http://brainz.org/how-many-human-senses-are-there/

I am not sure which human senses are involved in passing an object or if it is something else. But what has this to do with my usual topic of divorce and mediation? My take is that in divorce and mediation that there are things going on which we don’t understand or are not aware of but effect the results. The parties ultimately also want a “clean handoff.” As always, you can post any comment about this blog or Divorce Mediation, or just Mediation by following the directions at the right in the green column or at the bottom of this website. Learn more about mediation at http://www.center-divorce-mediation.com/ WM (194) 11/7/10