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In Step With a Pioneer

In Honor and Memory of  John S. Visher, MD, March 2, 1921 - April 17, 2009, we are including the following announcement by Dr. Margorie Engel, former President of the Stepfamily Association of America before our article, “In Step With a Pioneer” below.

As entrepreneurial ideas go, it wasn’t far-fetched—simply “Change the world for stepfamilies!”  Back in 1977, that’s exactly what John and Emily Visher decided to do.  Following 18 years of unexpected challenges while trying to integrate two families with four children in each, they were convinced that the tasks would have been easier with support and assistance.

Thanks to the Visher’s conviction and willingness to roll up their sleeves, the California stepfamily organization was born.  Brochures were printed, a newsletter was published, and the first annual membership conference was held in December 1979—in a living room.  The local media was curious and paid attention.  So did network television.  The calls began pouring in and they clearly indicated it was time to begin working on a national level.  John and Emily noted, “People were so happy to have someone to talk with who understood where they were coming from.”

John’s and Emily’s “ours child,” the Stepfamily Association of America, was almost immediately recognized as an important national resource.  In 1980, the White House Conference on Families made the following policy recommendations:
It should be the policy of the Federal Government that the stepfamily is a reality in America today and that all publications, programming, and funding recognize the fact.

In the midst of all this public awareness, the organization simply outgrew the Visher’s kitchen.  Management of the fledgling stepfamily efforts had been demanding all of Emily’s time and, at long last, John would be able to relinquish some of his marketing and cooking chores.  In 1982, SAA hired a paid Executive Director.

The Stepfamily Association of America quickly became a visible presence throughout the United States and a number of foreign countries.  Recognized as a reliable source of research information, the organization was called upon for quality help by those who wanted to provide good information, programs, and materials for their clients, students, listeners, viewers, readers, and membership.  SAA also spawned a number of additional stepfamily groups.

In 1999, the Stepfamily Association of America celebrated its 20th birthday during my first year as president.  Our volunteer Board continued to expand SAA’s primary emphasis on research-informed stepfamily information and education (books, educational materials, professional training, conference programs), media awareness (newspapers, magazines, radio, television, and movies) of stepfamily strengths and tribulations, and international (North America, South America, Europe, Asia, Africa and the Oceania countries of Australia and New Zealand) stepfamily research and support.  (My visit to Antarctica in 2005 indicated that stepfamily members working there were in “good shape.”)

As I prepared to retire, SAA’s Board recognized that stepfamily needs were  greater than the Stepfamily Association’s volunteer resources to meet them.  Given the difficulties that stepfamilies continue to have within their households and through existing detrimental laws and social policies, it became clear that a major education focus for stepfamilies, all of the professionals who serve them, and our federal and state policy-makers was critical.

At this opportune moment, the National Stepfamily Resource Center (NSRC) was founded in May 2006 as part of Auburn University’s Center for Children, Youth, and Families.  Dr. Francesca Adler-Baeder, Director of CCYF, was SAA’s former Director of Family Life Education and now serves as Executive Director of the National Stepfamily Resource Center <http://www.stepfamilies.info>.  The NSRC presence was seeded with SAA’s donation of its web site, its research-based educational materials and programs, its on-going projects, and the expertise of its professionals, now known as the Stepfamily Expert Council.

The National Stepfamily Resource Center is not a membership program; there are no membership fees.  NSRC makes all of its stepfamily information and resources available to all stepfamilies, all stepfamily support groups, all stepfamily web sites, all stepfamily authors and their publishers, all training of professionals who work with stepfamilies (counselors, therapists, educators, doctors, lawyers, financial advisors, clergy, etc.), conference programers and, of course, the media.  Adopting the Vishers’ and SAA’s vision, the National Stepfamily Resource Center’s primary objective is stepfamily education and to make research-informed stepfamily information widely available.

“I am so pleased that the Stepfamily Association of America’s work is going to be carried forward by the National Stepfamily Resource Center at Auburn.  I know Emily would have been as happy as I am that stepfamilies will continue to receive research-informed information, materials, and programs.  It is satisfying to know that our nation’s stepfamily resources will finally have a permanent academic home and will be in the good hands of professionals in our field.  Many thanks to all who have done so much over the past 29 years to support SAA’s vision.”
John S. Visher, Co-founder
Stepfamily Association of America

John and Emily Visher had their own vision that stepfamilies would be accepted, supported, and successful.  The cumulative result of their work is a recognizable turning point for all of us who live and love in stepfamilies.  Through their personal stories and example, research, writing, and speaking, John and Emily showed us all that being in a stepfamily is not just a way to live but a way to live happily and successfully.  Living in a stepfamily is a truly remarkable opportunity for a diverse and fulfilling family experience.

John Visher deeply mourned Emily’s death on October 5, 2001 and, in the years following, a lovely photograph of her was never far from his sight.   It is with profound sadness that we mourn John’s death on April 17, 2009 while he happily connects with Emily once again.

Condolence notes to the family may be sent to Mary Visher, 3255 Woodview, Lafayette, CA 94549.

Written with my love and great respect,

Dr. Margorie Engel
National Stepfamily Resource Center, Stepfamily Expert Council
Former President, Stepfamily Association of America

 

In Step With a Pioneer, Dr. John Visher

Dr. John Visher and wife, Emily, were in the forefront of the movement to support those parents and kids in the process of starting over.

 By Lise Lingo

It was the late 1950s, and John Visher was living the California life: wife, four kids, nice house, successful psychiatric practice. Emily Browning had the flip side, raising, with her husband, her own brood of four and, unusual for the time, pursuing a doctorate in psychology at Berkeley. When their respective pictures of happiness shattered, they found each other. It wasn’t an easy transition, but it had a happy ending: 42 years of remarriage, before Emily’s death in 2001.

When John and Emily remarried in 1959, stepfamilies were considered strange. “People tended to conceal the fact of remarriage,” says Visher. “At that time there was not a lot of sympathy for stepfamilies.”

As mental health professionals, both Vishers were surprised to find themselves struggling with remarriage issues in the early years. “We had some tough times along the way,” John says. “But we just kept going and tried to make it better.”

Merging families, including eight children ranging in age from tots to teens, had its challenges. “We confronted them all,” says Visher with a laugh. While waiting for their divorces to become final, and for the then required year to pass before they could remarry, the pair vacationed with all the children. Those excursion helped the kids adjust to new brothers and sisters the same age. “We tried not to make it a struggle with the former spouses and the children,” Visher says. “And the children began realizing that they didn’t have to give up their relationships with the other parents.”

More than 18 years of dealing with challenges at home and in practice made it clear to the Vishers that stepfamilies were missing a key tool that could ease these struggles, namely, support and assistance from other families in the same situation. It can help to see other people dealing with the same problems, Visher points out. “We helped people form groups with other stepparents, so as a community we could see what was working,” he says. “Getting people together in groups helped them realize that they were normal people, dealing with a normal relationship. People begin to realize that they’re dealing with issues that are typical. That gives a lot of people hope.”

They hadn’t set out to be pioneers, but pioneers they were. They blended their experiences in the trenches of remarriage with groundbreaking research and counseling for stepfamilies. In 1977, the Vishers started the Stepfamily Association of America (SAA) in their home; two years later, they incorporated and went national. Chapters sprang up in several states (18 in California alone) along with a newsletter, a magazine, and - over time - longitudinal research into best practices. “Arguably, the entire field of interest related to remarriage and stepfamilies gained notice and momentum from [those] humble beginnings in Emily Visher’s kitchen,” wrote Margorie Engel, former president of the association, in the SAA newsletter.

“It’s important to recognize the difference in time,” the 88-year-old Visher says now, noting the movement from the reactions to his divorce in the 1950s to the new millennium’s divorce-ridden landscape. As the divorce rate rose over the next 4 decades, many people came into remarriage feeling they had failed in their first marriage. “Some people would be so discouraged by the fact that things were tense” in their new marriage, Visher says. “They would think that something was wrong with them. One thing Emily and I did was help people accept that being in a stepfamily is normal and realize that they could make it work.”

According to the recent census, one in three Americans is now part of a stepfamily - that is, a stepparent, stepchild, or stepsibling - whether through birth, divorce, or remarriage. Yet despite greater awareness of stepfamilies in society, members of stepfamilies continue to face often unanticipated legal, logistical, and emotional difficulties. “A large percentage of remarriages fail because people don’t expect what actually happens,” says Visher. They come to the relationship expecting instant love in the new family. But a lasting remarriage takes time - as long as 4 to 6 years, by most estimates.

The couple took on these issues with very practical steps. Through the SAA, they provided guidance to support groups with their “Stepping Together” program. They spoke at clinicians’ and therapists’ conferences. They wrote seminal guides for professionals and for people going through remarriage, such as Stepfamilies: Myths and Realities and How to Win as a Stepfamily. The SAA continues to offer hope and counsel in its new incarnation as part of the National Stepfamily Resource Center at Auburn University, a clearinghouse of information that links research on stepfamilies with best practices in work with stepfamilies.

The Vishers defined a successful stepfamily as one in which both adults and children have mourned the loss of their old relationships; developed realistic expectations about stepfamily life; established new rituals together; formed sustainable relationships with stepchildren, stepparents, or stepsiblings; and developed a cooperative arrangement with the nonresident parents - what Visher calls “a parenting coalition.” Fundamental to success is a strong bond between the new couple.

The Vishers’ tips for a successful remarriage are all keyed to respect: Allow time for relationships to grow. Give each child his or her own space in the house. Agree on a small number of house rules, but negotiate differences in style. Keep other parents in the loop on schedules, plans, and problems. “One of the two or three key things that you can do is try to build a relationship with the other parents, to get them to understand what’s going on,” he says. “You have to get some objectivity about [the divorce]. It’s a hard thing to do but can be accomplished if you get out of the blame game.”

Through examples drawn from their own family experience, through their counseling work, and in their groundbreaking guides for both families and clinicians, the Vishers promoted a positive perspective on remarriage. Their work has been lauded with awards from the Marriage and Family Therapy Foundation and the National Council on Family Relations, and continues to be cited by researchers and used by support groups across the country.

Visher looks back with pride on the success he and his wife achieved in their remarriage: “I’ve been with my present family for more than 40 years. The children all care for each other. We have vacations together sometimes. It’s the norm for them. I’m very proud of them. They’ve married, had children, live in their own homes, but we still all get together.” As Engel put it, the Vishers showed that “being in a stepfamily is not just a way to live but a way to live happily and successfully.”

Lise Lingo writes on issues of health, aviation, and more from her home in Virginia.

Seventh Heaven (blog by Kathy Ely)

“This is second-wife heaven!”

Wha’???? The quote appeared midway through what was otherwise a fairly innocuous party report in “The Reliable Source” gossip column in yesterday’s Washington Post. The scene was a fundraiser for the Washington Humane Society, “Fashion for Paws,” complete with jacketed dogs and fancy ladies walking the runway with their favorite pets. I was mildly annoyed amidst my confusion about this “heaven,” then more so as I reread the surrounding sentences. The crowd, it said, included about “1,000 Georgetown party people, average age of roughly 29, in blazers and cocktail dresses.” The bit ended with the quote, “‘This is second-wife heaven,’” murmured an older lobbyist,” leering, no doubt, after this bevy of young things.

What should we take from this? That older men, tired of the bulging stomachs and graying hair of that deteriorating first wife, long for a new, improved model? That those twenty-somethings are in the market for a tried-and-tested husband, one that appreciates their nubile charms in comparison to the boredom at home? That the naif who croons, “You’re just fascinating,” is better than the richness of an equal, sophisticated, deep and meaningful relationship?

Men and women have moved beyond this, certainly. Though it could be my own naivete, I believe that our fresh start was not based on graying spouses or a search for a trophy partner. Of course, then I watch cable’s newest reality show star, “The Millionnaire Matchmaker “, and see hordes of what I feel are neanderthal attitudes being trotted out week after week. No wonder I worry anew as I gaze into my morning mirror.

I guess there are still golddiggers, and older men looking for trophy wives. I hope they all get what they deserve.

Lucky Number 13: Remarrying the Same Person

Husband Number 1 becomes Husband Number 3: divorces his wife, has second thoughts, marries her again. Kids are confused. Welcome to the merry-go-round world of remarrying the same person.

It was your typical dinner party. Three couples, too much food, copious booze, a profusion of ribald humor. We’d covered politics, the environment, and, inevitably, when the momentum slowed, divorce.

“Divorce is so miserable. Until I met Ralph, I never thought I’d marry again,” says DeeDee.

“I agree. One divorce per lifetime was enough for me as well,” I say.  “But amazingly we seem to be in the minority. People get married and divorced all the time. Like changing shirts.”

“Worse than that,” says Rachel. “People are remarrying the same person. A colleague just married the same woman he divorced 5 years ago. He married someone else in between. Then he divorced 2 and remarried Number 1. He called her Wife 13 since she was Wife Number 1 and 3.”

“Was he happier this time around?” I ask.

“Nope,” answers Rachel. “He complains about her all the time.”

“Isn’t marrying the same person you threw out a few years back a bit like betting on the video replay?” I ask.

“It’s exactly the same,” replies Ralph, evoking his sister’s repeats.

“My friend Debbie married a divorced man,” says DeeDee. “She was so happy she sent his ex-wife a thank you card for letting him go. Then when he chased her around the kitchen with a meat cleaver, she learned why Wife 1 had cut the guy loose. Unbelievably, when Debbie threw him out, he remarried Wife 1. Debbie sent her another thank you card.”

Susan chimes in. “We can top that: Chaz’s uncle.”

“My uncle has been married five times but only to three women,” chuckles Chaz. “He married two of them twice.”

“Were they sequential?” I ask. “It’s a completely different kettle of onions if you marry 1, then dump her and marry someone else. Then seeing how bad 2 is, you realize Number 1 wasn’t so bad after all so you dump 2 and go back to 1. Still doesn’t explain 3 and 4, though.”

“1 and 2 were the same woman. Then 3 and 4 were the same woman. Number 5 was new” comes the explanation.

“Had the women changed in between marriages?” asks DeeDee.

“Nope,” laughs Chaz. “When my uncle complained his wife was stealing from him, we said, ‘Well, she stole from you the first time you were married to her. Why are you surprised now?”

It is that video replay scenario! “This is crazy,” I say. “I can’t believe people marry the same person they chucked out the door in the first place. Seems like they’d be happy to be quits of bad news rather than revisiting the scene of the crime.”

“I think after the divorce, you forget the bad and just remember the good,” says Susan.  “I know if Chaz and I got divorced, all I’d remember would be the good of our 20 years.”

“Twenty years?” cries Ralph. “What’s wrong with you two, anyway? You’re the only ones at the table who have been married to the same person since college.”

“What do you mean what’s wrong with us?” she protests. “We’re the ones who made our marriage a success.”

“But what about your kids? Don’t they feel like outcasts at school?” asks Rachel.

“If you two weren’t so bloody selfish, you’d realize how difficult you’ve made life for them,” snaps Ralph. “Their friends talk about weekends with the noncustodial parent, court battles over child support, their mother dating a guy who sleeps over. I bet your kids are the only ones in their class who don’t hide in their room while their parents fight over custody for spring break. What do your kids have to talk about at lunch? How your whole family went to an art museum over the weekend? Boooring! How could you do that to them? Your kids probably don’t have any friends.”

 ”No friends?” asks Chaz, bewildered. “How about the fact that we’ve been financially successful? We can write out checks for their college education. They’ll graduate debt free.”

“They’ll graduate free of core life values,” snaps DeeDee, waving a pretzel stick in Chaz’s face. “It just shows how you put your own lives first before your kids. You should be ashamed!”

“Well, what should we do?” asks Susan. 

“Get divorced now,” I say. “You owe it to your kids to give them a normal childhood.”

“Well, we do want them to be happy,” says Chaz slowly. “But then what? I love Susan. Do I have to marry someone else?”

“Get divorced, wait a while, have a couple court battles, fight over visitation rights, then reconcile and get back together with Susan,” advises Ralph. “It’s obviously a popular trend. Susan would be Wife Number 12.”

“Don’t I have to marry someone else in between?” asks Chaz.

“Nope,” Rachel replies definitively. “As your uncle proved, it’s not necessary.”

“Wait a second!” exclaims Susan. “This is a sacrifice we’re making for the kids, right?”

We all nod enthusiastically.

“Since it’s for the children and if we’re going to get divorced anyway, I want to marry someone else in between,” Susan says, smiling.

“What?!” Chaz sits upright.

“No problem,” says DeeDee. “Chaz will be Husband 13 then. It will still save the kids.”

“Do you know if that golf pro at Bay Hills is seeing anyone?” Susan asks DeeDee, as Chaz grouses. “He’s awfully cute.”

DeeDee grins. “I’m sure he’s not. Let’s call him,” she says, digging her cell phone out of her purse.

“My company recently hired an interim CFO,” says Rachel. “This would be just like that: An interim husband. It’s a great idea, Susan! Enjoy yourself for 6 months, and when you get bored with wild monkey sex, dump the golf stud and marry Chaz again.”

Susan, with the righteous look of a martyr walking to a burning stake, takes the phone into the other room to make the call.

“Sacrifices like this are rare in today’s self-centered society,” says DeeDee, dumping pretzels into a bowl.

“Yes,” says Rachel as she pours the wine. “It’s such a warm feeling when friends join together and make a difference. I bet those kids’ grades jump a whole point higher!”

“Don’t bother thanking us.” says Ralph, patting Chaz on the shoulder. “That’s what friends are for.”

Leon Frank is a management consultant who conducts seminars around the country and holds dinner parties to survey friends about marriage (and remarriage).

Invasion of the Daughter Snatchers

She might be whisked away by some errant groom once, twice, or more, but the job of defender will always be Dear Ol’ Dad’s.

Like most fathers of the bride, I think of a wedding as something similar to an invasion by a foreign army, only more stressful. Not to mention that weddings seem to have more people than you’d get in an invasion - certainly you have to pay more people, anyway. And, as with invasions, I’d just as soon avoid the whole thing: Wouldn’t it be just as romantic to watch a ballgame?

It’s not that fathers don’t want their daughters to get married and have families - we just don’t want it to happen now.  What’s the big hurry? Our daughters have finally gotten to the age where they are respectful, or mostly respectful, or at least occasionally respectful, and they seem to want to be with us for reasons other than needing to borrow money. We made it through their teen years (which is worse than an invasion, by the way); why can’t we enjoy the relative calm and peace of adulthood for a few decades?

I’ve been writing about life with teenage daughters for some time; now I’ve started explaining what happens to fathers when their little girls unexpectedly, and without parental authorization, grow up. (See shameless plug for books below.) I have realized that, no matter how effective the Boy Prevention Program, one or two of them are going to slip through a father’s defensive perimeter, and it is only a matter of time before the relationship gets serious. Suddenly, before you’re ready, there are all these 10-pound bridal magazines cluttering up the house.

She’s getting married.

While conducting research for my latest 8 Rules book, I spoke to a lot of fathers who were going through the foreign invasion syndrome, though a few of them took issue with me and said the whole thing was actually more like Apollo 13. To a man, they agreed with me on the following:

• We want our daughters to be happy.
• We don’t know if this guy is going to make her happy.
• We don’t understand what it means to have a wedding “theme.” (Isn’t the theme always “We’re getting married at great expense to our Dads?”)

How can some virtual stranger love, protect, and care for our daughters? That’s our job, and we’ve been on duty for as long as they’ve been alive.

It’s even worse if it is a second marriage, because the first one only confirmed a dad’s worst fears - our daughters really can’t pick a winner, she’s proven that! We had our suspicions about the first guy, and we were right, which is a rare experience for a man.

So here comes a replacement. How can we know he’s not a loser too?

Of course, what often happens is that we start making comparisons to the first jerk, and naturally the new guy starts to look pretty good when we do that. Marriage Number One broke our daughter’s heart; you could pretty much pull someone off the streets at random and he’d be preferable to that guy.

Daughter: “Dad, I’m getting married to this guy I found unconscious in front of a biker bar!”

Dad: “Sounds better than your first husband!”

But that’s hardly a valid standard - we want this new guy to be perfect; it’s not good enough that he doesn’t seem to be a serial killer. He should be, well, like us.

My daughters often point out that I’m hardly the right person to lecture them on how to build a perfect marriage. Aren’t I divorced? Didn’t I fail myself? Would you take boating lessons from the captain of the Titanic?

Of course not, I don’t need boating lessons, I have an instinctive grasp for things like that. And let me tell you, a pilot who has been shot out of the sky a few times knows a lot more about successful flying than someone who is just making his first takeoff. (My daughters pretend that this kind of argument makes no sense to them, saying that they don’t see what being shot at while flying a burning airplane has to do with anything, which means they weren’t paying attention during my first marriage. Then again, they’ve never been married.)

A father’s reaction to potential groom number 2 can range from genuine affection to outright hostility. We’ll probably go along with the whole thing - didn’t we eventually allow the first marriage? (As if it were your choice, your daughter will say if you point this out to her, so it’s best not to bring it up.) At least, though tradition generally mandates that the father pay for the first wedding, it is thankfully silent on your obligations when it comes to the second one, so you aren’t required to give her money, you’re only required to loan her money. (You are, after all, president of the Bank of Dad.)

But we’ll always harbor a doubt or two about the fellow, and will always reserve the right to dump him over the side of the boat that I don’t need lessons for. Our job is protection from all enemies, foreign and domestic.

We get that she loves him - she wouldn’t be marrying him, otherwise. We’re just not sure that he’s good enough for our daughter.

Because really, who could be?

W. Bruce Cameron is the author of 8 Simple Rules for Dating My Teenage Daughter (Workman Publishing), on which the popular TV series was based. The follow-up humor volume 8 Simple Rules for Marrying My Daughter (Fireside Publishing) hit the bookstores in April 2008. See www.brucecameron.com.

For Remarrieds: Negotiating the Mortgage Maze

Post divorce contracts and more add to the often complicated finances of remarried pairs, putting hopeful couples into home-buying jams. Look for trouble signs before you sign on the dotted line.

Laura and Dennis were sure they had thought of everything: She had delivered their “official” divorce decree to me just the week before, complete with nifty gold-embossed seal. The court order spelled out the terms clearly: She was to “buy” the house from him and share the equity. The home was appraised at $185,000; the equity beyond the outstanding mortgage was $80,000. She planned to assume the mortgage, paying him a fair half of that equity - $40,000. Not so fast.

Their nightmare was just beginning, and it’s a cautionary tale for any couple who is contemplating moving into a new life with a minimum of housing hassles. Although a first-home purchase has its own financing issues, it’s a relatively easy transaction. Prove your income, prove that you have cash for settlement, convince lenders you can afford the mortgage. Couples dealing with exes and more have an entire new set of issues to consider, beyond the last year’s depressed housing market and mortgage crises, with financial and legal piling onto emotional ones.

Beware the Court Order

Laura and Dennis seemingly had all their ducks in a row, but on careful rereading of their decree, I realized it did not require that she buy the home at all. Instead, she was to assume the mortgage and give Dennis his half of the equity. Although that document implied that Laura would buy the home from Dennis, it did not mention who would pay closing costs or whether the appraiser would be acceptable to a lender, and it did not include a specific payoff statement to close the loan before opening a new one. Laura thought that because she had been living in the house for so many years, she should have no problem at all getting a mortgage. After all, it was her house. Likewise, Dennis thought that he could easily buy a new home of similar value.

Most people fail to realize that just because a judge orders an ex-spouse to pay the other spouse’s bill, it doesn’t mean that the creditor has to abide by that decision. In this case, the judge may have decreed that Laura would assume the mortgage liability to Wells Fargo, the lender, but it doesn’t mean that Wells Fargo would let Dennis off the hook. If Laura were to default on the mortgage, the financial institution would certainly sue Dennis. And removal of Dennis’s name from the deed might prompt the lender to declare a technical default and begin foreclosure proceedings.

Dennis was horrified to learn that, as long as his name was on the original mortgage, he wasn’t as financially set as he had thought to buy a new house. To qualify to purchase, he would need to get his name off of the previous note. He also would need both the equity cash and the reassignment of title. Laura was able to prequalify for a loan, and eventually received approval from another lender.

However, this story suddenly took a turn for the worse. Laura lost her job of more than 5 years. Because the court order didn’t anticipate this ugly turn, both she and Dennis were stuck - no mortgage originator would be able to help them at that point. I advised her to find a job in a similar line of work as quickly as possible to uphold her good credit. Although Laura was interested in self-employment, that path would be risky for her now, because it takes years to establish provable income to qualify. Fortunately, Dennis realized it would be in his best interest to help Laura out financially with the mortgage so that he would be in good financial standing to eventually buy his own house.

Don’t Assume Anything

It sounds like a great idea, but, as a practical matter, an assumable mortgage doesn’t exist anymore. If the lender agrees to have one person assume an existing mortgage, it can be done as a matter of contract law. During the past 15 years in my practice, though, I have not witnessed a single assigned mortgage in a residential transaction. Why? Not only do lenders not make a profit when a loan is assumed, but most mortgages today are bundled and sold to Wall Street investors, insured through federal programs such as Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac, or both. Any change in borrowers prompts a new underwriting of the loan to ensure that the assuming borrower will comply with that lender’s or insurer’s requirements. In Laura and Dennis’s case, letting Dennis off the loan certainly would not benefit Wells Fargo. Laura and Dennis may agree among themselves (or a court order could stipulate) that Laura will pay that bill, but the lender will hold Dennis liable too.

The Value of Child Support and Alimony

In another situation, Marge, divorced from Stanley nearly 3 years before, was awarded $1,500 a month in alimony for 5 years and $2,100 in child support each month for her three children, ages 9, 16, and 17. Previously a stay-at-home mom, Marge landed a job as a medical secretary paying an annual salary of $30,000. She wanted to know whether her child support and alimony could be counted toward her total income so she could secure a mortgage and buy a home.

Unfortunately, she can use only $700 per month additional income derived from the child support of her youngest child, and none of the alimony. Why? According to a Fannie Mae underwriting guideline, lenders will allow alimony and child support to count as income only if the payments are guaranteed for at least 3 years. For example, if a prospective borrower plans on using income from alimony and child support payments to qualify for a loan, but documentation such as a divorce decree or separation agreement specifically states that the payments will cease once the child reaches age 18 - and the child’s age listed on the application is 17 - the lender assumes that the suport will cease before the requisite 3 years.

Within 3 years, Marge’s older children would be turning 18, so a lender could not count on that portion of her child support income. Likewise, although the alimony was obligated to last for 5 years, 3 years had already passed. In my experience, many lenders assume their borrowers will receive child support and alimony payments on time, if, historically, that has been the case. Typically lenders will require borrowers’ bank statements as evidence that such support monies are deposited on a regular basis.

In the end, Marge had two choices: either downsize or get creative with financing. She wound up buying a comfortable townhouse, on a 40-year fixed mortgage, through a Fannie Mae “My Community” program.

Because alimony generally terminates on remarriage, some people may decide not to remarry to avoid losing the monthly checks, and, in some cases, pension benefits. If they do take the plunge, though, they may have outgoing alimony payments to consider. According to the underwriting guidelines, payments persisting beyond 10 months, however, are considered part of the person’s recurring monthly debt obligations.

Your Worse Nightmare

I still get nightmares when I think about the story of Peter and Betty. After arriving home from work one day, Peter found a handwritten note posted on his front door. The occupants of the home would need to vacate voluntarily, it said, or the writer of the note would have the local sheriff forcibly remove them. Peter called the number on the note and learned that the writer, John, was an investor who had purchased Peter and his wife’s home at a foreclosure auction. Peter thought it was either a bad joke or a huge mistake, and immediately called the mortgage company. As it turned out, John was telling the truth. Peter and Betty’s home was auctioned for nonpayment of the mortgage.

Peter couldn’t believe the news. Each and every month, he would give Betty money to pay the mortgage and the couple’s other bills. Or, so he thought. To his dismay, he discovered that Betty had not paid the mortgage. Instead, Peter told me, she stashed away the cash in anticipation of leaving him for another man. She managed to pick up the mail first and had the answering machine take the collection calls, which she then promptly erased. Peter didn’t have a clue that his house was lost or that his credit was ruined. As a mortgage originator, I could only assure Peter that, in time, he would qualify again for a loan. Although foreclosures remain on a person’s credit record for 10 years, if you can build your credit back up, you may qualify, with some lenders, for a mortgage following foreclosure after just about a year.

Be Smart, Be Prepared

Most divorce situations are not as severe as Peter and Betty’s, but many people fall prey to legal, financial, or other issues. A former spouse may have been meticulous about paying bills during the marriage; credit worthiness often is a reflection of lifestyle. After a divorce, or during the period of the legal separation, that lifestyle is often in turmoil. The spouse’s ability to repay debt on time may reflect that upheaval, particularly if he or she is living with someone else who has a different philosophy about paying bills. It pays to plan ahead.

If you are in the throes of divorce, you may help safeguard your credit standing and financial security by taking these steps:

• Protect yourself from future liability by making sure that you and your estranged spouse have no joint debt or bills. Get a copy of your credit report (and your spouse’s) as a baseline.
• If you do have joint liabilities, protect your credit score by making sure you make payments on time, especially if your ex-to-be is supposed to make the payments. Remember, just because the court may order your estranged spouse to make payments, if he or she makes late payments, those actions will affect your credit.
• Consult a mortgage professional before writing an agreement between you and your spouse. If one spouse has agreed to buy the marital home, make sure that spouse will be able to qualify for a mortgage. Even better, find a loan officer who has dealt with the intricacies of remarriages and more complicated financial situations.
• Don’t simply rely on your divorce attorney, who is not in the mortgage business and likely will not be familiar with mortgage-underwriting guidelines. Instead, talk to an experienced and independent mortgage broker or mortgage originator. You may not immediately be able to get a mortgage, but the advice you do receive may make a huge difference in how soon you will once again be able to buy a home.

David Pearl, JD, a former practicing attorney specializing in family estates and trust law, is a licensed mortgage originator associated with Prime Rate Funding Group, Inc., and is co-author of the book “Secrets to Owning Your Dream Home With Little Or No Money Down Regardless of Credit.”

Harmony in the Home: Tips for Everyday Stepfamily Living

• Expect the storms! The dynamic of every newly created group is form, storm, norm, and perform - and it can take years for the “norm” to emerge. Venting is necessary. Take advantage of all safe stress-releasing outlets, such as support groups, either in person or online. You might find solutions to issues involving exes and more, or just a place to let off steam.
• Find a common goal. Bring family members, no matter the age, together to focus on a cause: Fundraise for a community charity, adopt an impoverished family or a pet, even train for a race.
• Disguise the critical family meeting. Teenagers in particular abhor forced family bonding. Instead, create movie or book nights with discussion - and you pick the topic. Choose a favorite restaurant as an incentive. Or, center the meeting around a chocolate fondue, cookie-baking, or pasta-making party.
• Set up a calendar system right away. Send the message that everyone’s busy schedules matter, especially critical in joint custody situations. Use a range of communication styles - from paper to BlackBerrys - to engage all ages. Calendars enable the kids to take charge of their own responsibilities, rather than rely on frequent reminders from parents (”bio” or not).
• Support your pets, too. Acclimate your dog and his cat, or whatever, before they move in together. A walk in the park may do it; sometimes a weekend or more of transition time is needed. Seek professional advice or animal behavioral training if problems persist.
• Make new traditions, keep some old. Create entirely new birthday celebrations: Make Suzi’s favorite meal, plan a special outing, wear silly hats. Decorate the porch for the 4th of July. Set up two Christmas trees - one with a new theme, the other more familiar. Make a new menorah and set it alongside the old one.
• Pictures hold a thousand memories. Be aware of the balance of photos around the house: one set of grandparents, but not the other? Your biological children’s school pictures, but not your stepchildren’s? Feeling left out can lead to tremendous grief.

Blended Family Travel

Crossing state lines, even on vacation, can lead to unintended consequences. The lesson: Know the rules and your rights before you go.

The first time someone whispered it to me, I was boarding a Nashville-bound flight with Fred, a toddler, and Cheryl, an infant on the hip. That trip is known in the family saga as the “Coupon Flight,” because 15 of my unexpired drink coupons bought rounds for the folks near Cheryl as she wailed her way across the Mississippi and into Music City. I’ve heard the axiom repeated several times since: There are two ways to travel: First Class OR With Children.

Despite the myriad frustration of any travel in these post-9/11 days, the lucky few who luxuriate in wide lounge seats cannot expect to earn a place on Oprah Winfrey’s sofa by whining about the long wait for luggage. Brag about your sea kayaking off Baja, your climb of Kilimanjaro. It is travel with children that deserves our respect. Add airline regulations, government mandates, and custody orders to the packing list and only the bravest will venture across the seas or around the world.

With the blended family often come mandated parental visits, overseas grandparents, important allocated holidays. Gone are the days when a quick casual note and a photo ID from the paintball park are sufficient to fly a child down to Cancun for spring vacation or up to Quebec for a quick summer trip with Aunt Mary.

It starts with passports. Restrictions tighten and ease, but last summer’s rules required passports for flights to and from all nearby countries including Mexico, Canada, and the Caribbean. The pace of distribution of passports has picked up, but some changes in the guidelines may surprise unsuspecting parents. Most travel agents suggest allowing 4 to 6 weeks for new passports as well as renewals. The government will expedite for a fee (a hefty one), and private companies, such as RushMyPassport.com, may work in days, but it’ll cost even more.

Just getting a passport for the children can be a trial. As of February 2008, both parents of children under age 16 must appear together, offer proof of relationship to the child, present proof of their own citizenship, and actually sign in front of an authorized government agent. More than 9,000 designated post offices and other government agencies are listed at the website www.travel.state.gov/passport. More user-friendly and better written than the IRS site, it provides organized information about passport application processes and requirements as well as downloadable forms.

Suppose parents cannot, or will not, appear together at the signing. Then one parent must appear with the second parent’s original notarized statement of consent. In rare circumstances, this requirement may be satisfied by additional documentation, such as court orders giving unlimited sole custody, judicial declarations of incompetence, adoption orders of sole parenthood, or oath certificates.

The State Department requires that any parent who takes children ages 18 or younger out of the country without the other parent must have specific, detailed authority to do so. Add airline regulations on top of that: A random check of U.S. carriers indicates most also insist on notarized permission, along with proof that the parent has the right to travel with the child. If the receiving country refuses entry, the airline has to fly the child back home. Some countries also require that the permission authorization be translated into the receiving country’s language. Most countries additionally call for the passport to be valid for 6 months past the anticipated date of departure from the country.

At present, those traveling by land and sea may show proof of citizenship by means other than passports-for instance, the fairly new government-issued passport cards or a certified, original, nonlaminated birth certificate. Social security cards do not satisfy the requirement. Bringing along the birth certificates-even for days’ old infants-is good practice, even with valid passports, to ease the process of replacing lost papers.

It is critical to scan individual airline websites for distinct requirements. Most mandate that parents (or those traveling with the child) have proof of relationship to each child. This proof is especially critical when the traveling parent and child have different last names. A parent’s name change must be documented from a primary source such as a marriage certificate. In an era of multiple remarriages, that can be time-consuming at the gate. Think of the drama that unfolds as the bonding family checks in: loving couple with great intentions, his two sons from his first marriage, her daughter from another marriage, and their shared child from the current union. But the youngest left his photo ID at home. The day when the airline personnel can just smile and wave a passenger through the gate is long past. More than one family vacation has been ruined as one parent is left behind with a poorly documented child while the rest of the family boards the plane.

When divorced or separated parents don’t agree on foreign travel, or if a court order doesn’t specify, a family law judge may have to decide the question. Occasionally, parents want to travel with children to countries that have yet to ratify what is commonly known as the Hague Convention. (This is an international treaty whose signatories have reached agreement about enforcing the custody orders of other subscribing nations.) Some courts will require the parent with ties to a non-Hague country to post a bond, sizable enough to pay the other parent the costs of seeking the child in the event the traveling parent fails to return him or her. Movies have been made and books written about children taken to countries where the objecting parent has no legal standing to force the child’s return.

Parents who have sole custody, joint legal custody, or an order prohibiting the child from traveling without permission may ask to have the child’s name entered into the State Department’s Children’s Passport Issuance Alert Program (contact at 202-736-9156, Office of Children’s Issues’ Prevention Unit). Once alerted, the State Department will not issue a new or renewal passport for a child, but this does not invalidate an existing passport. Where this is a concern, it may be worthwhile to seek an amendment of current court orders.

The only things that we like to think can spoil a trip are rain, faulty air-conditioning, or lost luggage. But on the rare chance that a medical emergency threatens the health of a child, the traveling parent is well advised to secure a notarized statement from the other parent granting authority to request medical or surgical care on behalf of the child, plus carry copies of prescriptions for eyeglasses and for routinely taken medicine.

On the other hand, that neighborhood wading pool is looking more and more like a first-class place to spend the week.

A former family court associate judge in Houston, Texas, Patricia Lasher has specialized in family law for more than 20 years. She has written for numerous consumer magazines and has published a collection of profiles, Texas Women: Interviews and Images. With her own remarriage, she now divides her time between Baltimore, Maryland, and Houston.

Organized Co-Parenting

I’m an organizer-a professional organizer. With everyone’s busy schedules, especially in dual families like mine, it’s inevitable that even when I make up a calendar, mail it, e-mail it, or talk about it, I still hear, “You never told me,” or “I never got it,” or “I don’t remember that.” My carefully annotated spreadsheet noting camps and visitations with specific colors-and even my electronic Treo-doesn’t clarify everything.

Luckily, someone else has been hard at work at solving our problems. Bill Moritz, PhD, of San Diego, CA, has developed ShareKids.com, the outgrowth of an early 1980s educational and child-care computer program called Teachers’ PET. And “Dr. Bill,” as he calls himself, continues to evolve the system, adding on features regularly as users make requests.

In fact, when you log in to www.sharekids.com (once you’re a member), you’ll see the value in this system right up front: Co-Parenting Assistant. This complex “assistant” helps track everything from homework assignments to prescriptions, class and sports or other activity schedules, and vacation weeks and visitations. A color-coded calendar keeps everyone straight. Note insurance information, find resources, post photos, or chat with lawyers, mediators, long-distance partners. For $10 a month for each parent (or $100 per year) and a bit of time to set up, it’s totally worth the trouble and the cash. You can even track expenses and shared payments.

All these features will go a long way toward defusing those inevitable disagreements and confused phone calls, but a special element even stops the memory lapses over the agreement: A section called “The Rules” details the court order or other original document.  And a personal, unchangeable diary can stop those “I never said that” statements.

If you’re a co-parent, you owe it to yourself to explore ShareKids.

Valerie Walker is owner of Destination Organized (www.destinationorganized.com).

Remarriage Inroads in India

Arranged marriages and dowries are giving way to modern shaadi websites and online dating. A look inside remarriage in South Asia.

A two-time bachelor, 35-year-old Indebir Singh is somewhat of a maverick in India, a deeply conservative Hindu nation. He married his girlfriend after they’d dated for 3 years, uncommon for a country where most marriages are arranged by parents.

“It was a love marriage, but we decided to end it after 5 years,” says Singh, an executive for a software training company in New Delhi. “It’s been more than a year since my divorce. I want to get married again, but it’s hard trying to find like-minded people,” he sighs. So he opts for staying in shape, with badminton and daily visits to the gym.

Tying the knot for a second (or third) time is not yet a natural sequence when you look at the bulk of South Asia, where marriage is widely perceived as a once-in-a-lifetime event.

Even in the fast-modernizing India, parents still negotiate the vast majority of marriages. Their oft-repeated inducement to the befuddled fiancé is, “Marriage first, love comes after.” Divorce, as far as parents are concerned, is not an option.

In this modernizing country, as in most of South Asia, wedding ceremonies are extravagant and costly. In India’s more prosperous cities, grooms often walk away with huge dowries of around $100,000 (even though, officially, dowries are prohibited by a rarely enforced 1961 law). Some dowries reach as high as $500,000 in cash, gold, diamonds, and real estate.

As India’s economy soars, so do the price tags of weddings, often seen as a chance for India’s rich and rising middle class to flaunt their new wealth. Weddings in India are a $10 billion industry, leading many Indians to often joke about the country’s “marriage-industrial complex.” Fathers often take out bank loans to help pay for a daughter’s lavish wedding, which can last for several days and include up to a thousand friends, relatives, community officials, and colleagues.

Although India’s increasing exposure to the West is gradually changing social norms, divorce is still rare enough that the word is often whispered. Second marriages? More whispering. Among India’s higher castes, even young widows are forbidden to remarry. It wasn’t long ago that women in India were expected to throw themselves on their husband’s funeral pyre. (The custom didn’t apply to men whose wives had died.)

In much of India, a widow who remarries loses her claim to her deceased husband’s property. Today, remarriage is largely a phenomenon of India’s urban middle class, usually young twenty- and thirty-somethings stepping out of their arranged marriages.

And so the tide is changing.

In the past decade, enough ads for second marriages started cropping up in matrimonial sections of newspapers that many of India’s major dailies created special categories for them. Internet websites for people who are divorced or widowed and seeking to marry again have mushroomed here.

Businessman Vivek Pahwa saw an opportunity. Not long after the success of his marriage website, Shaadi.com, the Internet entrepreneur started another one for people whose first shaadi did not work out as planned. (Shaadi is the Hindi word for marriage.) That website is aptly named SecondShaadi.com.

No one was prepared for the popularity of India’s first matrimonial website, with its continuing Hindu, mother-father-arranged-marriage traditions. It was a sign that India’s centuries-old wedding traditions were changing, especially in the larger, more metropolitan cities like Mumbai and New Delhi, India’s capital.

“More and more people are beginning to open up to the idea of a second marriage, especially as people get divorced at a young age,” says Pahwa. “Society is moving forward. There is some hesitation, though, since society doesn’t encourage divorce. But in the big cities, divorce rates are rising and the remarriage taboo is decreasing.”

Most of the site’s 35,000 members are divorced. Only about one-fifth of them are widowers. Women have a serious advantage when it comes to choosing potential mates through the website: Men make up more than two-thirds of the membership, which is roughly consistent with the ratio of male-female Internet users in India.

To the extent that first weddings are lavish, second weddings are low-key.

“I’ve photographed many weddings, says Sandeep Sitara, a professional photographer in the southwestern Indian state of Goa, “and I’ve noticed there’s not as much fanfare with second marriages. That’s probably because it’s still looked down on.”

Indian women face many hazards in their search for a second marriage in the country’s male-dominated ethos. They are constantly wary of “serial grooms,” married men on the prowl for wives-or, more to the point, their lucrative dowries. Serial grooms are a growing problem in India, where rising prosperity and soaring dowries have created an incentive for fraud. As many as 30,000 Indian women-the true number is likely much higher-are duped into fraudulent marriages mainly to husbands living abroad.

“I had no idea that my husband was already married. Within weeks of my marriage, I found out that he’d been married at least a dozen times,” confesses Sneha Singh, 35, who started the Ark Foundation, a nonprofit agency in New Delhi that helps women who have been defrauded or abused by their nonresident Indian husbands.

Singh separated from her husband after 3 weeks, but not before he walked away with at least $2,000 in wedding gifts. Surprisingly, her parents are pressuring her to stay in the marriage, to “work it out.”

“For women especially, marriage is a gamble,” Singh says. “But many parents are willing to play this gamble with their daughters.”

Divorce and remarriage are also rare in Bangladesh and Sri Lanka, as in India. Centuries-old Hindu and Buddhist traditions there reinforce the idea that marriage is more than two people tying the knot. It’s a union of families, which takes on special meaning in a region of the world where families often consist of three generations living under the same roof. Split-ups and subsequent remarriages are more common in Pakistan, where Islamic custom makes it easy for a man to divorce his wife.

But in nearby Bhutan, a tiny and deeply Buddhist Himalayan nation perched between India and China, divorce is almost unheard of, mainly because marriage protocols are so flexible. Bhutan is one of the few places in the world where women can have more than one husband. (This gives a whole new slant to the term “remarriage.”)

“It doesn’t happen very often these days,” explains Nim Dorji, a Bhutanese tour guide. “But there are some women in the eastern part of the country who marry more than one husband, usually brothers. It makes sense, because most people in the east of the country are yak herders. They must travel for weeks, even months, for fresh grazing fields, leaving their wives alone for long stretches. With several husbands, the wife doesn’t have to be alone as much.”

Of course, husbands can also marry more than one wife. But it’s an option few men in Bhutan are able to afford. In the Bhutanese version of the HBO TV drama Big Love, the wives often live in separate houses or, at the very least, in separate wings of a sprawling compound, where they raise their respective families. That can get expensive.

Some social analysts say it will take at least another decade before the taboos surrounding divorce and remarriage start to fade. But, according to Pahwa, it’s inevitable with the rapid modernization of India and the region as a whole.

“The first marriage is usually fixed by the parents. The second marriage is usually a chance to take control of one’s own choices,” Pahwa says. “There is probably some hesitation about going through the whole process again, as well as owning up to family and friends about your divorce and your decision to marry again.”

But, he adds, with hope in his eyes, “most people I talk to are optimistic.”

Freelance writer Raymond Thibodeaux, formerly an Africa correspondent for the Boston Globe and Voice of America radio, lives in New Delhi, India, and covers the South Asia region for several publications worldwide. His wife, Emily, is the South Asia bureau chief for the Washington Post.

Ex-Communication by Proxy

The basic art of conversation gets so much easier when you find a pinch hitter to deal with your ex.

As I was sipping a glass of wine on my sunny patio around the 10-year anniversary of my divorce, a funny thing happened. I was having a hard time remembering why I divorced in the first place. This whole decade, I couldn’t find one single favorable thing about him. Now, it seemed, rose-colored glasses turned on my past and I found myself wondering, “What went wrong?”

Oh, yeah, it was the “c” word, the overused but overloaded term: “communication.” My ex and I talked a lot. Or should I say yelled. It seemed like we got our point across loud and clear to each other on a regular basis. We thought we were communicating.

So, naturally, I turned to my married friends for advice. One suggested this: “The way you communicate with your husband is to tell him what he wants to hear…and then do exactly as you want!” Another friend, Sam, ever the optimist, told me that separate houses were the best way to “communicate.”

So much for my “love conquers all” philosophy. Fast forward 2 years from those warning signs. My husband and I spent more than $8,000 on couples’ therapy-and got a divorce anyway. Seems we couldn’t get past the yelling.

And even though we’re living in those two separate houses, we still have a daughter between us, so we can’t help but talk regularly. Sadly, she’s the one who’s caught in the middle of our deficient communication skills.

Talk to any couple trying to negotiate the postdivorce remarriage terrain and you’ll hear the same thing over and over again. “I just can’t talk to her,” he says. “She won’t listen.” She says, “That’s why I divorced him in the first place.”

It’s amazing the extremes that emerge when parents can’t escape their own (okay, our own) immature behaviors, especially when dealing with shared custody. One story I heard had the ex-wife hiding in the kitchen when the kids were dropped off, refusing to speak to their father. Another couple would only allow drop-offs in a parking lot, because the one-upmanship of being at the other’s house would escalate the inevitable heated arguments.

Emerging technologies have helped some, inserting a buffer; for others, it’s a barrier. My friend Georgiana, an extremely organized sales executive, suffered along with her elementary school-aged stepkids when her husband and his ex could not speak civilly about even basic schedules. When the ex moved 400 miles away, it got even worse, even though flights and complicated visitations made communicating a must. Still they relied on the kids to relay important information, buying the little ones cell phones so the adults wouldn’t have to speak to one another. After years of losing phones and basically getting fed up with the burden, the now teenagers have put their foot down: We will not be the messengers.

E-mail has been a boon to those who can’t bear to speak face to face, or even on the phone-it’s easy, direct. I used it regularly, while giving myself the proverbial pat on the back for my calm, assertive communication style. Others use it as an avoidance technique by pretending the message never arrived, or bemoan its intrusion into an otherwise calm day. As Patty says, “Now, my ex can intrude into my home and my emotions any time of the day or night.” In Melanie’s case, it got downright toxic, so much so that she and her husband were forced to block the vehement e-mails from her stepdaughters’ mom. Now, on the advice of their lawyer, the couple will accept only faxes from his ex. Even then, her husband says, “We did get some abusive faxes, but we’d wait a day before responding so that we could work the emotion out and just respond [by fax] to the facts of the issue. If I have to find out something immediately, I’ll use the phone-but reluctantly-because things get too emotional and out of control.”

Luckily, my ex and I reached a turning point late one Sunday evening a couple of years ago. He had just dropped off my then 7-year-old daughter, Emma, after she had spent the requisite every-other-weekend with her father. We greeted each other as warmly as we could, heeding the divorce handbooks about keeping kids first.

Emma, an easygoing child with a great sense of humor, ran up the stairs and flopped down on her bed. But this time she was extremely upset, unusual for her. On this weekend, she told me, her father had been especially tough on her. That night, I called him to discuss her needs. He accused me of being “too soft” on her. The argument escalated; we had a typical blowout.

What was different this time is that my new husband overheard this conversation and asked if he could help. We had only been married a year, and I didn’t know what role he should play. He calmly told me that my personality was much too explosive when dealing with my ex. Desperate to try anything, I did the unthinkable. . . . I let him get involved.

My husband called my ex-husband that night and asked if they could have a meeting. To my shock and horror, my ex agreed and said his wife wanted to come along as well. (This was going to be good!) I was told to stay home because I would just add fuel to the fire. (This is true-I would.)

I knew I was throwing my husband to the wolves, but now he would see how hard it was to talk to such an uncooperative man. I wish I could have been a fly on the wall as my husband sat down and explained, calmly, Emma’s feelings and the frustration and pain unknowingly inflicted upon her. To my surprise, Emma’s stepmom also agreed that Emma’s dad is much too hard on her, and that changes were needed.

Most surprising of all was that my ex was able to accept the information from someone besides me. Over the intervening years, we have used this unconventional communication approach many times. Seems the three of them really work well together. Now both my relationship with my ex is better, and my daughter is the beneficiary.

Such a simple realization, but it took this to discover that my ex-husband and I were simply not equipped to sit down and work things out. My new husband became the mediator, the third party who enabled positive, emotion-free interactions. Some might need a more objective outsider, but this worked like a charm for us. (My friend Carol had equal success with her mother-in-law.)

So, a new husband, an old friend, or a stranger with no agenda, be it a life coach or communication mediators-surely someone in your circle or neighborhood is just waiting to step in and speak, if not for you, then instead of you.

Have a glass of wine and think it over. It just might stop the yelling.

Missy Ordons and her friend Georgiana Foletta have recently launched a website to vent the frustrations of dealing with past lives: www.myxpectation.com.

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