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Protecting Children During Divorce

Last reviewed by Rita Herrera Irvin, 11/26/25

Overview

Divorce is challenging for everyone involved, but the impact on children is often the greatest concern for parents. In this video, McKinley Irvin Law Practice Managing Partner Marc Christianson discusses how to protect children during divorce, what parents should expect, and how attorneys can help families create safe, healthy, and supportive arrangements for their children.

Title: Protecting Children During Divorce
Speaker: Marc Christianson, Managing Partner, McKinley Irvin

Key Takeaways

  • Your relationship with your children matters most. Parents often fear how the divorce will affect connection, stability, and emotional well-being.
  • Children absorb family stress. Conflict or unhappiness between parents can cause children to internalize blame or take on caretaker roles.
  • A stable schedule helps children thrive. Clear, predictable parenting plans reduce anxiety and support healthy development.
  • Professional support strengthens outcomes. Counselors, investigators, and guardians ad litem can help identify issues and create solutions in the child’s best interests.
  • The goal is simple: Children should get to be kids, supported by two loving parents, even during major life transitions.

Transcript

Marc Christianson, Law Practice Managing Partner:

We recognize the fact that families and children are critically important in our society for a whole bunch of reasons. So, this is an area where we felt that we could really help people the most. It's a very one-on-one, personalized, individualized relationship with a client. They're afraid of what's going to happen to their kids, what kind of relationship they're going to have with their kids, what are the financial implications going to be. So, our job is to basically explain the process as we're going through it, let them know the options that are available and the rough expectations for results and the costs, and assist them in making a decision.

What's going on in the background is that there's this dysfunction in the relationship. And oftentimes that then is picked up by the kids. And the horrible cases are where the children see that mom is unhappy, dad is unhappy, or either parent is unhappy, and the child can't make them happy, and so it must be the child's fault for causing that. So the child then becomes the caretaker; they internalize all of the negative things and have a low self-worth, which is horrible — it just tears the kids up.

So our goal is to try to get the situation calmed down, to try and work out a reasonable residential schedule and time with the kids that is healthy and best for them. So we utilize counselors, we utilize investigators, we utilize, as I mentioned, the guardians ad litem, to try to cut to the chase, find out what the issues are, try to get those issues resolved, so the kids just have to be kids and know that they have two loving parents.