The Relationship Layer Cake

Human relationships take on many forms. When we first meet a new person, we are acquaintances. Perhaps we later become friends. Maybe we have a professional relationship, as colleagues, customers, contractors, consultants, you name it. We could even go into business together as partners or co-owners. Or we could start dating, get married and have children together.

When a married couple decides that they are going to separate and possibly divorce, it’s important to identify each layer of their association and determine how the decisions being made correspond to the different relationships between the spouses. Let’s call this “a relationship layer cake.”

When the adversarial approach of our court-based legal system is avoided in favor of a more respectful and dignified mediation divorce process, the marital contract can be ended while preserving those relationships that continue to connect both spouses.

Separation and divorce, at a minimum, involve an “unwinding” of an economic partnership that is recognized in legal terms as beginning on the date of marriage. In a short, childless marriage, the decisions being made by my clients could be confined to the division of their marital property, leaving them to go their separate ways with no further personal contact. They may have no interest in remaining friends or being otherwise associated with each other.

But more often, especially in marriages of more than a few years and that include children, the decisions can cross many layers of relationship. Co-parenting and the development of a Parenting Plan acknowledge what we all know as parents—we will be the parents of our children for the rest of our lives. And so from here we can understand that our children will continue to have two parents, hopefully long into their adult years. 

When the adversarial approach of our court-based legal system is avoided in favor of a more respectful and dignified mediation or collaborative divorce process, the marital contract can be ended while preserving those relationships that continue to connect both spouses, whether they be:

• parental.
• personal (still friendly or at least cordial but no longer married).
• professional.
• business.

In the kitchen of mediation, you can hopefully take the “marriage layer” off your cake while baking a better tasting new confection for the future.