Helping Your Child Through the Divorce Process in New Jersey
Posted March 11th, 2019 by Anthony Carbone, PC.
Categories: Family Law.
If you and your spouse are going through a divorce, it’s important that you take the appropriate time to talk with your child(ren) about what’s actually going on and to help them deal with their emotions. However, their emotions can vary depending on their age.
Your child may feel:
- stressed
- sad
- afraid
- frustrated
- even relieved upon hearing the news that you both are getting divorced
Anger is also a feeling that your child might portray – as it’s one of the most common emotions for a child to feel during this process. Your child doesn’t have to feel like this forever though. At the Law Offices of Anthony Carbone, we have determined several things you can do to help your child deal with your upcoming divorce.
How to Help Your Child with Their Emotions
While you may think waiting to tell your child about your divorce seems like a good idea at first, it’s not. It’s important that you talk with them early and often, so they have a good sense of what is going on. Your child will begin to feel things changing around the home. Talking with them throughout this process will show that you trust them, while still showing that you care about them in the same way you always have.
If your child has questions about your divorce (which he or she will), don’t avoid them! Instead, answer them. Make sure you focus on the child, while not saying anything negative about your spouse or ex-spouse. Doing that could increase their anger and possibly damage their psyche.
There are also a variety of things you can do to help your child through your divorce, including focusing on spending time together. If you and your partner are on speaking terms, we advise spending time together with your child to help ease them through the divorce. Doing this can help your child’s memories of you both being together positive rather than negative.
The Legal Perspective
Some of the top concerns involving children throughout the divorce process are child custody and child support.
Child custody helps determine when your child sees what parent when. This issue can be very hostile, especially in New Jersey. When two parents can’t come to a custody agreement on their own, the court must step in and come to a conclusion that doesn’t always sit well with the child.
Then there is child support. When a child’s parents are not living together, they still have a legal obligation to support that child. The non-residential parent must pay child support to the residential parent. Failure to pay can result in arrest and imprisonment, which won’t help your child either.
Contact the Law Offices of Anthony Carbone
If you are considering going through a divorce in New Jersey, it’s best to get the help of an experienced divorce attorney to help guide you through the process. At the Law Offices of Anthony Carbone, we’ve been helping families go through the divorce process for over thirty years. Contact us today at 201-829-3829 to schedule a free consultation.
