Divorced and Still on the Hook

by | Sep 15, 2015 | Divorce and Separation, Money, Parenting & Co-Parenting

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Divorced and still on the hook

Growing up, I was always told I’d be responsible for paying my own way through university. My parents wanted me to go, but they also wanted me to learn financial independence early. I’m honestly not sure if that was a deliberate philosophy or just how things had always been done in the family; both of my parents had paid their own way through school too, and my dad had sold his beloved ’57 Chevy Bel Air to cover his tuition. There might have been a little martyrdom baked in: I sacrificed my car, so you can sacrifice too.

I lived at home during university and paid tuition out of my summer job earnings. My parents helped some, covering half a car and its insurance for the years I was in school, and living at home saved me a considerable amount on its own.

So when I think about my own kids and university, I don’t automatically feel obligated to fund it. That said, things cost a lot more now. My tuition ran about $2,000 a year. Today it’s closer to ten thousand, and minimum wage hasn’t come close to keeping pace with that jump. I’ve also always felt like I missed out on something by staying home for school. So I’ve been going back and forth, leaning more toward wanting to help fund my kids’ education if I can, while still believing that support at that stage is a choice, not an obligation.

Then I learned something that reframed the whole question. A friend of mine was still paying child support for a stepdaughter in her late twenties. It turns out parents remain financially responsible for a child pursuing their first university degree, unmarried, essentially regardless of age.

That got confirmed again during my own divorce, when my lawyer walked me through it directly: under the Divorce Act, child support obligations end when a child marries, becomes self-supporting, or turns nineteen, unless that child remains a “child of the marriage” because they’re unable to become self-supporting due to illness, disability, pursuing an education, or another qualifying reason.

Here’s the interesting part: divorcing your spouse can actually leave you with a greater ongoing financial obligation to your kids than staying married would have. Married parents can simply agree together that their adult child is on their own now. Divorced parents, if a child chooses university, generally can’t make that same call unilaterally.

I understand why the law exists. I’ve seen how badly things can go without it: a parent encourages the kids toward a school far from home, then refuses to help pay once they’re there, leaving the other parent to fund the bulk of it alone, occasionally with some help from the kids themselves. I’ve watched a situation like this play out over several years, court decisions repeatedly siding with the parent seeking support, and payment still not materializing. The frustration of getting a ruling in your favour and still not seeing the money is its own particular kind of exhausting.

Even with the law clearly on your side, enforcing it can turn into a long, draining process. Much of the difficulty lies in the details: figuring out exactly what amounts should be split and tracking and accounting for them over years.

The way to avoid landing there yourself is communication, early and often. Talk to your spouse about what you both envision for your kids’ education. If you’re separating, get clear, specific language about postsecondary funding written directly into your agreement, not vague gestures at “supporting education,” but actual clarity on amounts and how they’ll be calculated and tracked. If your current agreement is silent on this, start that conversation with your co-parent now, ideally before your kids have already set their hearts on a school far from home.

If your co-parent genuinely isn’t on board with sharing the cost, that’s worth a hard, honest conversation with yourself: can you fund it alone, or do you need to start helping your kids adjust their expectations of what this stage of their life is actually going to look like?

And if you do decide funding their education matters enough to you to do it regardless, take a real look at your financial situation to see whether it’s actually possible, and if it’s not yet, what would need to change to get there.

Working from home with kids

by | Sep 10, 2015 | Parenting & Co-Parenting

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Working From Home With Kids

I keep a file of half-started blog posts, and today, searching for something to finish, I opened one called “Working From Home With Kids.” Surprise, surprise: it was blank.

That probably says everything already.

It’s hard to work from home when your kids are also home. I keep expecting to be more productive these days, since they mostly do their own thing now and don’t need me for much. So why don’t I have long, productive stretches of work to show for it?

Turns out I’m on constant low-level alert whenever I’m the only one home with them. Something about becoming a mother flipped a switch, and danger started feeling like it was everywhere. As my kids have gotten older, some of those dangers have faded, and new ones have taken their place. These days it’s mostly the fear that they’ll actually kill each other mid-argument. Logically, I know that’s not going to happen. My mom-brain doesn’t seem to care what logic says.

So even with them upstairs in their room, my attention splits in half, part on whatever I’m doing, part permanently on guard. Eyes in the back of my head, switched on. There’s a low hum of anxiety sitting in my stomach that makes me even less productive than I’d otherwise be.

What I’ve noticed is that I can still manage low-acuity work in that state. Bookkeeping, reconciliations, data entry, things I’ve done so many times I could do them half-asleep. Fine.

Talking to a new client about what they need? I tried. It felt like texting while driving.

Writing a new blog post from scratch? Apparently my brain needs actual space for that.

Except, wait. I just did it.

Where are the kids? It’s suspiciously quiet in here.

Better go check.

—

They were fine. I’m finally finishing this post two weeks later, with the kids back in school and some real uninterrupted time in front of me. Turns out I really do need that kind of stretch to do anything new or genuinely challenging, which became obvious the hard way over the past few weeks of summer break.

So how do I actually get that uninterrupted time? I could park them in front of a screen, or send them off to their rooms, but neither solution felt great, and both seemed to feed that same anxious feeling rather than solve it. They ended up getting plenty of screen time anyway, and I still only managed the low-level stuff.

What I actually need is better planning and more realistic expectations. Going into summer, I was anxious about only having half the summer with them, since the other half was with their dad, and I thought I’d have all this time to catch up without them around. So I hoarded the time I did have, avoided signing them up for day camps that would’ve taken them away from me even more. What I need to actually accept is that I can’t do real, effective work while they’re home with me, and trying anyway just generates anxiety for all of us.

The unexpected upside of finally understanding this: it’s going to be a lot easier now to feel genuinely grateful for the time they’re with their dad. I never thought I’d get there; I assumed I’d just be sad about it indefinitely, but I’m slowly adjusting to sharing half their lives instead of resenting it.

Strategies for Dealing with Transition Days

by | Aug 27, 2015 | Divorce and Separation, Parenting & Co-Parenting

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Strategies for Dealing with Transition Days

Are you in the middle of a transition day?

There are two types of transition days: the ones where the kids leave to go stay with their other parent, and the ones where they come back to you. Let’s deal with the leaving days first.

The first thing to do is make sure your remaining minutes before saying goodbye are good ones. Minutes, yes. This is your first real challenge, and it is one. Getting kids packed and ready to leave is stressful on its own, and in my experience, kids rarely cooperate. It’s hard to stay calm when your child won’t stop what they’re doing long enough to put their shoes on, and it’s doubly hard when part of you doesn’t want them to leave at all.

So how do you stay calm instead of spending those last minutes yelling? Practice. Practice reminding yourself this is genuinely a hard situation. Practice giving yourself a break if you do end up yelling anyway. Apologize to your child if it happens, and tell them why. Then remember to say you love them and that you’ll see them soon. Remind yourself you’ll get plenty more chances to practice this, and that it does get easier with time.

While you’re getting your child ready, pay attention to the feeling rising in you that tends to lead to yelling. This is a good moment to remind yourself the kids are leaving soon regardless, and it genuinely doesn’t matter if they forget something or run a few minutes late. It’s also a good moment to remember your kids are capable, and this is exactly the kind of situation where natural consequences can do some of the teaching for you. Help them remember what they need, help them pack, then wait for them outside once they’re ready. Sit down. Take a few deep breaths while you wait.

Set a rule with your kids that they always look you in the eye to say goodbye. There’s nothing worse than watching your child sprint off without a backward glance, whether they’re leaving straight from your home or somewhere you’ve driven them. You don’t want your last memory before two days, four days, or a full week apart to be the back of your child’s head running away from you, thinking, I didn’t even get to say goodbye. What if something happens to one of us?

Then they’re gone. You might have somewhere to be, or you might not. You might fill the time deliberately so you don’t sit with the absence, or you might find yourself with more open time than you know what to do with. If it’s the latter, grief tends to creep in. Let it. Sit with it for a while. Powering through a feeling, or burying it, just means you never actually learn how to move through it. Face it directly, give yourself grace for being sad, and over time, these grief stretches tend to get shorter.

Then remind yourself that none of it will go exactly to plan. Things happen. Don’t beat yourself up if whatever plan you made for “how the next transition will go” doesn’t play out the way you pictured. You made that plan while the kids weren’t even there, and the actual push and pull of parenting rarely follows the version you designed in their absence.

That said, don’t stop making the plans. Pieces of them do eventually find their way into your real transition days, in a good way, even if the whole plan never survives contact with reality.

Transition Days

by | Aug 18, 2015 | Divorce and Separation, Parenting & Co-Parenting

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Transition Days

I often wonder if there are other parents out there like me. I start wondering about five minutes after dropping my kids off at school. Day one of five days they’re with their dad, on our 2255 parenting schedule.

Are there other parents out there who know what a 2255 parenting schedule even means? I haven’t met one yet. When I try to explain it to friends in intact families, their eyes glaze over. “How do you keep track of that?” Oh, we have a shared Google calendar, but honestly, I don’t need it. I always know exactly when my kids are coming back, and exactly when they’re leaving. I sometimes wish I didn’t, since both the anticipation of their return and the dread of their leaving tend to wreck my whole day either way.

I call the days on either side of a handoff Transition Days. Some weeks it feels like every other day qualifies.

I’m always caught off guard by the waves of sadness that show up. Just thirty minutes earlier, hustling the kids into the car, I was mostly annoyed; nobody could find their school bag, nobody would put their shoes on. The night before had been exhausting too: a full day as an accountant in the final stretch of tax season, then home as a single parent to two wound-up sons who wouldn’t settle down for bed. My six-year-old stayed up until ten, wanting me to sleep next to him, probably picking up on the tension in the house even if he couldn’t name it. I needed some time alone to recharge after the day I’d had. The irony wasn’t lost on me; five full days of alone time were about to start in twelve hours. He eventually fell asleep on the couch in the next room while I was watching TV, and I carried his warm, sleeping weight up to bed, trying to hold onto the feeling of it, because I knew by morning it would already be gone.

I’ve learned to schedule things for the stretches when the kids are gone, but I can’t schedule all of it. I’m single now, and when they leave, I put myself to bed alone and wake up alone too. This particular morning, I was meeting a friend; she’d text around eight, but I was up at six, and the silence of the house made it impossible not to notice they weren’t there. The house feels small, crowded, and messy when they’re home. The moment they leave, I basically live in one room, and even that room feels too big.

There’s no getting around being alone when they’re gone. I try to think of the friends who tell me they’d kill for a chance to sleep in and have a day entirely to themselves. I try to remember that just yesterday I was trying to fade into the background at home so nobody would notice me and demand a round of Crazy Eights. I know my kids are happy with their dad, well taken care of, not to my exact standard, sure, but getting a different version of how to live and see the world, which probably isn’t a bad thing for them in the long run.

But my first thought waking up and my last thought falling asleep both circle back to the same place: the time I get with my kids is already short, and it’s just been cut in half again. Then the sadness moves in. I wonder sometimes if it ever fully goes away, or if I’ll just be managing this particular grief until they’re old enough to be leaving the nest for good anyway. Maybe by then it’ll finally let go of me too.

Thoughts – Alone

by | Nov 7, 2014 | Divorce and Separation, Parenting & Co-Parenting

Thoughts – Alone

Do you sometimes think to yourself, “I am alone”?

I do. Usually right after dropping my kids off at school on the first day of a five-day stretch at their dad’s.

It doesn’t matter that thirty minutes earlier they were driving me completely bonkers with the noise and the fighting, and I couldn’t wait to get them out the door. The second I give them a hug and a kiss goodbye and walk away from the school, reluctant every time, the thoughts take over.

Here’s a sample:

I don’t get to see my kids for five days. Actually six, if you count Wednesday, when they’re at school anyway.

It’s not natural for a mom not to see her kids.

I can do this. I know this is just a thought.

I’m sad. That’s allowed. This is a sad situation.

I have things planned for this time. Two days ago I was actually looking forward to having it. Remember that feeling.

I am alone.

That last one is the one that really gets me. I’m not sure there’s a more demotivating, devastating thought out there. It pulls me right out of living the day the way I actually want to, with hope, joy, and some sense of purpose.

I’m writing this down mostly to name exactly what that thought does to me when I let it take the wheel. Awareness is supposed to be the first step. I’m hoping that’s true.