In this interview, mediation attorney Scott Levin and co‑parenting specialist Kelly Myers discuss how divorce mediation and coaching can help separating parents negotiate directly and treat their co‑parenting relationship as a business partnership. They explain why mediation is more effective when parents are prepared with clear proposals, understand their bottom lines, and avoid emotional reactivity. Kelly emphasizes that divorce adds emotional stress, especially around children, and that many parents lack communication skills. By reframing the post‑marital relationship as a joint business—raising the children—they can create a detailed parenting plan that functions like a business plan, providing structure, predictability, and a framework for handling future conflicts (e.g., moving, high‑school milestones). They argue that a well‑crafted parenting plan reduces anxiety for kids, prevents recurring disputes, and protects children from the negative effects of parental conflict. The conversation also highlights the importance of anticipating developmental changes, allowing flexibility, and shaping a positive “divorce story” that children will remember decades later. Practical tips include preparing proposals, setting clear A‑offers and bottom lines, using communication tools (e.g., Bill Eddy’s Biff), and focusing on the children’s needs rather than marital grievances.
Chapters
Hey everyone, this is Scott Levin, Chief Peacekeeper. I'm a mediation attorney in California and I am here with Kelly Myers of First Steps Divorce. Hi Kelly, how are you?
I'm good, how are you?
I am doing great. So Kelly and I have worked together and known each other for a number of years now. Um, Kelly works in the divorce world on, on the coaching side, I guess. Kelly, give the Give the 2-second summary of your practice, if you don't mind.
Sure. So I primarily do divorce and mediation coaching. What that means is I really help people navigate through the divorce process, and then when they're going through mediation, really helping them coach and be coached and prepare for each of the mediation sessions. And then I'm also a co-parenting specialist.
And the reason that you need coaching for that sort of thing, especially for mediation, is because you're doing direct negotiation. So, you know, I do have clients that bring their attorneys into the mediation, but that's less common. The vast majority of the time my clients have consulting attorneys or professionals on the outside of the mediations, but it's the 3 of us that are working as a team to come up with solutions. And so in dealing with your spouse and your soon-to-be ex-spouse directly and negotiating, putting in the terms in place with each other. You're having to talk to this person and be calm and respond to them in the way that, that is best for you and your futures and all those things. And that takes coaching because it's a skill. It's like a skill that you can get better at. And it's good to be good at something like that when you're in mediation.
Absolutely. You know, divorce is a really emotional thing. And I don't know about you, but for me, I've never really made a good decision when I'm emotional. And so the more you can prepare for your mediations, the less you're going to be triggered by emotions. You know, I heard you mention a lot of times people will work with a consulting attorney, you know, during their mediations. But the reality of it is there aren't a lot of legal issues that need to be addressed. There's issues related to parenting. There's issues related to the house, mortgages, real estate, your finances. Obviously, most of those don't require a legal opinion on.
Yeah.
And so it's really making sure that you're going into each one of these mediation sessions prepared with the knowledge that you need to really negotiate. And part of negotiation is you don't want to walk in with your best Proposal, right? Like, you want to create room for negotiation. So really being prepared to understand what is your A proposal and what is your bottom line and how are you going to talk about that. So that's where coaching comes in.
Absolutely. And one of the things that— one of the things that we're going to talk about today, the main topic is really approaching your negotiation with your co-parent. So you have minor children under, you know, that are in, you know, still in school. And they're gonna live with one of you, both of you. Where are they gonna live? On what days? With whom? How do you share holidays? What rules about vacations do you want to put in place? Do you want to put restrictions in place about introducing these children to new partners in the future? Of course, in mediation, my job is to bring up all these topics, and sometimes, you know, when I bring up that topic, That's when I'll hear, you know, he or she already has had a girlfriend or boyfriend for a blank number of months, and they're living together. And it's like, okay, well, you know, that's where we're at then. So what about if that relationship is no longer, for whatever reason? Maybe we have different rules in the future. But all these things are what the clients that I work with, that work with Kelly, They come in prepared to talk about things as a business plan, really. So I see that those people are geared to discuss and negotiate with a business partner, and the business is the parenting of their kids. And I guess I wanted to bring Kelly in to talk to us about how do you, you know, give that perspective to people listening? Why is it important? How does that benefit each other and the kids in the future? Can you walk us through that?
Sure. Well, divorce is emotional enough. Now let's throw in— let's talk about the kids. And now that can completely escalate the emotions because there's so much fear, right? There's fear of being marginalized in your kids' life, fear of lack of access, fear of just time in general. You used to be able to spend all your time with your kids, and now you may be only spending 50% of the time with your kids. So there's just a lot of fear that goes into that. Couple that with the fact that Most people who are going through a divorce don't really communicate well with their spouse. And so you've got this unproductive, sometimes conflict-ridden communication style that now you've got to bring into the mix. And so when I work with my clients, there's a number of things that I need to help them with. Sometimes it's really understanding kind of where courts lean on things, right? A lot of times people are fearful of, I'm never going to see my kids. Well, You know, unless there's something really and you know egregious that's gone on, the courts really want both parents to have consistent you know access to the children, right? So a lot of times we can get rid of that fear. You know, when it comes to communicating, we can work on that. There's lots of tools out there. There there's a lot of the work that Bill Eddy has done with Biff, you know, to to learn to talk differently, to communicate differently with your co-parent. The biggest thing that I would that I tell my Clients is now that you're no longer married, right? You're stepping out of that marital relationship. You are now in the business of raising your children together, right? You got to look at it differently. And I don't know of a successful business that doesn't have a business plan, right? And I always say, I think it's so funny that people spend so much time dividing up their assets and debts and figuring out who's going to get the house or the car or the gym membership or whatever it is, right? And that they spend very little time on how are they going to manage this really, like, one of the most difficult jobs in the world, right, is parenting. And it's hard enough to parent under one roof, much less now to do it under 2. So I always say, don't you owe it to your kids to put in the efforts you would in a small business and create a plan for how you're going to work together? Parenting plans aren't for parents. They're for kids. And they're— the parenting plan is the thing that creates the structure so that children can thrive. Without structure, there's a lot of anxiety that kids have, right? So the parenting plan is there to help kids have the structure they need so that they aren't anxious, so that they know what's coming, so that things are consistent. They're not wondering every day, am I at mom's house or my dad's house? They know what's going on, right? It also, if you have a plan and you've contemplated how you're going to do things, you are going a long way to avoid future conflict with your co-parent. As you and I both know, once the divorce is signed, people have signed on the bottom line and the MSA is filed with the courts, that's it, right? You can't go back and undo the decisions you've made around your assets and debts or what you're going to do. with the house or any of these things. So what's the one thing that people can go back and argue about?
Their kids.
Right. Kids and child support. So we, as professionals in this realm, really need to help people contemplate the issues that may be ahead for them, thinking about things that trigger them. What creates conflict now? How can we get ahead of that? How can we give you things to think about down the road that may cause conflict? Right? That's what a business plan does. A business plan takes a look at things and says, how are we going to address the needs now and the ever-changing growing needs of the business as we move forward? How are we going to deal with conflict when it comes up? What role does everybody play in the business?
And it's really hard to project that conflict resolution when you're already in a litigated situation. So when you're contesting A divorce, you're just— everyone is trying to just get us through day 1. Like, let's get us to the finish line of this process, and then let these 2 people figure out how they're going to resolve things down the road, because you're already disagreeing or working against each other to come to the basics.
Mm-hmm.
So, you know, hey, how are we going to handle this issue when it comes up in the future? No one No professional— the attorneys are not bringing these things up. They don't want to project forward.
Right.
Because let's just get to the finish line on these things, the basics. And then, you know, when one person wants to move to Vista and the other person wants to move to Chula Vista, and you're living, you know, they can figure this out a different way down the road. You know, all these things that you can establish in a mediated settlement, you can say, hey, okay, we figured out the cores. We figured out everything that has to do with now, and we really talked that out. And we talked about this, this or that, or what about this option? We really thought it through, and we talked it, and we, and we viewed it as from the perspective of, of Jimmy and Bo, you know, like, how's this best for them, and how is it not best for them? Let's, let's, let's project this out now. Let's think about the things that we know are coming, because they're 13 and 15. So what's coming? Driving. You know, auto insurance, them having their own thoughts and opinions about things as they get into high school and older, you know, all these other things that can change over time.
Absolutely. Well, and also recognizing that when they're getting into high school, developmentally, they're at a different place. That's when they start to assert their independence, whether or not you're married or not. That's when kids start— they start to kind of pull away. And if you know that, if your mediator or, you know, your co-parenting specialist has worked with you, on this, you recognize this isn't because you're divorced or because one parent is trying to, you know, take the kids away from you. This really is a natural progression of their development. And what do you do with that, right? Do you, do you allow for some flexibility in the schedule? Because, you know, maybe at one parent's house they're closer to activities or friends that they really need at this developmental stage in their life, right? But it's, it's really taking a look at so much more than just where they lay their heads down at night, where they spend their holidays. Right. But what do they need? Because regardless of whether you're married or not, your kids still need the same thing from you.
Right.
And I think to your point, Scott, mediation really allows you and gives you that opportunity to spend the time to be really thoughtful about what your children need in this process, because it isn't divorce that impacts kids negatively. It's the conflict that occurs during divorce. And during and after. But I want to give a big caveat there because that's always kind of a sticking point for me because people go, well, maybe I shouldn't get divorced because my spouse has had conflict and I just can't see us not having conflict. Well, the flip side of that is I always ask, well, is there conflict currently? And usually there is. And so at the end of the day, it doesn't matter whether this conflict occurs during a divorce or after, or it occurs during the marriage. Conflict in and of itself Creates problems for children. What is a benefit for children is if you have a marriage where there's a lot of conflict, even if that co-parent is going to continue to play in that conflict pool, you can step out and you can be the healthy parent, and you can be the parent that provides that safe, consistent environment in your home. And that is a huge gift.
Yeah, I love that, Kelly. Well, this is why You know, people work with Kelly, obviously. So we'll wrap it up now, but I'll put in the information on how you can reach out to Kelly. I guess, Kelly, is there any last tip that you want to leave with people when they're thinking about, you know, transitioning a relationship from spouse, you know, to ex-spouse to business partner in terms of parenting? Like, any last final words you want to leave them?
So I think that the one thing I like to focus the parents that I work with on is really what is the divorce story you want your children to tell 20 years from now, 10 years from now? You will leave a legacy with these kids when it comes to divorce. What do you want it to be? Do you want it to be that, you know, my parents fought all the time and they constantly put me in the middle and I just, you know, constantly felt like I was pulled back and forth, or You know, it wasn't easy, but my parents worked really hard to, to, to not put me and my siblings, you know, in the middle of their conflict. They really tried hard to continue to, to provide for me and support me in the way that I needed to be supported. Um, and all in all, what I really feel like is they were better apart, and they've gone on to be happy, and we're all just happier as a family.
Love that. Thank you so much, Kelly. Love that so much. Talk to you soon.
