Family lawyers and mental health professionals can work together for better outcomes in divorce.
Of course, such a statement raises the question of what a “better outcome” is.
Emotions can shape the outcome of a divorce. Couples who are more aware of how their emotions affect how they approach their divorce are more likely to be able to work through their emotions to reach a more rational divorce settlement.
According to Psychology, Public Policy, and the Law, the strongest indicator of children’s post-divorce wellbeing is their relationship with both of their parents. Mental health professionals can help parents work together to keep the parent-child relationship strong as the family navigates the challenges and changes of divorce. Mental health professionals trained in child development and family therapy can offer the family lawyer and the parents an important perspective about the children’s needs as they develop their parenting plan. Mental health professionals can also monitor the children to help mitigate the negative impacts of divorce, and address concerns as they arise.
For couples without children or for older couples going through a gray divorce, a better outcome might look like a fair divorce settlement reached through amicable negotiations in a timely manner. Mental health professionals can help couples work through resentments and anger, and learn better communication strategies, so that the couple can sit down with their lawyers at the negotiating table and peacefully work through financial matters.
In every divorce, each person’s deeper motivations, desires, and hidden narratives can contribute to their ideas about what their own “best divorce outcome” will look like. Mental health professionals can work with family lawyers to help clients achieve better divorce outcomes by helping clients expose hidden narratives and by helping them to become aware of their deeper motivations and desires, while working through resentment and anger. A mental health professional can be present during difficult conversations to model more productive conversation strategies and call time-outs if things get heated.
As collaborative divorce lawyers in the state of Washington, Truce Law helps clients negotiate their divorce settlements amicably, outside the courtroom. With collaborative divorce, a team of professionals work together to help clients navigate the challenges of divorce. This team can include financial advisors as well as mental health professionals.
While it is true that mental health professionals are often called in to provide expert witness testimony or evidence in a court proceeding, this is outside the scope of this article. In child custody court cases, mental health professionals or a social worker might be brought in to perform a psychological evaluation of the parents, to perform a parental fitness evaluation, or to conduct a home study to help determine the best custodial environment for the children. This article focuses instead on why couples might want to bring a mental health professional on to their divorce team as a proactive measure, and how doing so can potentially prevent litigation.
Mental health professionals can play an important role in collaborative divorce and in helping couples reach amicable divorce settlements and child custody agreements.
Understanding the Different Types of Mental Health Professionals
When choosing a mental health professional, there are many different options. The overlap and difference between these professionals can sometimes be confusing or difficult to navigate. Mental health professionals can include psychologists, psychiatrists, social workers, licensed professional clinical counselors, and licensed marriage and family therapists, among others. Some mental health professionals also focus on child development or children’s mental health issues.
Psychologists have graduate school degrees in psychology. According to the American Psychological Association, psychologists receive extensive training on “all aspects of human behavior, with an emphasis on research and scientific methods.”
Psychiatrists, attend medical school and study the biological basis of mental illness. They can prescribe medications and sometimes also use talk therapy to help patients.
Social workers receive graduate degrees in social work and are trained to perform psychotherapy and connect their patients with community resources.
Licensed professional clinical counselors and licensed marriage and family therapists receive graduate degrees in psychology, or in family therapy. Professional counselors work more with individuals, or in group settings on common individual issues (for example, a group counseling session to address addiction). Licensed marriage and family therapists are trained to work with couples and children to help the couple work through relationship problems and evaluate how family dynamics might impact the children.
Family lawyers will most often work with licensed marriage and family therapists or psychologists who specialize in children’s development or family dynamics, though there might be situations where a family lawyer might work with social workers, or even psychiatrists. For example, a licensed marriage and family therapist can help a couple work on their parenting plan, while offering guidance on how the couple’s parenting plan might impact their children.
Psychologists might be called in to conduct evaluations and help co-parents identify any psychological issues that may need to be addressed when developing a co-parenting agreement. Psychiatrists can prescribe medication, when appropriate, to help clients manage anxiety or depression related to divorce. And social workers can be brought in to help parents develop a co-parenting environment and relationship that best supports their children, while also connecting the family to community support services.
If a family lawyer is making a referral for clients, it is important that he or she understand the different types of mental health professionals available, and guide clients toward mental health professionals with the specific training and experience in family conflict, parent-child relationships, and family dynamics.
If a family lawyer wants to work with a mental health professional collaboratively, relationship-building is important. Do you know some of the mental health leaders working in your community?
Having a wide and deep network is important as well. As Donald N. Duquette explains in “Collaboration Between Lawyers and Mental Health Professionals: Making It Work,” “broadening the pool of potential experts also serves to enhance a lawyer’s objectivity.” Duquette writes, “Informal contacts may be mutually beneficial… informal conversations may reveal ways in which the other disciplines may be helpful; ways that were never apparent before.” Duquette adds, “Lawyers should learn and appreciate the basics of child development, especially notions of attachment and separation.”
Mental health professionals might also look for certain qualities in a lawyer before agreeing to work with him or her. Is the lawyer curious about the mental health profession and theories and genuinely interested in helping clients use mental health resources to help them navigate their divorce?
How Mental Health Professionals Can Help with Child Custody
When couples with children get divorced, their primary goal is to find the co-parenting plan that is best for their children. Mental health professionals can help divorcing couples stay focused on this goal.
According to Psychology, Public Policy, and the Law, research indicates that the “quality of the parent-child relationship is a better predictor than conflict of children’s outcomes, with the exception of the most extreme forms of conflict to which some children are exposed.” So, while co-parents should aim to reduce conflict in their co-parenting relationship, it is most important that both parents work to maintain high quality relationships with their children, regardless of what happens. Marriage and family therapists can help couples reduce conflict during their divorce but can also help both parents work on the quality of their relationship with their children through this time of immense change.
Mental health professionals can also help parents address important questions they must face when getting divorced. What co-parenting plan is truly in the best interests of the children? Are the children facing any difficulties due to the parent’s conflict? Is the conflict affecting the quality of the parent-child relationship? What things can the parents do individually and together to promote parent-child relationships? What things can the parents do to promote a more amicable co-parenting relationship? Mental health professionals can help co-parents work through their own blocks toward achieving these ends.
To answer and address these questions, the marriage and family therapist might need some time with the couple and the children to get a baseline. It can be helpful for the family lawyer or the couple hiring the family therapist to ask how much time will be required for the therapist to provide adequate assistance. This might include time outside the context of collaborative divorce. In some instances, couples might bring a marriage and family therapist they have already been working with to the negotiating table when they work out their divorce settlement with their family lawyer.
Family lawyers might encounter clients who could benefit from hiring a marriage and family therapist to help them address anger, resentment, and communication issues that might impact divorce negotiations and child custody. Likewise, marriage and family therapists might often encounter clients who cannot resolve their marital difficulties and who might ultimately be better off apart, through divorce, who might need the assistance of a family lawyer.
When marriage and family therapists have a network of family lawyers with whom they work collaboratively and when family lawyers have a network of marriage and family therapists they know and trust, clients can receive the support they need, wherever they are in their journey.
Mental Health Professionals Can Provide Context
Mental health professionals can provide context for families navigating divorce. Children’s attachment to their parents can shape the course of their lives and future relationships.
According to John Bowlby’s theory of early attachment, early parental attachment forms “internal working models” that serve as the basis of future relationships (British Journal of General Practice). Children with a “secure base,” that consists of reliable, consistent, close, and safe parental attachment can approach relationships outside the family with confidence and self-esteem.
Mary Ainsworth further developed attachment theory, exploring how early bonds with a caregiver shaped children’s behavior outside the parental relationship. Early secure attachment can form the basis of either secure attachment, anxious attachment, avoidant attachment, or disorganized attachment styles, which can impact a person’s attachment for life. According to the British Journal of General Practice, “disturbed childhood attachment relates to adult physical and psychological ill-health, including major causes of mortality. It is a key factor in intergenerational parenting difficulties and predisposes children to substance abuse, temper problems, homelessness, promiscuity, early pregnancy, and criminality.”
This further highlights the important role that mental health professionals and family lawyers can play in terms of impacting child development, especially in situations where early attachment can become disrupted due to divorce or separation.
Mental health professionals can guide the family lawyer toward deeper reading, understanding, and context about how divorce can impact early childhood attachment.
Marriage and family therapists can evaluate the child and contextualize the child’s difficulties within the context of the divorce or marriage difficulties. Marriage and family therapists can also observe parental dynamics and help the couple understand how their dynamics might be contributing to their children’s difficulties.
According to the American Association of Marriage and Family Therapy, “marriage and family therapy is brief; solution-focused; specific, with attainable therapeutic goals; designed with ‘an end in mind.’” These qualities of marriage and family therapy align well with the goals of collaborative divorce attorneys and many family lawyers. After all, collaborative divorce is designed to be brief, solution-oriented, with specific attainable goals, namely, that of a divorcing couple reaching an amicable divorce and child custody agreement.
How the Goals of Marriage and Family Therapy Align with the Goals in Collaborative Divorce
In “Collaboration Between Lawyers and Mental Health Professionals: Making It Work,” Donald N. Duquette writes, “the psychiatrist, psychologist, and social worker’s professional relationships are generally based on trust, mutual respect, openness, and cooperation.” In his article, Duquette writes about how the mental health professional’s approach often conflicts with the adversarial approach many lawyers take.
Yet, in the context of collaborative law, the goals of the lawyer and the mental health professional align. Collaborative divorce lawyers work to help their clients negotiate amicable divorce settlements outside of court based on trust, mutual respect, openness, and cooperation. Duquette adds, “in the traditional therapeutic relationship, the setting is private.” The privacy of the collaborative divorce process allows for more productive and honest conversations. Duquette adds, “the mental health professional is accustomed to compromise.” Collaborative divorce lawyers also have compromise as their aim.
It is important to note that mental health professionals and family lawyers have different professional duties, and that the collaborative process could create conflicts in very specific circumstances (as noted by the Family Court Review). For example, family lawyers have a duty to maintain client confidentiality under attorney-client privilege, while mental health professionals have a duty to report child abuse. These issues can be overcome by the fact that collaborative law and mediation aren’t considered appropriate options in cases where abuse, coercive control, or violence have been present.
Collaborative divorce lawyers often address these limitations in their intake interviews, and if these issues are discovered during the collaborative process, the process would be abandoned, with the clients being advised to seek new legal representation with attorneys skilled in handling situations involving abuse or coercive control.
Mental Health Professionals Can Help Family Lawyers Be Their Best
Family lawyers are human at the end of the day, and they truly want what’s best for their clients. Mental health professionals can help family lawyers navigate their own biases and emotions regarding a case, helping them to maintain a professional perspective, even while navigating normal emotional reactions to highly emotionally charged conversations. Collaborative divorce lawyers work together to help their clients negotiate a settlement, but at the end of the day, each spouse retains their own collaborative divorce lawyer who is committed to their respective client. A mental health professional can call a time-out if negotiations between collaborative lawyers start to become contentious.
The Role of the Mental Health Professional in Collaborative Divorce
With collaborative divorce, a team of professionals collaborate to help clients resolve their divorce amicably, outside of court. With collaborative divorce, each party is represented by their own collaborative divorce attorney, so there will always be two attorneys on the team. The couple can then also decide whether to bring in additional professionals to help with the divorce negotiation process. These professionals might include financial advisors, mental health professionals, mediators, and other professionals as needed. These professionals work together to help the couple address the emotional, legal, and financial issues that can arise with divorce.
In the collaborative divorce process the mental health professional will typically meet with the couple without the attorneys present to identify issues, observe communication dynamics, and identify each partner’s goals for the divorce. The mental health professional can identify areas where conflict might be more likely during divorce negotiations (for example, areas where one person is fixated on achieving a specific goal or outcome, or topics that are particularly sensitive).
With divorce, one partner may be more ready to engage with the process, so the mental health professional’s work will also be to help the partner who maybe didn’t initiate the divorce to process their feelings and become more ready to engage the process, while also helping the partner who initiated the divorce give their partner time to process their feelings. The mental health professional can also help each partner see the situation from the other partner’s perspective and help the couple develop better communication skills. Finally, the mental health professional can identify power imbalances (financial, and interpersonal) and address these during the negotiation process.
For couples with children, mental health professionals can help the couple work through co-parenting issues while they might still be living together and can help the couple prepare for how to speak to their children about their divorce.
A mental health professional can also help the couple decide whether collaborative divorce is right for them before they even reach the stage of speaking to a lawyer.
Truce Law is a collaborative divorce family law firm in the state of Washington that works with mental health professionals and clients to help them negotiate their divorce settlements outside of court. If you are a mental health professional interested in connecting or learning more about how you can play a key role in the collaborative process, please don’t hesitate to reach out.
This article is for educational purposes only and does not constitute legal advice. Every situation is unique. For guidance specific to your circumstances, consult a licensed family law attorney in your area.