Estate Planning as a Family Conversation

The NY Times ran a terrific article last week about the value of talking about your estate plan with your family.  Although it may cause some friction at the time, it gives family members a chance to vent, to speak their piece, and it gives parents (or whomever is doing the planning) an opportunity to explain their thinking. 

Many parents leave their estate to be divided equally among their children.  While this is logical, and appears fair on the surface, it may not always be so.  What if Susie has a disability and will never be able to work?  Or what if she needs skilled nursing, while the other kids are fine?  Or what if the parents have been paying for Johnny's rent for the last 20 years?  Maybe they want to leave more to one child than the other in their will. 

Of course, it is natural that conflict will arise.  This brings up old "stuff."  (Remember the Smothers Brothers?  "Mom always liked you best!") 

This is a perfect opportunity for family estate mediation - a chance to sit down together and really understand things from the others' perspectives.  After all, what parents almost always want, more than anything, is to know that their children will keep lines of communication open, and will get along.  Mediation does not gloss over the surface, nor is it family therapy.  It is a facilitated, structured conversation - a chance to do problem solving together.  And it is future-oriented. 

Family members will continue their relationships long after the senior member is no longer here. By facilitating creative problem solving, estate mediation can help ensure that the elders' intentions are understood and carried out.

Compassion and Mediation

I am taking a course this weekend from Zoketsu Norman Fisher - one of the authors of the book, Getting to Yes, who is now a Zen Buddhist priest, and a teacher of meditation.  In preparation, I read an article he wrote entitled, "Developing Compassion."  He writes, "to be narrowly self-interested and self-identified is simply a very dangerous and unhappy way to live - the wider your interest and larger your sense of identity, the happier and the stronger you will be."

And this reminds me of words of my mediation teachers, Jack Himmelstein and Gary Friedman, who say that when we mediate, we must be able to hold in our minds the full reality of what each person is saying.  That neutrality is not staying squarely in the middle, but in fully understanding each person, really understanding their perspective.  And being able to hold both realities in your mind at the same time. 

I don't try to find the truth when I mediate.  In a certain way, I don't care about it.  I am not trying to come to my own conclusion about what really happened.  I do, however, care deeply about each person's perspective and perception about what happened.  For that is what is real to them. 

When I practice this, I believe - I hope - I am practicing the development of compassion. 

Gay and Lesbian Couples - Splitting Up

What options are available to gay and lesbian couples who are splitting up?  If they've been legally married but live in a state that doesn't recognize same-sex marriage, getting divorced may not be an option.  If they are not legally married but have kids, they may have to go to civil court to divide up their property, and to family court to get an order about their children.

It is much easier to do collaborative process or mediation, where the couple themselves can make decisions.  I've done both for same-sex couples, and they both work well, because you can be very creative in making agreements, and come up with decisions that fit your real needs.

The New York Times ran two good articles about this topic last week:

'Traditional' Divorce isn't always an Option for Gay Couples

7 Tips for Dissolving gay unions 

How to Pick a Divorce Lawyer

The New York Times has been running a fantastic series about Divorce and Money.
 Tonight they asked people to comment on the best way to pick a divorce lawyer.  Here is my answer:

The best way to pick a divorce lawyer is to find someone who will try to optimize the situation for everyone involved (particularly the kids), not just for you. Think about the emotional and psychic costs as well as the financial costs.

I am an attorney who only does divorce mediation and collaborative law for this very reason. Lawyers are taught that they have to provide their clients with "zealous advocacy." That may work fine in business deals, but it doesn't work when it comes to families.

Mediation and collaborative process work for most families, even if you're furious at each other. They allow you and your spouse to make decisions specifically tailored to the needs of your family, they're usually cheaper and faster than litigation. Whose kids do you want to send to college - yours or your lawyer's?

The 6 Relationships ...

I just returned from the ACR (Association for Conflict Resolution) annual conference, which really opened my eyes in a lot of ways.

But one thing I wanted to share tonight was a concept from Stephen Reynolds, a mediator in Santa Cruz, CA with Common Ground Mediation Services. He comes from a business background, and had an interesting, analytical view of committed relationships. His view is that each committed relationship really has 6 relationships going on at once.

In no particular order ...

• Physical & Romantic (sex, affection, physical space, division of household chores)
• Emotional & Spiritual (connectedness, communication, individual development, religion, values, ethics)
• Social Activities (how the couple relates to friends, family, community)
• Parental (relationships with children, decision-making, discipline, activities)
• Financial (managing income and debt, planning for the future)
• Legal (marital status, views of the law, legal relationships with others)

Therapists tend to focus on the first two, lawyers & mediators tend to focus on the last two or three.

You can picture what things would look like if they were going well -- or not well -- in any of these areas. And then you really get an idea of how complex each relationship is, how we relate to each other on so many different levels. So you see why relationships take so much work.

And most especially, so much communication.

Where is your relationship? Which areas are your strengths? Which are your weaknesses? What is still going well that you can build upon? What needs more work?

I have spoken before about the stages of divorce. But I think this framework actually says it better, and lets us think about it within relationships that are still in progress, not just those that are reorganizing, or coming apart.

I and Thou

My favorite book is I and Thou by Martin Buber. It is the defining book of my life, I think.

It is based upon a simple, but profound, premise: that each relationship we have is either I:It or I:Thou. I:It relationships with things - I:Thou (I:You) relationships are those with beings. It is contained, inanimate, what you can experience. Thou is spirit, limitless. "If I face a human being as my Thou," Buber says, "and say the primary word I-Thou to him, he is not a thing among things, and does not consist of things."

This is what we do when we get married. We vow to always see the spirit in the other person, to understand and to relate to that person with your whole self.

And by the time couples get divorced they are relating to each other as Its - as things, as obstacles.

But when we treat someone else as an It we dehumanize ourselves.

In mediation, we ask parties to consider the whole person again, to treat that person as I:Thou, if only for the small time they are in the room. And it is by seeing that person's spirit, by treating them at their highest, that you honor your own spirit. For only the whole can relate to the whole.

Good for Your Health!

The New York Times published an article in the Well Column of the Science Section last week, entitled, "Divorce, It Seems, Can Make You Ill." Similar news stories came out as well, based upon a study done by sociologists at the University of Chicago and at Johns Hopkins, that followed over 8,600 people, about 40% of whom had gotten divorced. The researchers found that divorce and widowhood are extremely stressful, physically as well as mentally, and that even getting remarried does not help one fully recover.

The study found that divorced or widowed people had a 20% greater incidence of chronic health conditions like diabetes or cancer, and 23% more difficulty getting around.

Another study they cited in the Times article found that wounds took up to two or three times as long to heal after marital conflict with high levels of hostility.

There is no question that divorce and widowhood is stressful, and that stress is related to health. So now I'd like to see a study that compares people who had mediated or collaborative divorces with those that underwent litigation. I imagine that there is much less stress in the former processes, and that therefore, people who use mediation or collaborative process end up with healthier outcomes.