How to Reduce the Cost of Divorce
Raising a child is expensive, especially in a coParenting situation where the parents aren’t living with one another. In most cases, you don’t have another person to split parenting costs with. The child will likely need two of everything, one for mom’s house and one for dad’s house. Two beds, two sets of clothing, two sets of toys, and the list goes on. The amount of money spent can really add up.
Another big hit to your pocket comes in the form legal expenses. The average divorce costs anywhere from $15,000-$30,000, according to Forbes.com and the average child custody case costs anywhere from 3,000-$40,000, according to LegalMatch.com. That’s around $18,000-$70,000… on average! I don’t know about you, but I think that’s A LOT of money!
My divorce and child custody case literally drained me, monetarily and emotionally. I remember sitting in my living room with a year’s worth of documents in front of me, wondering if there was a better way to get through all this without having to sell my left kidney. I spent over a year going back and forth with my lawyer and having to wait for court dates. I was ready for this all to end. I was literally maxed out.
I decided to get out of the house and treat myself to dinner with a few friends. I needed some time away from all my court shenanigans. But what was the first question my friends asked me? “…How is the court case coming along?” I took a deep breath, smiled through the frustration and squeezed out… “It’s ok.”
Thankfully, my friend Maegen picked up on what had become my commonplace stress. She told me about a new app that her brother had started using as he was going through a similar situation. She told me that he had already saved tons of time and money with the app and that the concept was really simple. The app was called ‘coParenter’ and it helps parents resolve the exact same everyday disagreements that I was paying my lawyer thousands of dollars to work on. The app apparently would connect parents with an on-demand mediator who could help them resolve their issues. They would actually document and synchronize everything with both parents phones, giving them both the ability to track their responsibilities and stay on task with what they committed to.
The next day, as I was waiting for my ex to bring the kids home (he was 45 minutes late again), I decided to give the app a try. Within five minutes, I was connected with a live, on-demand coach who helped me come up with some simple strategies for speaking with my ex when he arrived with the children. I told him about the app, invited him to connect and within the hour, the on-demand mediator helped us work out a new agreement for how long we would be required to wait if one parent was late for pick-up or drop-off. It was so easy, I was dumbfounded. My biggest disappointment was that I didn’t found this app earlier in my process – which would’ve saved me tens of thousands of dollars.
Since then, our coParenting professional has helped us to create a consistent parenting time schedule, holiday plan and more agreements then we’ve made in the past year. All calmly, safely, and very easily.
Now, our coParenting relationship is pretty much smooth sailing. We communicate on the app since all of our communication is documented. We also manage our coParenting schedule, even check-in times for pick-ups and drop-offs. And whenever we hit a snag, either of us are able to hit ‘Get Help’ and get a coParenter professional to mediate a resolution to our situation… straight from the app. I’m really thankful because I no longer have to spend more money on lawyers or legal fees to argue about every day coParenting issues. I estimate I’ll save around $15,000 by using the app instead of paying for a lawyer and family court- this year alone! So this year, instead of my lawyer taking another trip to Hawaii, I think I’ll take my kids on a nice vacation. We definitely deserve it!
For more coParenting blogs and tools to help you in your coParenting journey, download our FREE coParenting app.
About Grace McSpadden
