Money and Marriage

Once a month, a few lawyers, a few more mental health professionals, a divorce support group leader, and this month,  a financial professional, get together over coffee, yogurt, fruit and chocolate chip banana bread and talk about books.  Not just any books, but books that relate to collaborative practice.  Some of them deal with how to practice collaboratively, some of them deal with subjects that help us as professionals understand our clients and the issues they present, and some of them are books our clients might read to help them through their divorce.  Today's book was Money Harmony by Olivia Mellon.  It's a little dated in it's gender roles (it was written in 1994), but what it talks about is every bit as valid today as it was when it was written.  Besides learning how each of us relates to money and why, thanks to our mental health professionals, we also gained a bit more insight into our clients.  When opposites attract, they do so on many levels, and money is one of the biggest areas.  What's really interesting is that even if opposites don't attract, even when the two spouses are people who view money the same way, one of them will always start to deal with money in a somewhat different way in order to maintain balance in the relationship.  How cool (and true - think of couples you know) is that?  Then, of course, we need to talk about how we all reenact how our family of origin dealt with money, how they thought about it and how they talked (or didn't talk) about it.  All of this information and insight into how our clients relate to money helps us understand them and aids us in helping them reach a financial settlement that resonates with their attitude toward it.   It's just another demonstration of the lengths we go to to serve our clients  - here in the Trenches.