Helping
by Shel Silverstein
Agatha Fry, she made a pie
And Christopher John helped bake it
Christopher John, he mowed the lawn
And Agatha Fry helped rake it
Now, Zachary Zugg took out the rug
And Jennifer Joy helped shake it
Then Jennifer Joy, she made a toy
And Zachary Zugg helped break it
And some kind of help is the kind of help
That helping’s all about
And some kind of help is the kind of help
We all can do without
When my kids were small and trying to be helpful but unintentionally not quite getting it right, we used to call their attempts “Zachary Zugg help”. In the world of Divorce, I see a lot of Zachary Zugg help. For instance, I recently saw advertised a Valentine’s Day contest for a free divorce. Perhaps the Missouri attorney running that advertisement thought it was great PR. It certainly was eye catching. The small print indicated that only uncontested divorces with no or minimal custody issues could qualify for the contest so in other words, nothing legally complex. It seems to me the attorney failed to grasp that even in divorces where the legal issues are uncomplicated, the emotional issues can be enormously complex. Not attending to those issues seems to me to be Zachary Zugg help.
Divorce Corp., a recent nationwide movie release, is an exposé purportedly about the abuses amongst divorce lawyers and judges which alludes to a complicity between lawyers and judges that has created a self-serving divorce industry, thus the allusion to a Divorce Corporation as opposed to Divorce Courts. The film was not nuanced and it seemed to only address extreme cases of divorces gone terribly wrong. It was sort of like looking at the extreme end of a bell curve. Again, the kind of help we all can do without.
Guiding divorcing people toward personal growth and helping them optimize their family life is productive, creative and positive. Consilium’s psychologically and legally integrated approach helps individuals control their initial crisis, consider the content of the law and how it will impact their unique circumstances and then create context by becoming educated about the processes available to them. People can then move from paralysis to empowerment, and choose wisely how best to move forward be that through mediation, arbitration, collaborative law or the traditional divorce process. Now that’s the kind of Agatha Fry, Christopher John, Jennifer Joy help we all can do with.
Heidi R. Webb is the Founder of Consilium Divorce Consultations and the Consilium® Divorce Process.