Kimberly.
Um do me a favor,
introduce yourself and tell me what your work is with um couples who have divorced.
Ok.
Um So I'm, I'm my, my business is km Family law.
My background, I am a lawyer,
a marriage and family therapist and a certified financial planner.
Um So I kind of work with divorcing families all out of court,
but I work with divorcing families on um the, the legal side,
the financial side and the parenting side.
Um and like I said, out of court.
So it is almost exclusively families that are trying to work together.
I don't go so far as to say it's always
couples that get along or finding this process easy.
Um But they at least have some insight and know that they want to come up
with resolutions together and not leave it to the court to tell them what to do.
Give me um your working definition
of co parenting. What is it?
You know, everybody does it when, whenever there's two parents involved with,
with or without a divorce, I mean it at, at its bare minimum,
it is two or more people trying to make decisions and parent,
uh one or more Children together.
Um When you're divorced or separated in two separate homes,
you have two added things, which are really interesting to me.
One is you're just in two separate spaces.
So usually there's, you know, two different home bases, two different drivers,
two or more sometimes when you have like stepparents or other family.
Um but the other piece you have is you actually
can have a court order binding you to do something.
Um When you're not divorced,
if you and your spouse or you and your co
parent can't decide on whether your kids should do,
you know, club soccer or just do at the community center.
Um You just have to figure it out between you and kind of figure it out until
you're ready to go uh when you're divorced or if you have a parenting plan in place,
you can actually go to a court and fight about it in front of
a judge and get an order that says yes to club soccer or no.
Um So it's a really funky weird place because who wants to do that.
Um But, but, you know, at a bare minimum, it's,
it's two or more people making decisions and,
and trying to come together on how ideally to best raise the Children.
Um But when it comes to extracurriculars, um or sports
um or music or theater or whatever they're doing outside of school time,
it can be really challenging
youth athletics with all the growing demands can present
a lot more problems, can't they?
Yeah. Absolutely. And I think they're, they're twofold, um, time and money.
I mean, like everything else.
Um,
but as the time commitment becomes more and more
and more on these kids and it's not just,
you know, three or four practices a week, it's tournaments out of town.
It's the hotel cost, the food costs, the driving costs.
Um,
Sometimes you're putting your kid off with another
family or someone else is taking them on.
I've had a minivan full of, you know,
six kids going to Des Moines for a soccer team tournament.
Um And then sometimes there's the unknown time.
You don't know if you're gonna be there for one game or four games. Um,
and when you're crossing over on parenting time,
um there's, there's that element too of, is it my time or my co parents' time?
Do I like this sport?
And do I want to be as equally involved in on the sidelines as the other parent?
And then financially so often there's such
a huge financial contribution that goes in.
I mean, I ask kids,
I ask families when I start working with them, do you have a hockey player,
a club sport player or a dancer?
Those are the three that you have to almost have a separate budget for,
to figure out how are we gonna pay for it?
What happens with the unknown costs? It only gets more as they get older usually. Um,
and then you get the, the tough situation of,
of what happens if one parent can't afford it
or financial circumstances change and the other can,
how do you balance that out with also
trying to have a unified
front for your kids and make sure that you're not, you know, you're, you're
one of the things just important in general is supporting your co parent.
What about the social aspect of this? And
you know, as a soccer mom, right,
there are groups on the sidelines,
there are groups that hang out together on um away tournaments.
Um that can, I'm sure be a big deal with two camps
and one athlete.
I
think it's really upon parents to communicate to other parents
that like we may be divorced or we may be separated,
but we're here as a team and we're gonna be unified so like knock it off,
don't treat us any differently.
Um, and kind of keep them out of it as much as you can. Again, it might be really hard.
I'm not undermining the fact that it might be
really hard for parents to pretend that it's ok.
Um but do that for the short period of time and can you give me
kind of a laundry list or a checklist
of things
that couples do
that help them succeed during the divorce? You gotta come up with a plan for the time
you know, how are we going to communicate and decide what they're doing
and the money
to take that out of it. So that no kid feels like they are worried because,
you know, hockey goes up at some point in time when you're in Bantam,
you're paying more money than you were the year before and you need
to plan for that and prepare and think about it ahead of time.
Um So that's like the prep that's in the divorce documents or in
the decree that you guys have come up with a plan for that.
Um And then during the process, it is about
um
I, I think I put it on my blog, avoiding promises,
make sure you're talking to each other and you're not saying, oh yeah,
you can definitely go to that tournament or you can do ODP or you can fly to Vein
for the college showcase before you talk to your
co parent because the answer could be no.
And, and when you're not together and in the same household,
you're often having those conversations together and
all of a sudden when you're separated,
you're driving home alone with your kid and you might
inadvertently promise something that then you have to back out of.
So I think avoiding promises, um
I think
getting along
and just doing your absolute best to be positive and good on the sidelines. Um
And then I think, you know, really trying to make sure that the community as a whole,
you're communicating to them about what is happening.
It may seem obvious
but why is it important
to put a ton of thought
and a ton of effort
into being a go good
co parent of um, of a young athlete
as a divorced parent. Don't be that parent, like teach your kid that you can divorce.
Well,
you can be friends or friendly enough to support
them on the sidelines of a sporting event.
Um, and then just, you know,
just keep loving them and keep doing the best that you can for them.
Um, and then also just make sure you're doing it for all the right reasons for them.
It would be my same advice for non divorced parents. It's just a little harder,
really hard.