No Logic Can Overcome Resistance from Divorce Clients – But This Approach Can!

Many Family Lawyers agree that the biggest mistake people make in divorce is, “she wants to keep the house.” Generally, lawyers and mediators and financial advisors and collaborative law participants try to explain to her why or how it would be a mistake to try to keep the house. After all, it may be clear that it is impossible to refinance the mortgage into her name only. And the house may also be an expensive enterprise to maintain. Her spouse is either unwilling or unable to stay on the mortgage or otherwise financially support her decision to keep the house. All too often, there is no amount of logic or calculation or convincing, short of coercing her, that persuades her that insistence on keeping the house is unreasonable. Often, dispute resolution professionals get very frustrated with her and begin to label her as irrational and not credible and incompetent as a participant in the process. What she thinks, begins to be dismissed. This is one of the tragic outcomes of dispute resolution in divorce matters.

Her wanting to keep the house against all odds is not irrational. The problem is not with the client. The problem of an inability to resolve this matter lies with the dispute resolution professional. She will keep raising her “wall of resistance” as high as it needs to be to resist all arguments against her desire to keep the house.  Sound familiar? She isn’t the one making the mistake.

Divorce Coaching is a dispute resolution process. CDC Certified Divorce Coaches are dispute resolution professionals who have been trained to a professional standard to assist with this very circumstance, as well as many others. The dispute resolution techniques the divorce coach employs, assist the client to self-discover for herself that it would be important for her to consider other housing options. Time after time, divorce coaches “kick the log jam loose” in a dispute. This requires time, patience, technique, and non-judgement to accomplish.