No matter how contested a divorce or separation may become, most people genuinely desire that their children be left out of their disputes; but with changing concepts of what constitutes a “family” and the ever evolving roles of the parents in care and upbringing of their children it is extremely challenging to fashion custody and time sharing arrangements which satisfy parents’ ideas of what it means to be a fully participatory parent and what the needs of any one family’s children or children may be to have successful childhoods free of as much of the inevitable angst which confronts any child whose parents are separating and/or wrestling with hos to sort out child custody arrangements. Ms. Lieblich takes pride in learning the special interests and needs of the parties’ children and their role and place in the family order so that she can guide parents toward working relationships which benefit everyone. Often times this involves recognizing and acknowledging the unique roles of both parents in their children’s lives and helping them fashion new ways of co-parenting and cooperating to raise successful, happy children.
While there are statutory guidelines for factors a Court needs to consider in making a custody determination, the true challenge, in Ms. Lieblich’s view in successfully resolving custody is to identify how the strengths of a parent can be marshalled for the children’s benefit and to maximize the opportunity for that parent to provide leadership for his or her child(ren) in that area. Equally challenging is finding ways for parties to effectively communicate about their children when communication between the parties is otherwise hostile, finding mechanisms for compromise between the parents so that their children are not caught in the middle of “turf” wars and encouraging parties to begin to see the strengths of each of the other as parents so that the children get the best of both of them.
