Divorce Coaching

I coach both individuals and couples, in collaborative, mediated and litigated divorces.

I provide coaching across the continuum of separation and divorce needs, including pre-divorce consultation, co-parenting coaching, attorney consultation, and post-divorce problem-solving. 

All of these services are delivered through the lens of divorce coaching. 

Whether you have decided to divorce through litigation, mediation, or are interested in pursuing a collaborative divorce, the use of a divorce coach is often considered to be an investment in your best decision-making during one of life’s most difficult and emotional processes. It’s important to recognize that divorce coaching is not therapy – we don’t delve into past issues or examine why your feelings exist. The focus is your experience in the divorce process itself and the goal is to help you:

  • manage your feelings to help you think clearly and strategically.
  • understand and be able to communicate your needs, interests, and goals for post-divorce life.
  • achieve your best decision-making capability.
  • use your most effective communication skills in divorce negotiations.
  • problem-solve realistically.

As a member of your divorce team, I assist the other professionals involved by helping them to  understand all of your needs in real time and clarifying legal and financial information to aid in complete understanding. I also participate in the development of the strategy that moves your divorce case from beginning to end. Some roadblocks are psychological, and I can help the professional team overcome them.

How does it work?

I use a mix of psychological and consulting techniques. My psychological tool kit includes cognitive behavioral methods (which are evidence-based as helpful in quickly managing emotions), active listening, and motivational interviewing. A supportive approach is also a key ingredient and I look to develop a relationship with each client in order to be able to reality test later on.

My consulting background also gives me a skill set that is useful in terms of project management and organization, goal setting, meeting facilitation, and strategic planning. A divorce is akin to a project; it has a defined beginning, a messy middle (where the path forward is iterative and requires different types of expertise), and an end. My reputation is that I am uniquely able to help the process yield a successful end point.

As a Divorce Coach within any process, I am available to provide any or all of the following services:

  • individual and/or joint divorce coaching in general (see below)
  • providing neutral facilitation/mediation (often on parenting plan development)
  • co-parenting coaching which focuses on improving the effectiveness of communication, problem-solving and shared decision-making
  • working directly with both parties to address transition issues (for example, how do we tell the children? How do we achieve separation while we work on the divorce? How do we manage our anger?)
  • providing consultation to the mediator and attorneys to explain the psychological subtext of what may be behind a party’s behavior in the divorce process
  • ensuring that all divorce professionals understand the key psychological issues and are working in concert toward defined goals
  • working with an attorney and their client (creating a sub-team) to problem solve and/or strategize through an emotionally laden issue

How is coaching different from therapy?

Divorce coaching is a consultative service while therapy is a treatment. Coaching is designed to help an individual, couple, or family deal as effectively as they can with the process of divorce. There is no diagnosis or psychological evaluation as there would be in psychotherapy. The methods utilized in coaching are here-and-now, pragmatic, and often take the form of an instruction or directive.

Many people already have a therapist they are working with and in fact, that is my #1 recommendation for anyone contemplating a divorce. I can establish communication (with your permission) to educate therapists about the divorce process and goals of coaching. If I assess that you need therapeutic services and you are not currently in psychotherapy, I will make that recommendation and provide referral(s) to you.

Unlike psychotherapy, divorce coaching is not an insurance-reimbursable service.

Individual or Neutral Coach?

This decision is most often based on the needs of the clients. Some individuals feel quite strongly that they need their “own” coach and in that case a two-coach model is deployed for the case. Other couples feel that a one-coach or neutral model is more appropriate for their needs.

While I often work as an individual coach for one party, my specialty is joint or neutral coaching for both parties. In the 150+ divorces I have been involved with, approximately 80% have been the one-coach model. You can think of a neutral coach as being an individual coach for two, both parties have full confidentiality. And my role is to help both clients achieve all of the goals described above.

Neutrality also means that I am bringing my mediation/facilitation skills to the fore and facilitating group meetings as well as working behind the scenes to ensure the professional group is functioning as a team. As a neutral coach I am often delegated the responsibility of working directly with both parties to address transition issues (for example, how do we tell the children? How do we achieve separation while we work on the divorce? How do we manage our anger?) and develop the parenting plan.

What if we can’t talk at all?

I often work in high-conflict divorces. My approach to this situation is also evidence-based. When the relationship is characterized by high conflict behaviors, there is usually a set of personality traits and a pattern of interactive behavior that is well-known to psychologists. While I am not diagnosing anyone as a coach, I do try to figure out what is happening in terms of the behavior patterns in evidence, I then refer to the psychological/psychiatric literature for best practice interventions to try and influence/redirect the behavior pattern with one or both parties.  In addition, high conflict individuals/couples are often able to function more effectively within a tightly defined container of professionals. I am able to help the professional team operate in such a way as to bring the conflict level down.

The first step is to contact me, I prefer email to sarah@drsarahvpuccia.com as I can often respond more quickly. I will usually get back to you within a few hours.

Divorce Coaching in Collaborative Divorce

Collaborative divorce is a specific process where a team of divorce support professionals representing the main components of divorce (legal, financial, and emotional) work with you and your spouse to achieve agreements reflective of everyone’s needs.

While you retain your own attorney during this type of divorce; all the involved professionals function as a team, use processes to promote effective communication between partners, and work to preserve the positive aspects of the relationship so that the odds for long-term cooperation is improved. This approach has been shown to yield long-lasting benefits; making agreements that will be kept rather than broken.

Collaborative Divorce professional teams are developed to meet the specific needs of the couple. I function as part of the Collaborative Divorce Team. When you and your spouse meet with all or parts of the team, I work to encourage respectful listening, help each of you gain perspective on other points of view, and assist in formulating goals for your individual futures. If children are involved, I will help you both prioritize their needs.

I am a Fellow of the Collaborative Law Institute of Illinois and adhere to the Principles and Guidelines of Collaborative Family Law.

Divorce Coaching in Mediation

Mediation is an alternate dispute resolution process used to divorce. The process is highly confidential, neutral, and the Mediator is in control of all aspects of the process.

Divorce Coaching within mediation is a relatively new innovation and some mediators are more comfortable with it than others. I have been coaching within or adjacent to mediation for approximately 10 years. As with Collaborative divorce, I can function as a neutral coach for both parties or an individual coach for one party providing neutral facilitation (often on parenting matters), individual and/or joint divorce coaching, and mediation assistance to both parties and all divorce professionals in this process.

Coaching within mediation means that I am in the mediation sessions. As an individual coach, I am only in Mediation sessions if the other party also has a coach (known as a 2-coach model).

A neutral Divorce Coach is a coach for each individual as well as both parties. The Divorce Coach may participate as requested in any of the mediation activities and may also work with individual or both parties separately from Mediation sessions to facilitate the overall process.

Divorce Coaching in Litigation: The Coach/Consultant Role 

If you are not divorcing through a Collaborative or Mediated process, you are most probably in litigation, meaning that you and your attorney are negotiating with the other side in court. Litigated divorces can range from quite friendly to highly adversarial. And one that begins in a friendly manner can suddenly turn into an anger-filled process. Divorce coaching in this scenario is available only to an individual (not a couple) and under their attorney’s privilege. That means that in addition to being your coach, I will also be your attorney’s consultant. You will need to understand any implications of this arrangement, which are outlined in my psychological service agreement. This arrangement is designed to ensure that communication between the coach, client, and attorney remains completely confidential and cannot be subpoenaed or otherwise used in the litigation by either party. Beyond that special arrangement, divorce coaching is provided for all the same reasons: to help individuals understand and handle their emotions in real time, problem-solve effectively, and make optimal decisions for themselves and their family in a highly stressful process.

Other Steps along the Continuum of Divorce Needs

Pre-Divorce Consultation

This is not the specific, protocol-driven, Discernment Counseling which is used when a couple does not know if they want to divorce or continue to work on the marriage. Instead, I have developed Pre-Divorce Process Consultation to use for the following circumstances:

  • When one party wants a divorce and the other doesn’t or isn’t sure yet
  • When both parties have decided to divorce but have no idea of how to begin
  • When people feel they need some education about the processes available and what each will look/feel like
  • When a couple needs some conflict management assistance to endure the divorce process and not wind up in court
  • When a couple feels they need problem-solving help to handle immediate issues

Co-Parenting Coaching

Co-parenting coaching focuses on improving the effectiveness of communication, problem-solving and shared decision-making. In order to accomplish this, we will tackle situations and issues/disputes that are occurring in real time. I integrate psychoeducation regarding what is objectively happening with your children with a mediation approach to facilitate a mutually acceptable agreement. This approach includes identifying the issue(s), reducing emotions and misunderstandings, exploring, and clarifying each parent’s interest, needs, concerns, and priorities, developing an understanding of evidence-based solutions that are in the children’s best interest, and exploring possible solutions. 

I receive referrals for Co-Parenting Coaching from a variety of professionals (including mediators, attorneys, and children’s attorneys). While this service is often divorce-adjacent, it is not always. I also provide co-parenting coaching to a range of parents who  find themselves needing a cohesive approach to parenting in either a difficult situation or in general because of differences in parenting styles.

Co-Parenting coaching is most often provided to both parents at the same time. In this scenario, I am a neutral coach. Either parent can contact me, or I can recommend individual coaching session, and whatever is said is strictly confidential unless a parent gives me permission to share it. But I can also work with individual parents as well as couples. In this case it is because two co-parents cannot sit together and work through issues and may need a mediator to work between them for a solution, or one parent decides to avail themselves of expertise in breaking a dysfunctional communication pattern that impedes effective communication with a co-parent.

Post-Divorce Coaching

Regardless of how it happens, if you have minor children your divorce will yield an Allocation Judgment (a.k.a. Parenting Plan) and this document, while usually a roadmap to handling a variety of parenting situations related to parenting time and decision-making, does not specify every detail you will encounter as life evolves around you and your children. Post-divorce problem solving is a facilitated approach to making decisions about how to implement your plan and/or extend sometimes vague legal language into the world of co-parenting in real time. We sometimes tackle the entire agreement and in-fill the holes that have occurred in real life. Otherwise, we can deal with situations as they arise that co-parents are not successfully resolving on their own.

Some issues cannot be anticipated and attended to completely during the divorce process and in those cases the coaching relationship can be extended to address issues such as:

  • Grieving and sadness
  • Communicating effectively with each other; developing new, more effective communication patterns
  • Co-Parenting in Reality: Implementing the Joint Parenting Agreement
  • Achieving consistency in parenting styles between homes: what’s needed versus what seems like control?
  • Moving on: Traversing the distance between “over” and “next”

The first step is to contact me, I prefer email to sarah@drsarahvpuccia.com as I can often respond more quickly. I will usually get back to you within a few hours.