Parents navigating “Splitsville” often hope to divide time with their children equally. But in practice, that approach isn’t always the most helpful for children - or even the most practical. “One of the things I emphasize with parents is that, if you work with your co-parent to try to determine what is in the best interest of the children, then you can craft any kind of plan you want,” says Maria Curran, a licensed therapist, the owner of the Center for Creativity and Healing in Charlotte, and a repeat guest to “Welcome to Splitsville. “You can have a different schedule in the summer, for instance, than you do during the school year.”

Maria and host Leigh Sellers unpack the emotionally charged issue of why “equal time” often doesn’t mean “best time.” As a longtime family law attorney, Leigh reflects on an increasingly common trend of parents wanting “everything to be exactly equal.” “Shared parenting time is not a specific number of overnights,” she says.

Maria notes that factors like a parent’s job, children’s ages, sibling dynamics, and even the geographic distance between parents’ homes all play into an effective parenting schedule. Schedules that are too fragmented, she warns, can create real problems for kids, particularly teenagers managing school responsibilities and social lives. “We have some traditional plans that - a cookie cutter option, if you will - that just don't work for everybody,” she says.

Tune in for this insightful discussion about the truth behind “equal” parenting - when transitions between households may create behavioral problems, and why flexibility is key.

The insights and views presented in “Welcome to Splitsville” are for general information purposes only and should not be taken as legal advice for any individual case or situation. Nor does tuning in to this podcast constitute an attorney-client relationship of any kind. If you’re ready for compassionate and reliable legal guidance on your journey through divorce, contact the team at www.TouchstoneFamilyLaw.com

Hello there. Going through a divorce, considering one, sorry to hear that, but here you are. Welcome to Splitsville. You'll find Splitsville to be a pretty unique place, a new world really, with its own rules, its own expectations, and in many ways, its own language. But don't worry, you have a knowledgeable guide along the way. And now, here she is.

Well, hello and welcome to Splitsville. Listeners today, we are very fortunate to have with us guest Maria Curran, who is a very knowledgeable and experienced therapist in both North Carolina and South Carolina, who has worked with many families of clients that I've had and in other cases. And she is joining us today and we're specifically going to talk about the concept of equal parenting time or joint parenting time as it's discussed and how it impacts children. So, welcome, Maria. Can you tell the listeners a little bit about yourself and your practice?

Absolutely. And thank you, Leigh, for having me. I own the Center for Creativity Healing and Healing, which is based in Charlotte, but I provide services in both North Carolina and South Carolina, including child and family therapy, co-parenting, coaching, parent coordination, and consulting and training services. So, I have a staff that provides various services under that same umbrella.

And you've actually been a guest on our podcast in the past. And we talked a little bit about reunification therapy and some specifics of parent reunification, if there's been any kind of distance or issue with children. But today we're going to take on a totally different phenomena or challenge for separating or divorcing parents. And that's the parenting schedule or the parenting time. As attorneys, when we are working with parents, it's very common and much more common in recent years to have a parent coming in and regardless of what the type of household they ran together while they were living together, whether they had someone who was more of a primary parent or not, they're very interested in equalized parenting time. They want 182 days, 182.5 days. They want everything to be exactly equal. And so, that's something that parents ... And that makes sense as to why parents would desire to have that kind of schedule.

And so, as an attorney, we hear a lot about loving their child as much as the other parent, being as important to the child as the other parent, being as relevant. Their child deserves to have two parents. We hear a lot of the, I think, reasonable parental arguments about why they believe that an equal parenting time would be helpful. But what I would love to really talk to you about is from a child's perspective, because you see a lot of children and from the co-parenting perspective, how do we determine what type of shared parenting plan is going to work for a child? When does an equalized parenting plan work for a child and when does it not?

Well, in Bud Dale's article, Still the One, he makes a very powerful argument for the fact that the best interest of the child should remain the driving factor in determining what the parenting time schedule looks like. And child and family therapist I ... who sometimes works with parents on crafting a parenting plan, I think that that makes a lot of sense. We know that shared parenting time, the small amount of research that we have does indicate that that in general promotes the best outcome for the child. However, those studies that were done were primarily looking at fathers and parenting time. So, there's still a lot in the research that we don't know about parenting time, which is part of what Bud covers in his article. And I think that that's easy to throw around numbers and statistics and sort of bend them to your agenda, if you will.

But I think in the end, there's so many factors that need to be considered. I do hear a lot of times, if one parent has been a primary parent in a more traditional household arrangement, that sometimes they have a lot of concerns about whether the other parent can step up. So, I do talk about the concept of the good enough parent and the fact that both parents are not going to parent the same. They didn't do that when they were together. So, there's no expectation or no realistic expectation that they would do that once they're separated. But I think what happens is when parents are together, they balance each other out. So, if one is really organized and on top of all the activities and whatnot, but the other parent is the one that coaches the teams or assists with practices, those things can still happen.

They're just not going to happen under the same roof. But I think that looking at things like the developmental stage of the child, any special needs, they might have the siblings set and their needs too. That can get complicated when there are multiple children, but there are so many factors there. The parenting styles, if the parents have vastly different parenting styles, then that can create problems for children transitioning back and forth. And that's probably one of the bigger concerns that I see when we have parent-child contact problems that emerge later on, that those differences haven't been addressed. I really try to encourage parents on sort of practical matters to try to come together as much as they can in terms of things like bedtime and rules around screen time, because otherwise those become points of contention for children as they navigate back and forth between the two households.

And what's interesting, and I'll often try to just talk to people as shared parenting time is not a specific number of overnights. There is a lot of, I say, real estate between the old-fashioned kind of horrible schedule that they used to call visitation that was just like every other weekend, Friday to 6:00 to Sunday at 6:00 that back when I started my practice 30 years ago was fairly common. And there's a lot of real estate between that very limited visitation, old fashioned, I think it's already kind of gone away schedule and 182.5 days of the year and that you don't necessarily in every circumstance need ... In terms of effectiveness, I'll ask my clients sometimes, "Why do you think that you will be less effective with 140 overnights than you will with 180?" Really trying to get them to think about something more than just that number being equal.

And shared parenting and shared parenting plans is supposed to encompass any plan that is, I think, 35 or 40% parenting at least is considered share. If you're having at least 30% of the time or 35% of the time, it's considered shared parenting.

In the literature, it's actually 25, 75, up to 50, 50. So yes, and you're absolutely correct. I think sometimes parents can get hung up on what's fair for them, what feels fair is that very equal split, even if it's not pragmatic. And if one parent's job requires that they travel more often during certain periods of the year, for instance, that make it really pragmatic to have that very cut and dried fifty fifty split. And one of the things that I emphasize with parents is that if you work with your co-parent to try to determine what is in the best interest of the children, then you can craft any kind of plan you want. You can have a different schedule in the summer, for instance, than you do during the school year. And that in fact can be quite effective doing week on, week off, for instance, during the summer and maybe doing a two, two, five during the school year or some different arrangement.

Again, depending on all the factors involved that in my experience that if you are crafting it together, you really don't have restrictions. Whereas if you go to court, you don't know what's going to happen. And what you think may be ideal may not actually be ideal.

And one of the things, there are definitely, I think, things that make an equal parenting time more challenging. And you mentioned work schedules and work commitments can certainly interfere with the ability to do an exact equal parenting. One that I know is distance between the homes can sometimes make that challenging because the kids are only going to go to one school. So if the homes are really far apart or one of them's home from the school, then that puts a challenge on the family. If they have to get up an hour earlier at one house, for example, to get to school and things like that.

And yes, then that particular issue becomes quite contentious in my experience once kids get to middle school and high school in particular, because most of the high schools start at 7:15, which is a really early start. And so kids are already getting up super early. I always encourage parents that they can to try to keep their residences in closer proximity because that does become a reason for a child to start developing a resist, refuse dynamic with a parent when they have a long commute time. The other issue too is as they get older and they're more peer focused and less family focused, there's also that frustration with one parent. They live 30 minutes away, not being near their friends and not being near their activities. Because as you said, you're not going to play on one soccer team on Monday and Tuesday and a different soccer team on Wednesday and Thursday.

That just doesn't work.

So what are some difficulties or some things that you've seen in children that you believe is a result of an equal parenting plan that isn't working? You're suddenly left with treating a child who is having some difficulties and where you've determined that you think that a contributing factor to some of their issues is a poorly drafted parenting plan.

Well, so one issue can be if they're trying to do equal parenting time, but they've got a really chopped up schedule. And I had a case like this years ago where the kids were still transitioning every other night during the week and they were teenagers and they hated it. And so they started balking at the schedule and not wanting to have to flip-flop. So constantly, because as kids get older, they have more responsibilities with school. There's more items to schlep back and forth between households. So that can be an issue. If you have a child with special needs who has a hard time with a lot of change in transition, in my experience, creating a parenting time plan that's really focused on what makes it easiest for them is going to be the most effective plan. And again, that may not be something ... We sort of have some traditional plans that parents sort of a cookie cutter option, if you will, but that just doesn't work for everybody.

Sometimes as kids get older, they have a preferred parent. And I mean, again, I think when parents are together, they don't think anything about the fact that their teenage son is favoring dad at that point or teenage daughters favoring mom. One of the things that I have encouraged parents to do before when I've helped them with a parenting time plan is to build something into their agreement that says, "Hey, when these kids get older, we agree to come back to the table and review the plan and see if this still works." And oftentimes if I've worked with them, they may come back to me and say, "Okay, here's the situation now, and this is what we think we're ready to switch to. " Sometimes they'll ask me to talk to the child and sort of get a feel for how they would feel about the change or how that might work for them.

But I think the flexibility is key if you want to avoid having parent-child contact problems down the road.

What about for younger children? Because older children can get very verbal. They're able to verbalize their feelings more if they're unhappy with a schedule or feeling like their parents' issues are negatively impacting them. What do we see in younger children who are sort of being forced to toe the line of a parenting plan that's not working for them?

And typically that would come out in more behavioral issues. So they may be having more meltdowns, temper tantrums, they may cry very easily, they may be clingy with one parent or the other, or they may really resist the transition time. I mean, and even that in and of itself can create problems for a child. So for instance, you mentioned earlier that back in the day when I also was new in the field and the weekend, every other weekend visitation was sort of the standard in divorce, that disruption at five or six o'clock on a Sunday afternoon is not something that most kids enjoy. And so sometimes that in and of itself can create a problem. And so doing something as simple as saying, "Hey, we're going to transition on Mondays and school is going to be the transition place so that one parent, parent A drops the child off on Monday morning at school and parent B picks the child up on Monday afternoon." And that feels like a more natural transition.

And in my experience, kids do better with that.

So the transitions themselves between the households can be an issue for, especially younger children, whatever the plan is. I know some parents want a lot of transitions. They don't want to go a lot of days without seeing their child. And so they'll be trying to build in a schedule where they're seeing a child every three days or there's various ... Well, there's not too many various because there's only so many ways you can break up seven and 14 days, but people will try various things, but transitions themselves can be tough on children going from one house to the other, more so than people I think expect.

Correct. And again, I think when transitions are more natural, it's easier for the child typically than to have to stop what they're doing, get in the car and drive to the other parent's house or having that parent show up and pick them up. And I think with young children in particular, I mean, we know that anybody who's raised kids knows that really young children, preschoolers, toddlers, oftentimes will go through a phase where they have separation anxiety. And so that can be another consideration. And again, this is one of the reasons why if I'm helping parents craft a plan, I encourage them to think about building and flexibility because what you need for a two-year-old is not what you need necessarily for an eight or 10-year-old or even a 14-year-old.

Right. So you had mentioned the developmental age of the child, that really you have to factor in age and the individual child when you're coming up with these shared parenting plans.

Absolutely. Because you can have a seven or eight-year-old who is perfectly comfortable with a week on, week off if you're doing say a fifty fifty plan and you can have a 10-year-old or 12-year-old who is not and who wants or prefers more of a two, two, five schedule. So I think that, again, that's why I said developmental stage is not just about their chronological age. Not every child matures across every developmental domain at the same rate. And so that again can be something that needs to be considered. And unfortunately, if you have just a set presumption of this is how we're doing it and every case is going to fit this way, you're not considering any of those things.

And so I think what we're both noticing is if a parent comes in with a preconceived notion or that only equal is going to work, there's some education that needs to happen about, well, there are other ways to have a very involved life with your child that aren't these ways. But we've talked about what some of the stressors on the children can be with these schedules, which is certainly starting to resist actually going. I'm sure anxiety with transitions, you talked about behavioral issues, acting out, but if a parent is determined to make a plan work and they're really committed to the plan, what are some things that parents need to make sure they're doing to help their children be successful with an equal parenting plan? You've mentioned flexibility, but what are some other things a parent can do if they really want to make sure and give their child the best chance to be successful with this type of a parenting plan?

Well,

Yes, the flexibility is key. And that can include too, taking into consideration if a child requests shift in the schedule for a day or two because of things happening in their lives and maybe one parent is better suited to assist with that than the other parent, but also giving the child a voice. It's voice, not choice. You can ask your child, "Hey, how do you feel about this schedule? What could we do to make the schedule better for you? Or what could we do to help you with the transitions?" Sometimes kids are incredibly wise about what they need or what they prefer, and so that can be really helpful. I mean, I myself, with my daughter, we had that very traditional parenting plan back in the day. She was able, because I noticed she had a really hard time transitioning back to my house, and I used to refer to it as a reentry period.

And so I finally sat down and said, "Hey, what can we do to make this better for you? Because I get that it's hard for you to shift gears and come back." And one of the reasons for that was she went to her dad's and it was kind of more Disneylandlike. They did lots of fun stuff because he didn't see her as much. And when she was at my house, we were doing homework and going to school and doing all those day-to-day things. But she, even at age seven, was able to tell me that she just needed some time to sort of decompress and shift back to the day-to-day norm, which makes perfect sense when you think about it. I mean, I, as an adult, if I go on vacation, I give myself a day between coming back from vacation and having to go back to the office because I need time to sort of settle back in and shift gears.

So even little things like that, asking your child what can help you with the transition, whether it's looking at where you transition, the time of day that you transition, whether there's tension around the transition and how to minimize that. And then even when you get back, if you're the receiving parent, when the child comes back to you, what would help them settle in? Do they need time alone? Do they need to ... I've had kids say, "I don't want to be asked about spending time with the other parent." Because for them, that may feel like an interrogation, whereas the parent may think, "Oh, I'm just checking in because I haven't seen you in several days." But again, I think listening to your child, talking to them about the experience that they're having and what can make it better, another consideration is not making your child schlep 50 million things back and forth if you can help it.

And I realize money can be a factor in that, but the more they have duplicated items from one house to the other, the less that they have to carry back and forth and then that eases their stress.

Yeah. It's interesting that you mentioned the decompression time. I actually had a client that, and it really didn't have anything to do with the schedule. It was just transitions. She did learn early on that the best thing to do was they would come in the house, they would head to their room and they would reenter the household, so to speak, when they were ready. But she learned this pattern of not instantly having the dinner ready, not instantly being like, "Okay, here's our checklist to get ready for the evening." And she learned that they did better if it was just quiet, not a lot of questioning, not really engaging too heavily. And I thought that that was, number one, great that she recognized that they seemed to do better when they had that little bit of time, but also that it worked. It wasn't just about the exchange times or just about the exchange location or what the schedule was.

It was just giving a little bit of space to get themselves kind of pulled in. And I think that being wise to what your child needs would be a very important thing, not to take it personally, I guess to say. I admired she did not take it personally.

Yes. And that's a great point because just because a child needs or desires something, it's not an indictment on you as a parent. We all have our needs. One of mine is when I get home from work, I've been talking all day, I need a few minutes of nobody talking to me, and it's not personal. It's just I need time to shift gears. So I think that's an excellent point and good for your client for recognizing that.

Yeah. I learned so much from my clients all the time because they're navigating this. But one of the other things that I was curious about, again, when you just want to make this work, you've talked about proximity, we've talked about flexibility, we've talked about engaging with the child, giving them a voice, doubling up things if you need to with supplies. All of that requires a fair amount of collaboration on part of both parents wanting it to be successful and being willing to do it. What about when the parents are much more, I think the term we use is high conflict, but essentially you've just got parents that do not have the level of trust and communication that some do. I mean, every divorcing couple or separating couple is different, but what about the level of animosity? How does that affect trying to do equal parenting plans?

Well, it makes it a lot more difficult. And so I would say that if parents are really committed to having a fifty fifty split or a significant shared parenting time schedule, even if it's not quite fifty fifty, learning to communicate effectively about your child, leaving your hostilities on the sidelines is really important. And that's why we have parent coaching available, parent coordinators are sometimes needed, or doing your own personal work. I mean, divorce is hard and the adults involved oftentimes have a lot of baggage that they need to process. But one of the bigger mistakes I see is this expectation that the divorce fixes everything that was wrong in one parent's estimation with the other parent doesn't happen. People don't just magically change because they go through divorce. So if you need to do that personal work to be able to put your hostilities aside, then do it.

I mean, one of the best pieces of advice I got when I went through my divorce was to treat those transactions, a business transaction, to be professional, don't get personal and just deal with the things that you need to deal with. And that really helped me a lot.

When you've got, and I'm assuming I see more shared parenting plans and more equal parenting plans and a wide variety of different parenting schedules through the most recent years, but I'm also seeing a whole lot more kids in therapy. Yes. And so I don't know if those are related or not, but I don't think I hardly have a client that doesn't end up at some point putting their children in some sort of a therapeutic environment. And so what are some words of wisdom that you can give parents on? Obviously we're not talking about any particular case or any particular clients, but just in general, what are some things that you guys are hearing in your office from children where their parents are different households now that you believe that parents really could fix this if they would just try. They could make their child's lives so much better if they would just stop doing ...

Disparaging each other in front of the children or within earshot of the children. Kids oftentimes Snoop, they will read your text messages, your emails. I can't tell you how many kids have told me about sneaking around and getting information. Whenever there's conflict between parents, kids are aware of it. Presenting as much of a united front as you can, even if in the background you're going back and forth over things benefits your children. And so I would say if I could fix one thing about what kids struggle with the most, it would be that.

So we've talked a little bit about the fact that there can be, and we talked about, we didn't call it learning differences, you were talking about special needs, but special needs in defining it, when I think about the special needs, there could be a child that has a very specific problem. There could be Down syndrome, there could be a particular problem that they're seeking a lot of medical condition, but also there can be the needs of a child that has OCD or a child that has extreme anxiety or even attention deficit disorder. When you're talking about kids' special needs, or really just talking about what does a child as an individual need to be successful?

Oh, that's a big question. But I think ultimately children need to feel loved and supported and unconditionally love, which includes understanding if they do have a preference for a parent that it's not a competition, that that is a natural occurrence for a lot of children. And oftentimes it's related to developmental stage. Sometimes it's related to personality. But just because a child may prefer one parent over the other doesn't mean they don't love both of their parents and that they don't benefit from spending time with both parents. But I think if there's that one thing, the unconditional love and support, which includes consistency for them, again, that goes back to co-parenting too. The more consistency there can be between households, especially for younger kids, but even to a certain extent for older children, the easier life is for them.

One of the challenges I hear sometimes, and I get it, I think it's when it's taken to the extreme maybe, but the My House, My Rules, which is a great comeback if you've got a child complaining, "Well, mom does it this way or dad does it this way." But the differences between the rules at one house or another, does it cause a fracture and a stress for the kids? Does it make the transitions harder when there's a whole lot of differences between the rules and the household?

Yes. And again, I would equate it to, imagine if you had two jobs that were very different and you spent half of your time at one and half at the other, the rules are different, the space is different. What's available for you to use as tools is different. That's a lot to shift gears with on an ongoing basis. And you're talking at a minimum once a week, but depending on the schedule that you have set up, it could be as often as every two to three days.

I used to experience that just when my kids went to the grandparents because they're being treated like grandkids at one house, which is totally different than where they're being treated when they're at home. And I just remember the reentry phase as you were talking about just being like, "Oh my Lord, no, we are not having ice cream for breakfast. That's ridiculous." Absolutely. But apparently not at grandma's house, but you would think that kids kind of recognize that, but they really don't.

No.

Not until they're older.

Well, even kids having to help them understand when you're at a friend's house that you have to follow, that household's rules and just because I let you do X doesn't mean that Johnny's mom is going to let you do X when you're there and that we have to accept that. But again, if you're doing that on a every couple of days basis, that's a lot of change to navigate for a child. So again, I encourage parents to have consistent rules whenever possible around the essentials because it just makes it easier for the child.

So you've talked about working with, because some parents will actually go into a child therapist or the child's already in therapy for other reasons and they'll talk to the therapist and they'll say, "We're separating and divorcing and we've got to come up with a parenting plan and we want to work with you. We want your input to make sure it's a good plan." And those cases don't come to me very often because these parents work these things out and sometimes they don't even need legal involvement. But do you have any kind of checklist or just common questions? If somebody's coming to you, do you have them fill out or are there certain questions that you ask them to consider before you actually take on that task? Because you would potentially have both parents together, which obviously doesn't happen in attorney offices very often.

Right. Well, I try to get familiar with what their schedule is like, if they're employed, what does that responsibility look like? Do you travel? Are you expected to work late, entertain clients? I mean, there's all of that. I usually have the luxury of maybe meeting the child or children and getting a sense of who they are and how they are feeling about what's happening and what their concerns are. So that gives me an opportunity to give that feedback to the parents. And I think I really encourage parents too that when a parent asks a child, "How do you feel about this? " Or, How does this parenting time plan sound to you? Kids may tell you what they think you want to hear, not necessarily how they feel, but if you have a neutral party who knows how to ask non-leading questions, you may get a very different answer.

And I think that that feedback can be really helpful.

Yeah, that's a very good point is about how involved should the parents make the children ... You talked about a voice. How do you balance that with maybe overinvolving the children in what may be a conflict over the parenting time?

Well, involving the children in it is always a bad idea directly. In my experience, what ends up happening is the child sometimes will even engage in what we call chameleon behavior, where they'll tell each parent what they think they want to hear, which only increases conflict rather than having maybe a neutral party intervene to try to help determine what the real issues are. And sometimes too, I find that I will present ideas to parents that they just don't see because they're in the middle of that forest and there's all those trees around. And so sometimes even that is helpful just to have someone who has some distance and doesn't have any personal feelings wrapped up in decisions that are being made.

I've often told parents who come to me and say, "Well, I asked the kids and they said they wanted equal time." And I'll say, "Well, what did you expect them to say? Did you expect them to tell you that they wanted to stay with their mom more?" I mean, that's kind of a net neutral way for a child to say, "I'm not picking."

Right. And a lot of times-

I love you both. I'm not picking. Right.

They don't want to choose because no matter what they come up with, they feel guilty. I think it's really important. And some kids, older kids will say, "Well, I should be able to decide it's my life." But they think they should be able to decide everything. We don't let them. So this isn't an area where I feel like children should be given a choice either. Again, a voice is important, but not the burden of making the decision.

And so with the voice, you would want to be asking more specific questions like, "What would work better for you? Are you okay with the exchange at the QT? Or would it be better if we did it at school?" Or a more specific question to get feedback, not those general, what do you want? Where do you want to live?

Right, right.That's so huge.

Yeah. I can actually tell when I go get gas on Friday afternoons. It's always stunning to me. I'm now hyper aware of all the people meeting and exchanging children at gas stations or Walmarts and things like that on Friday afternoons because of what I do. But you see these halfway points or neutral locations if people don't want them at the house. But I do know that schools can often work really well. It's a natural end to the day and you just go to one parent or daycare and those do seem to work really well for children. So I think that's a good suggestion. Well, you've been in this space for such a long time and done such great work and you're very helpful to the public and to talk to attorneys to help us help our clients, which we always appreciate. And I know you do a lot with clients.

If someone's listening to this podcast, is there any particular thing that you would love to tell parents that are going through a separation or divorce aside from the please don't talk badly about the other parent or show your complete disdain for the other parent in front of your shared child?

Yeah. I think the other thing I would say is we know that it takes kids sometimes one to two years to fully adjust and sort of go back to that pre-divorce norm for themselves and that providing the love and support. I'm here if you need me. I'm here if you want to talk about it. If you feel like you need to talk to somebody who's not mom or dad, let me know that offering that and giving them the time and space to heal through that on their own terms, not yours, not your co-parents, but theirs, and recognizing that that's a normal process as opposed to expecting them to be fine, if you will, whatever that is, right away. And also understanding that for some kids, they know that there have been problems, there's been a lot of tension. And so for some kids, there's even relief.

And once they sort of adjust to schedule changes and new spaces, they handle it pretty well as long as you are handling it pretty well.

Well, that's great. Well, we thank you for your time and your insights into this issue. It's a challenge for any parent that's going to go from being in the same house with a child to not being in the same house with a child. So I don't think it's going to get easier for parents to face, so we appreciate your time and your insights.

Oh, well, thank you for having me.

So there you have it, another neighborhood of Splitsville explored. There's still so much to learn here, so I hope you'll tune in to the next episode. While Splitsville is not a fun place to be, thankfully it is full of helpful people, valuable resources, and sound advice. If you know where to look, see you next time.

The insights and views presented in Welcome to Splitsville are for general information purposes only and should not be taken as legal advice for any individual case or situation, nor does tuning into this podcast constitute an attorney-client relationship of any kind. If you're ready for compassionate and reliable legal guidance on your journey, contact Leigh Sellers and her team at www.touchstonefamilylaw.com.