418. How collaborative divorce and positive psychology can reduce conflict and support your children with Andrea Vacca

Andrea Vacca (00:00):

I tell people I help couples divorce without destroying their families because that is exactly what my goal is because you will always be a family.

Dr. Sarah Bren (00:16):

Divorce is often framed as a battle, something you have to fight through or survive. But what if there was a different way to approach it? One that is more intentional, less adversarial, and ultimately more supportive of the entire family. Hi, welcome to Securely Attached. I’m Dr. Sarah Bren, a clinical psychologist and mom of two. In this podcast, I’ve taken all of my clinical experience, current research on brain science and child psychology and the insights I’ve gained on my own parenting journey and distilled everything down into easy to understand and actionable parenting insights so that you can tune out the noise and tune into your own authentic parenting voice with confidence and calm. And today I’m joined by Andrea Vacca. Andrea is a collaborative divorce attorney with over 30 years of experience in family law and the founder of Vacca Family Law Group. For nearly two decades, she has focused exclusively on non-adversarial divorce, helping couples navigate separation outside of the court system using a team-based holistic approach.

(01:18):

And in this conversation, we talk about what collaborative divorce actually is and how it differs from the traditional litigation model that most people are familiar with. We explore how a team that includes legal, financial, and mental health professionals can help couples make thoughtful informed decisions without escalating conflict. And we dive into how positive psychology, including concepts like growth mindset, values-based decision-making, and focusing on strengths can help people stay grounded and regulated during what is often one of the most stressful experiences of their lives. We also spend time on the parenting piece, looking at how to create durable, flexible co-parenting plans, what nesting is and when it can be helpful, and how to keep your child’s needs at the center while still honoring the realities of the adult relationship ending. This is a conversation about divorce, but it’s also about how we navigate big transitions, how we make decisions under stress, and how we move forward in a way that protects not just our kids, but the long-term health of the family.

(02:28):

Hi, Andrea. Thank you so much for coming on Securely Attached. It’s great to see you.

Andrea Vacca (02:33):

You too, Sarah. So happy to be here.

Dr. Sarah Bren (02:35):

Yes. So you have spent your career working in collaborative divorce and that already approaches divorce in a pretty different way than what most people kind of conceptualize the divorce process to be. So I was hoping maybe we could start out a little bit talking about what is collaborative divorce and how you got involved in your sort of approach to working in this way.

Andrea Vacca (03:05):

Well, I’ve been practicing law and I’ve been practicing family law my entire career, which is over 30 years now. And about 22 years ago, I first heard about collaborative divorce. So I was now like 12 years into my practice of being a lawyer and I was a traditional matrimonial lawyer trying to settle my cases and going to court when I needed to go to court. And when I heard about collaborative divorce, it was like literally like this light was shining down on this conference table I was sitting at as these people were talking to our group about this process. And noth ever like that happened to me before until I met my husband actually. But anyway, this is your path. I literally saw it going down this table and I said, “Okay, I’m going to start getting trained in collaborative divorce.” And then I built my firm around that. So now there’s four attorneys and we only work with clients who are willing and able to stay out of court.

Dr. Sarah Bren (04:08):

And so yeah, if people are not familiar with the concept of collaborative divorce, maybe they’re just getting their bearings on all of this or maybe they’ve already gone through it and they didn’t know that that was an option. Because we have a lot of people I think who listen to the podcast who are navigating co-parenting at this point, right? They’ve already jumped the hurdle of this or the many hurdles, but I talked to a lot of people who didn’t know that was an option. They don’t know what it is and certainly people who are new to this world might not have heard about it. And so what is it and how is it different from what most people have been exposed to in terms of thinking about the divorce process?

Andrea Vacca (04:55):

Divorce. Yeah. Well, we often think of divorce as a battle, a war, one side versus the other. And if you file for divorce, it’s one spouse versus another. It’s a lawsuit that you’re bringing to end your marriage. That’s what happens when you go to court. So there’s this whole mentality around a divorce from our culture, from our experiences, from our families, from everything we’ve seen that it’s a war and you’re going to be fighting basically for your life and for your children, for your money and you can expect that it should be one of the most horrible things you ever go through. Ending a marriage is one of the most horrible things you’ll ever go through, but the collaborative divorce process makes it easier and that we’re agreeing never to go to court. The attorneys you hire are trained in this process, which we call collaborative divorce and we’re agreeing in writing with you with the two clients, the two spouses, their attorneys.

(06:02):

We’re agreeing we will never go to court with you. We’ll have full and transparent disclosure of all the information that’s needed. We will keep the best interests of the children in mind at all times. It’s a team approach also. So there’s a mental health professional on the team and a financial professional on the team who are neutrals. So these professionals will help make sure we properly address all the emotional issues, the child related issues, the financial issues that all need to be addressed in the termination of any marriage that have children so that none of those issues hijack the other. So you have your lawyers representing each of you, you each have your own lawyer and then you have these neutral professionals to help manage the other emotional and financial and child related issues. It’s a very holistic process. It’s very formal. There’s lots of things you’re coming into meetings with a written memo and a written agenda and you’re leaving with a memo of what happened and who’s going to do what by when. We’re not just sitting around having conversations.

(07:04):

We’re really working and trying to get an agreement between this couple that works for them and their family long term. So I love the process. Not everyone needs this kind of process, but if you’re thinking we have a complicated marriage, a complicated financial situation, even if we’re very high conflict and we can’t talk to each other, we need help, but we don’t want a judge making decisions for us. We don’t want to go to court. This is an awesome process for those families.

Dr. Sarah Bren (07:37):

Okay. Does that make sense? It’s funny because as you’re talking about this, I’m realizing there might be some myths that might need busting because I think a lot of people who have heard about collaborative divorce might be thinking like, oh, collaborative divorce. This is for couples who can collaborate. And if we can’t collaborate, we’re really high conflict or one party does not want to come to the table or it’s really impossible to not fight about these issues, then we can’t collaborate. That’s why we’re getting a divorce and now this precludes us from participating in this process. I’m guessing that’s not the case.

Andrea Vacca (08:17):

It’s not. You both have to be willing to come to the table. So this is only for couples who are both willing to hire collaboratively trained lawyers and are willing to negotiate in good faith, but they need help and they know they need help because they can’t do it themselves. Otherwise, they probably would’ve gone to mediation and just had somebody in some neutral party help. So

Dr. Sarah Bren (08:38):

The will has to be there. But the skills may not necessarily have to be there.

Andrea Vacca (08:42):

Perfect. That’s exactly it. They don’t necessarily have the skills or the information they need, the ability to ask the right questions. Yeah, the skill. That’s a really great way to put it.

Dr. Sarah Bren (08:59):

Because I think some people are like, “Well, we don’t have the skills to be collaborative so we can’t do this process.”

Andrea Vacca (09:06):

The will is more important because if you hire those attorneys and you put the right team around you and your attorneys will help you find the right team, they’ll say, “Okay, based on your relationship, your issues, your personality types, all of this, these are the people we’re suggesting that would be a good part of our team. So trust your attorneys to put that team together for you and then use the team, use the professionals, lean into it. And as a group, we will help you get through this process.”

Dr. Sarah Bren (09:39):

Got it. And what does it look like? If you say, trust your professionals, trust the process, what would the process look like?

Andrea Vacca (09:47):

Well, the process looks like we’re first starting off by signing that participation agreement I mentioned where everyone’s agreeing to resolve this in a non-adversarial way without court, how we’ll exchange information and how often we’ll meet and not the exact number, but that will be meeting in person and that how the process will end. We cover everything. So sign that participation agreement, then we scheduled our first meeting and we’re meeting in person generally or on Zoom, but everybody’s in one room, a real room or a Zoom room and we go in with an agenda. So what’s important to each of you? What’s your financial situation? How are your children doing? What are we thinking about for parenting plans and custody agreements?

(10:42):

We’re going to cover all of these issues. And then the parties are always agreeing on what we’re going to be doing next. No one’s telling them what to do. We’ll suggest we think the next meeting should cover these items, but if something is really important and time sensitive, that’ll get moved to the front. So it’s very bespoke in a way because it’s very tailored to each couple and each family, but it’s also very formal and has a process that the professionals will guide you through. So that’s how it works. And we can meet three times, four, five times. It depends on the conflict between the couple and the complicated issues that are coming up. And after that last meeting, we’re drafting an agreement and then we’re working on refining that written agreement and then you’re legally separated once you come to that agreement, like in any divorce.

Dr. Sarah Bren (11:43):

Okay. I’m betraying all of my lack of knowledge about this, but I’m thinking too, if you go to court or you do mediation, it could take a really long time, but I feel like people also might think that collaborative divorce is going to take a really long time because it’s so slow to go through, agree on every little detail, but it sounds actually a lot faster what you’re describing than I was picturing- My student depends, for sure.

Andrea Vacca (12:15):

As lawyers love to say…

Dr. Sarah Bren (12:16):

Therapists too.

Andrea Vacca (12:17):

That’s right. Well, mediation is, if it’s the right process for you, mediation’s usually the fastest, less people to coordinate in the room, just you and your spouse and the mediator and kind of move through the process. That’s the simplest mediation process. If it’s not the right process, it’ll get derailed and you’ll take two steps forward and three steps back. But if you need the collaborative process, it could take eight months to a year to come to an agreement. In court, it could take two to three years to get a ruling from a judge if that’s the way you’re going. The courts are moving very, very slowly and not much gets done in between, but at least in the collaborative process, you’re meeting, you’re making agreements like working with a client right now where we’re in the middle of the process and they wanted to separate.

(13:17):

So we came to a nesting agreement and we’re trying out this co-parenting agreement. They’re not going to nest forever, but during the process they’re able to nest. A court would never order nesting, but this couple in collaborative was able to say, “We’re going to make this work.” They had another home that they could both live in, move in and out of, and it’s working really well. So it really helps the couple and the children to start testing the process and testing how they’ll live together and how things are working.

(13:51):

In fact, in this case, there’s a family specialist and also the child’s therapist who are involved. If the child’s suffering or the child isn’t doing well, they can bring the couple together and say, “This is what we’re seeing.” So we have an eye on everything while we’re trying out new ways of this family, new formation for this family.

Dr. Sarah Bren (14:14):

That actually makes me want to pivot and ask you some questions about the family piece and the parenting piece, because I mean, obviously if people are listening to this podcast, chances are they are also thinking about it in terms of parenting and supporting their kids. And so you talked a little bit about nesting, which I wanted to pick your brain about. I think we’ve even done an episode, I’ll have to link it on the podcast, but we answered a listener question about that once on our Q&A segment from a therapeutic lens, like from a child development lens.

(14:53):

I realized I can weigh in on certain aspects of this in terms of how do you maintain this sort of secure base and secure environment relationship? How do you nurture and maintain the security and the relationship between the parents and the children as the parents are going through rocky transition themselves. But from a legal standpoint, I am curious, what have you seen in terms of if people are interested in nesting, one, what is it? And also where have you seen it be successful? Where have you seen it being less of the best option for a family? And then I want to ask about parenting plans.

Andrea Vacca (15:40):

Okay. So nesting to define what it is in a traditional divorce, both parents have two new homes and when children are in a joint custody situation, they’re moving between the two parents. That’s very traditional. In a nesting situation, the child is staying in the marital home, the family home, and the parents are moving out according to a schedule. So in this case, it could be usually it’s every few days maybe they’re doing this, the parents are moving in and out. And sometimes parents will say, “Well, when I’m not in the nest with the child, I’m going to be, ” I call it perching. I don’t know if other people call it this. I’ll be perching on my sister’s couch because I don’t have anywhere else to go. So you can see this is going to be a short term situation because how long do you sleep on your sister’s couch?

(16:38):

Other people might say, “I already have a new relationship. I’m going to be at my girlfriend’s house.” Or sometimes a couple I’m working with right now, they have a rental building and they had a vacant apartment that they can use. So they’re moving in and out of that vacant apartment. Lucky, very lucky. It’s nice to have something like that because it’s no extra cost. You don’t have to furnish it. It’s already got the furniture. And it’s like an ideal situation for nesting and it made it really easy to do it. So that’s what nesting is and it works well I think from what I’ve seen when it’s a short term arrangement. It’s not a forever arrangement. I’ve seen, so maybe it’s during the pendant while the divorce is being negotiated, that’s a great time to be nesting and then you know once the agreement is signed, we’ll both be living in new homes and that’s one of the things we’re negotiating.

(17:32):

Where will we be living? Who’s getting the home? Who’s going to be living there full-time? It doesn’t work very well when it’s a long-term arrangement. We’re just going to nest forever. I think it’s very, very hard on the parents and can be very expensive and nobody feels stable and it’s not reality, but parents have done it. Also, I’ve seen parents do it for maybe two years. They just don’t want to make their 16, 17 year old go between two homes, but they want to both spend time with that child. So they’re going to nest so they both have the opportunity to be with the child because they know they’ll never get the child to go to the other home.

Dr. Sarah Bren (18:18):

Ah, okay.

Andrea Vacca (18:19):

Until the child goes to college, they’re willing to do this. So every family is different as to why they nest, how long they nest, but rarely I don’t know if ever I’ve had an agreement saying, “We will be nesting forever until the children are in college.” I’ve never done that myself in all these years.

Dr. Sarah Bren (18:40):

And to me, that makes sense too, just from a family systems perspective of like to me, a lot of these strategies that tend to be more in the collaborative space that are a little bit more like, this is middle path, like this is a bit of an … We’re compromising here on something that is functionally not a longstanding thing, but it serves as a bridge or a stop gap or scaffolding that we slowly peel away as we’re moving through this transition. Maybe it’s to help us navigate this transition with a little bit more support. Maybe it’s so our kids have a little more stability as the … I always talk about how like change is like a snow globe, like any big change, it shakes up the snow globe and all the snow is moving. It’s not just this one little section. So anywhere we can create some stability and predictability and control for kids when their whole snow globe got shaken and their snow flurrying everywhere, that’s good and it doesn’t have to be nesting.

(19:42):

You could find pockets of stability and predictability in lots of different places, but just thinking about it from that lens can be really helpful. But yeah, eventually the snow does settle, right? And we do need to feel there’s like a conclusion to this too versus we’re living in limbo of this like pseudotransitional relationship forever. I don’t think that that helps anybody kind of get closure including the kids.

Andrea Vacca (20:13):

Exactly. Right. It’s not realistic for the child. The longer it lasts when you know it’s not forever, you should be trying to come to an agreement because the child is so comfortable now, is getting so comfortable with this arrangement. It might be hard to move to the next one where they will have to move between two homes, but the parents can also make that very exciting for the child and you’re going to get to pick your new bed out and you create a new room and you know all the things that you do with helping parents help their child get adjusted. So it’s always looking through the lens of what’s best for the child, but also has to be what’s realistic for this family.

Dr. Sarah Bren (20:54):

Yeah. Yes. I fully agree. I mean, I’m obviously very, very pro thinking about what’s best for the kids, but I’m also equally as pro looking at the entire family system and how do we support the health of every element of the family system, including the adults in the family because a healthy family system does rely on healthy adult figures as well. And obviously when you’re divorcing, your family system is shifting its shape and size, but it’s still a family system. Yo may no longer be married, but the reality is you’re still a family.

Andrea Vacca (21:35):

I know. I tell people, I help couples divorce without destroying their families because that is exactly what my goal is, our goal is, because you will always be a family. And if you are in court and being forced to ask, bring up all the terrible things that your spouse ever did, all the terrible things they did or didn’t do with regard to parenting or finances or as a spouse, it’s very hard to put that back together again and go co-parent together and try to make decisions together when you’ve been knocking each other down for two years in court and that’s just the normal litigation process. That’s just kind of the everyday thing that you’re doing.

Dr. Sarah Bren (22:21):

Right. It’s the system that you are working inside of because I get what you’re saying. You don’t have to hate your spouse to be forced to focus on the negative and that can then lead to really adding toxicity to a very volatile process already. I mean, I’m sure that’s true no matter what you do, whether you do collaborative or you do litigation or anything or mediation on the other end of the spectrum, like being able to kind of separate out what are my feelings, what’s the facts of the situation? What do I have to grapple with here? What are the things that aren’t working so much so that we can’t continue this relationship, but how do we do it in a way that’s not vilifying and seeing either person is all bad because chances are for the majority of families that go through divorce, on individual is very rarely all bad and one is very rarely all good, right?

(23:39):

We’re complex messy people and I’m sure there are situations for sure where we’re not even talking really about how do you manage safety in the family and how do you manage preserving relationships? We’re talking about how do you escape a really unsafe situation and how do you, like we’re talking about basic safety and that’s a totally different sort of category. I recognize that that does also exist in the divorce world, but I would say it’s the tail end of the extreme of the bell curve. Most families that are going through divorce, there’s some gray, like it’s not all good, all bad.

Andrea Vacca (24:19):

Exactly. And it’s not all good or it’s not all bad and there’s still probably good things that are still working, that maybe you are doing well together. Sometimes we’ll see parents who can come to financial agreements so easily. That’s not an issue at all, but there’s a lot of emotional issues around the right parenting schedule. So what can we learn from how you negotiate and talk about money and feel confident and trust each other around the finances? Can we bring that into our conversation around the children? Is there anything we can learn there? Sometimes it’s the opposite, the parenting is not an issue at all and then it’s the finances. So we’re always trying to … I like to ask, what is going well still? How do you come to decisions when you do have to make decisions right now? How does it work well? Where are you struggling? I really want to understand this family, this couple, so we can build on the strengths and build on what is good because there usually is still sold something good.

Dr. Sarah Bren (25:29):

Yeah.

(25:34):

If you’re listening to this episode, I imagine there might be a lot on your plate right now. I hope this podcast can be a good first step in helping you feel seen, guided, and held with psychologically and scientifically backed information you can trust. And for the moms who are looking to get additional support as you navigate a separation or divorce, I want to share a resource that might be helpful. At my group practice, Upshur Bren Psychology Group, we offer a virtual support group specifically for women navigating separation or divorce. This is a space where you don’t have to carry the weight of this transition alone. Whether you’re still deciding what’s next in the middle of legal proceedings or working to rebuild your life on the other side, this group is here to offer support, community, and tools to help you feel more grounded and empowered.

(26:19):

Led by expert clinicians, the women’s divorce group is designed to help you process what you’re going through, find clarity around your needs and boundaries, and gain coping strategies for everything from grief and guilt to co-parenting and identity shifts. To learn more about this group, you can visit our website, upshirbren.com, or just go to the episode description wherever you’re streaming the show to get links directly to learn more about this group or schedule a free 30 minute consultation so we can help guide you with suggestions for the best support options to meet your unique needs.

(26:56):

I know you do a lot of work in the positive psychology space as well as collaborative divorce. I think we’re starting to talk a litle bit about the intersection of the two here, right? Positive psychology is not about feeling positive all the time. It’s about perspective taking. And so could you talk a little bit about that and how that influences the way you approach working with families that are divorcing?

Andrea Vacca (27:21):

Yeah. Positive psychology is study of what helps to make people thrive, not just survive. And so it’s looking at what’s working well generally for a person, an individual or a system, a couple, but how can they have a better life? How can we take them from baseline and help them grow from there? Not just fix their pathology so much, which is a lot of what traditional psychology is for. So it’s a little different view and some of the things that I think really help and I studied positive psychology and then I became a positive psychology coach a little about a year and a half ago. But overall, the way I see some of the tenets of positive psychology that I think really help divorcing couples is the idea of having a growth mindset for first of all. So if a client comes to me and they never handled the finances and they’re really not comfortable, they don’t know what’s going on on the money.

(28:37):

They trusted their spouse. It’s not like an issue of mistrust or force or it was just that one person handled the money and one person didn’t and they can feel really uncomfortable around trying to understand now their assets, their debts, how everything is structured, what they’re going to need, what they’re spending and taking that growth mindset idea of you can learn, you can grow. Even if you’re grieving right now, you can grow and learn something about yourself, about how to do something and then that will help you thrive because you are now learning new skills and you can feel more positive about yourself and create the future that you want. I think positive psychology is very forward looking. I think traditional psychology might be a little more past looking so you can have a better future, but positive psychology is very much focused on where do you want to go?

(29:35):

So it’s about being more resilient. How can you find ways to be more resilient? How can you find ways to have a better growth mindset, like I mentioned. Another issue that I think that regularly comes up that I try to help my clients understand is the good enough agreement. What’s going to be good enough Nothing’s ever going to be perfect. So just talking to one of the attorneys in my office, this couple’s fighting over $50,000. They’re $50,000 apart. Okay. So you’re $50,000 apart. If you can settle on 30 or 40,000, will that 10 or 20,000 that you give up make a difference in 10 years? When you look back in three years, would it really make a difference to you? It’s really, everyone’s different and everyone might answer that differently. But I think we always have to ask somebody to say, “Is this going to be good enough to give you the future you want?

(30:38):

What’s most important to you? The life you want to live, the person you want to be, the values you want to live into. Will this agreement get you there? The terms that we’re negotiating and what you’ll be signing and agreeing to and having to live under. So I think positive psychology I think helps me to have those conversations a little more. And the other thing I think positive psychology is very helpful with is thinking about just people’s strengths, which I mentioned earlier. But also internally, what are your strengths, not just as a couple, but maybe you’re really good at … Maybe on the parenting side, it’s been really easy for you to be a great co-parent or an individual parent. But finding out what your strengths are, maybe on the strength finder could be gratitude, hope, love, family. It could be resilience. What are those strengths, your character strengths? I find it’s really helpful to look at those and then look at your life and how you can be using them more in your divorce, in your work, everywhere.

Dr. Sarah Bren (31:45):

I love that so much because I think one of the things that you’re ultimately doing when you’re helping people take those perspective shifts is you’re orienting them to either safety, agency or control, which is very absent when you are flailing in the midst of a crisis. So it’s very easy when something really stressful or overwhelming is happening to be in fight or flight, right? To be in a threat mode, to be unmoored and kind of very in survival mode. The problem with that is that’s not our most reflective place. When we’re in fight or flight by default, by definition, we’re also not in our thinking brain. We’re in our survival brain. And so the part of our brain that really needs to be on to take perspective, to sort of weigh our priorities, to kind of reorient to the larger pictures, like zoom out and say like, okay, what is the most important thing?

(32:56):

To prioritize, to problem solve, all these skills. They live in our prefrontal cortex and that is offline when we’re in fight or flight. And so when you’re working with someone and you can slow things down, like reset a sense of safety and then help them reorient and reflect internally into like, okay, well, what’s most important to you right now? Because it could be fighting over $100,000 or $10. It doesn’t matter the amount. If that amount feels like threat to lose it, even if you have 10x that in your bank, right? The question is, what is the threat? Is it that I’m losing it? Is it that they’re winning it? Is it that I need this to survive? If the answer is not the last one, maybe we can slow things down and check in and say, why is winning or losing the threat? Is it as scary as it feels in this moment when you zoom out, when you feel safe again, when you reconnect to what your goals are here? And I think that that is incredibly powerful and fairly lacking in what I think most people picture the divorce process feeling like. I don’t know, that’s not what you see in the movies.

Andrea Vacca (34:20):

It’s not. It’s more in the movies it’s, what do you want? I’ll get that for you. You deserve this. I’ll get it. We’ll fight for you. And a healthier way to approach this is what you’re saying. What is important to you and why is it important? Let’s talk about that. And what’s beautiful about the collaborative divorce process, we have a whole meeting focused on that and we share that with each other. The couple we’re preparing, that’s one of my favorite parts of the collaborative process is when I’m preparing my client for that conversation. “What is important to you? Don’t tell me why you want the apartment. Just don’t say it’s just, ” I want the apartment. Why do you want this apartment? “”Well, A, B, “whatever it is that’s really important to that person about that home and living there with their children. Let’s talk about that.

(35:08):

Let’s get underneath it all. And then more options are going to open up as to how we can get that for you because we’re going to hear from your spouse also what’s important to them. So we slow it down and we get away from what we call positional negotiation and we’re moving more into interest-based negotiation. Listen, where are their interests lie? What are their goals? And sometimes they need to speak with their therapist because they’re so afraid. And I will say, please have this conversation with your therapist or with your coach or whoever may be on the team that can help manage your emotions and the fears and all those everything that’s so normal I refer to as divorcing while human. Don’t beat yourself up because you are scared and angry and frightened and everything else. It’s just part of it. And let’s see how we can move you forward. You can’t get stuck there.

Dr. Sarah Bren (36:10):

I think that’s such a radical approach to divorce and I think it’s so human centered and it reminds me to go back because I wanted … We jumped around a bit, but I’m following the thread in the back of my mind. But all of this I think does connect to zooming out and looking at not just what I need or what I’m afraid of not having. Because when you do go under that, like you sort of like intimated that underneath wanting the apartment or wanting that money is maybe actually, oh, I want predictability and stability for my kid. I want to be with my child. I want to reduce how much their life is disrupted. That’s the fear. That’s the wish. That’s the driver. It’s usually not the thing. So when you’re able to help anybody you’re working with, strip that back, get in connection with the real fear or the real desire, how does that translate into the parenting piece?

(37:21):

Because that’s a massive negotiation that I don’t think a lot of people realize until they’re actually in it how much nuance really is required to create a good parenting plan because you’re navigating not just the two relationships anymore. It’s now you exponentially multiply that by the number of kids.

Andrea Vacca (37:43):

That’s right. So right now many families are more, and you might be seeing this, more families that are divorcing a fifty fifty arrangement is becoming much more common than the child. In the last five or 10 years it’s just like, that’s not the default under New York law that it’s fifty fifty. Some states it is. And then you have to prove why it shouldn’t be fifty fifty, but that’s become pretty much what we’re expecting that unless there’s some reason, strong reason otherwise, we’ll probably have a fifty fifty arrangement if both parents want it. No one’s going to force it. Let’s say both parents, one parent really wants it and one is hesitant to do it. We want to find out why. So why do you want fifty fifty? Is it about spending more time with your child, having certain quality time with your child? What we’ll hear is, I want to be able to be there on weeknights and put my child to bed and I want to hear what happened with their day.

(38:47):

I want to walk them to school in the morning. I don’t want to just be the weekend dad. I don’t want to be just the weekday mom. I also want weekends. I want relaxed time. I don’t want to just do all the drudgery work. So you will hear it from both sides as to what they really want when they say they want a certain schedule. What is it about it? Is it the quality? Is it the quantity? Usually we try to get into what’s the quality of the time that you want. So that helps to open up more options sometimes between the couple.

(39:20):

So that’s how we would do it in parenting and the nuances of not just the day-to-day schedule. There are so many issues that have to be addressed. How will you make decisions together? How have you made decisions together now? What happens if the decisions are financial related? That’s a whole other issue. Now we have to talk about child support and making decisions around money. What happens if the children … Well, not if they get older, when they get older. Will this parenting plan work long-term when they go to a new school, especially in New York, in New York City where I am, children could be in their neighborhood elementary school and then go to a middle school that’s 45 minutes away. And so where will the parents be living? How close do they have to live to near these different schools? Or how will they make decisions about schooling?

(40:16):

And there’s so much that goes into the future. And we can do that in the collaborative divorce process. We can do that if we keep your divorce out of court. We can think ahead for you. We can help you think ahead. And if you go to court, it’s like, this is where you are now. This is what your agreement is. If you have to change it later, good luck. If you can’t figure it out, you can come back to court. We want to set you up for success long term. We want this to be a durable agreement around the parenting. So maybe it means annual check-ins. Is this schedule still working? What needs to change?

(40:53):

What kind of flexibility do you each imagine you’ll need around the holidays and school breaks and what traditions are already in your family that we want to respect and continue for these children? So it’s very specific to each family and there’s a lot of issues, a lot of questions that go into it to making that plan work. But I’m happy and proud to say that they work. We don’t get calls on Christmas morning that somebody didn’t bring the children back or they’re fighting over the summer schedule or they don’t understand. We didn’t address something. Typically, if you keep your divorce out of court with a team approach or a really good mediator, you’re going to have a very, like I said, durable agreement that you don’t have to fight about later. So it’s worth putting the work in now to get that kind of success long term.

Dr. Sarah Bren (41:49):

If parents are listening to this and they’re like, “Okay, well, I already had a divorce. I have a parenting plan. It’s pretty bare bones. It’s pretty cookie cutter. We got the basics, but I want what you’re describing. I want to revisit it with more nuance.” Do people ever go into that process with a collaborative team just to revamp their strategies in the post divorce world?

Andrea Vacca (42:21):

Yes. It’s a really great question, Sarah. They can and they do. So sometimes it’s because something has changed and the agreement said you needed to go revisit this if something changes, like where people live or the child has certain needs or something. So sometimes that triggers a conversation post divorce or post judgment, we’ll call it. So after the judgment of divorce or the parenting agreement is signed, now something has changed. Coming back to a mediation process could be a very simple way to do that, just working with a mediator. If you’re more high conflict, putting together a collaborative team like we’ve been talking about could be more of what you need. So first I would talk to an attorney that can work in both processes and they will help you figure out based on your dynamics and the issues, which process you might be more successful in or might work better for you.

(43:23):

And maybe it’s a mediator who’s a mental health professional. Maybe you don’t need a lawyer mediator. Maybe you need someone with child development expertise who can also be your mediator and help guide the couple to helping to make this a more nuanced and detailed agreement so you don’t have these conflicts coming up every year or whatever is happening.

Dr. Sarah Bren (43:45):

Yeah. Because I could imagine people kind of uncovering this option after the fact and being like, “Ugh, I wish that that had been the path maybe that I chose just because I didn’t have that information going into it. ” And then feeling like, “Oh, well, I lost that opportunity.” I always am very mindful of helping people consider options even if it’s retrospectively looking back, if you feel like you want to try something different there, there’s really never a … I just feel like the repair process is never done.You can always revisit and yes, certainly sometimes it requires some lawyers to help you do it if it’s too contentious to figure it out on your own, but that’s an option, which I honestly didn’t really think about until we started talking about it. Yeah, you can go back.

Andrea Vacca (44:40):

You can. We’re working with a number of clients like that right now where they’ve had a parenting agreement, they’ve been living under it for a few years and they need to get it more refined or like I said, or something has changed and that’s all we’re working on with them. That’s it. Nothing about the money or anything else. It’s just about refining that agreement and it’s never too late. And the attorney you meet with could maybe help you have that conversation and kind of coach you on how to have the conversation with the other parent, how to bring this up, how to propose a process, how to make it safe for them to come back to this conversation and what’s in it for them. So I think the attorney could be very helpful in that regard too, not just papering it, getting you to an agreement, but helping you bring them into the process so you’re both willingly there.

Dr. Sarah Bren (45:33):

Yeah. I mean, I feel like I’ve certainly, because in our practice, we work with a lot of families that have been navigating divorce because we are a child and parent and family practice, which when the family system is in crisis, we work with that a lot. And one of the things that we do is help parents kind of figure out a parenting plan if it wasn’t really that thought out that before. But there’s also a lot of times where yes, we can advise on like what, okay, developmentally speaking, where maybe your children are a lot older now and like this plan doesn’t fit anymore and we need to like rethink it. And from a developmental standpoint or a family system standpoint or a conflict resolution standpoint, sometimes we can help with that. But if you have one parent that’s not interested in changing it and you need, and the threat is like, well, we have to go back to court, it’s really nice to know actually that there’s an intermediary step that is like with formal legal support, but it’s not, oh my gosh, we have to go rip this back open and go back to court because a lot of these parenting agreements that I see that are really like kind of cookie cutter are from the court system, like they’re from that process.

Andrea Vacca (46:47):

Exactly because the court is not nuanced, it’s not going to be looking forward. Like I said, at this moment in time, this is what I’m ordering. If you have a three-year-old, you know.

Dr. Sarah Bren (47:02):

That’s great. If people want to learn more about your work, your practice, how to work with you or how to learn more about collaborative law and divorce, where can we connect them?

Andrea Vacca (47:15):

Yeah. The best places on our website, vaccalaw.com. There’s so much information on there about everything we’ve talked about today, collaborative divorce, positive psychology, all the different processes. We have lots of blogs and videos. I also have a podcast that our sixth season could just launch today as we’re talking. Amazing. It’s called the Better Divorce Podcast. So there’s a podcast there that helps that we will help you get some better divorce tips. So those are the two places I would suggest finding us. And we are in New York, but for anyone listening who wants to find a collaborative attorney anywhere else in the country or even the world, we have connections everywhere or we can find someone to help you find the right person for you. So don’t hesitate to ever reach out if we can help you find someone else in your neck of the woods.

Dr. Sarah Bren (48:10):

That’s great. That’s an amazing resource. We’ll link all that in the show notes as well. Thank you so much for coming on. This was a really delightful conversation with you.

Andrea Vacca (48:19):

Thank you, Sarah. I loved speaking with you. It was really great. Thank you.

Dr. Sarah Bren (48:29):

If you enjoyed listening to this conversation, I want to hear from you. Share your thoughts and your feedback with me by scrolling down to the ratings and review section on your Apple Podcasts app or whatever app you’re listening on and let me know what you think of this episode or the show in general. Your support means the absolute world to me and just a simple tap of five stars can make a real impact in how this show gets reached by parents everywhere. So thank you so much for listening and don’t be a stranger.