Issues the follow-on from the breakdown of a marital or de-facto relationship are naturally more than just legal matters for the parties involved. When you have your pride, self-respect and access to your offspring on-the-line, it’s incredibly easy to fall into unhelpful emotional thinking that actually sets you back from getting an ideal outcome.
Of course, you can’t be expected to become entirely robotic and ignore all of your emotions, after all, emotions like love are the reason you are engaging a child custody lawyer in the first place. This is where you need to utilise your solicitor to act as an unbiased, measured and reasonable ally during this highly difficult and tumultuous time.
Let’s take a look at some tips you can use to ensure you are able to stay sane while working with child custody lawyers.
1. Trust your solicitor
When working with a child custody lawyer, the best thing you can do is make sure that you take their counsel seriously and don’t second guess their expertise. You hired a solicitor for their expert knowledge and ability to argue in your favour – you need to give them the freedom to do what they do best without fear of you or your emotional mind undermining them.
Make sure you listen to their advice carefully and ask follow-up questions in the event you don’t understand something. The greater mutual understanding that you have with your solicitor, the greater your ability to cooperate towards achieving the outcome you desire.
2. Know who is in your support network
Another good way to ensure you are getting the most out of your time with your child custody lawyer is to build a solid support network around you. This includes friends and family who are sympathetic to your situation and can help keep you company or simply listen to you vent your emotions.
Taking care of your emotional well-being in this way means that you’ll be going into meetings with child custody lawyers and potential negotiations with your ex with the healthiest possible mindset. While you can’t dismiss all of the emotions seeing your ex again will inevitably bring up, having a strong support network around you will prepare you to deal with it maturely so that you can get on with what you are there to do.
Talk to your relatives and friends who you know aren’t going to report things to your ex and that ostensibly are taking your side. While an us VS them mentality isn’t ideal, sometime its all you have when your ex is determined to punish you by denying access to your offspring.
3. Leave the kids out of the bickering
When working with child custody lawyers, one of the big things you need to worry about is how your children’s emotional well-being is being affected. Of course, splitting parents is an ordeal for any kid, especially when they are of a younger age where they can’t conceptualise why their parents seem to hate each other and speculate as to whether its their fault or not.
If you know that your kids are in tears because of what you and your ex are putting them through, it’s going to put extra stress on you. Make sure you do your best to ensure that your kids aren’t caught in the crossfire and are protected from the worst of the fighting.