Seven Top Tech Tools to Reduce Your Stress
Let’s face it – we live in a digital world. I don’t know about you, but as a middle-aged woman, I entered this new world kicking and screaming. Sure, the Millennials, or whatever our young cohorts are known as these days, grew up with computers and are able to use them as though they’re just another appendage attached to their tight, little bodies. My son is five; he knows his way around the iPad better than I do (and has for a while now). But the truth is when I cast aside my intimidation of all things virtual, there are many helpful apps (not hors d’oeuvres, but applications you can easily download on your fancy smartphone) that can help mitigate your stress if you are getting divorced. Here are a few:
1. Our Family Wizard and other online apps facilitate all of your co-parenting communication on a single platform so that you can co-parent with confidence. Use the app to manage schedules, track expenses, share files, send secure messages, and connect with your attorney and other professionals. It will help you manage your communications with your ex more effectively and thereby reduce the conflict between you. And won’t that alleviate everyone’s stress levels? Including your kids’? Interested in learning more about Our Family Wizard? Read our blog.
2. There is now online counseling and therapy for families such as BetterHelp, ReGain, and TalkSpace. While most of these services charge a fee, they’re usually cheaper than in-person services and more efficient because, obviously, travel and parking, and all the time and money required for that, is now eliminated. Maybe now you can fit these services into your demanding day which you couldn’t do if you had to attend in person. Avoid the stigma that may accompany seeking help by using one of these discrete apps and reduce the stress that any divorce, even the kind, and gentle ones, will create.
3. My Family Law Software and similar applications actually calculate the child support you are likely to pay in your state, as well as project your likely support when you modify different variables, such as overnight timesharing, cost of health insurance, and others. Eliminating any unknowns that you can in your divorce process will help mitigate the stress, again, that any divorce will cause.
4. Florida Child Support Calculator and similar online sites make it easier for you to understand how child support is calculated. Much of the stress of divorce is caused because no one outside the law, and even some lawyers, understands what the heck the lawyers are talking about. Reduce that element of your divorce stress by understanding the concepts and why they’re important in your own separation story.
5. Support Pay and other online apps help parents manage all child support payments and expenses while working with state payment systems. Manage all of your support payments in one easy-to-use app. Simplify the process of sharing expenses. Track your children’s expenses, provide receipts to your ex, easily calculate how much is owed, and make payments. This streamlined approach to support and expense payments allows the paying parent to see where her or his money is going, and the receiving parent can clearly demonstrate how expensive their children really are.
6. Meditation is well known to relax the mind and the spirit. Videos and apps (both free and for a price) are readily available, some from highly qualified mental health and other practitioners like Stevey Jones.
7. Exercise is also a wonderful way to lower stress, and these days, it too can be had virtually for free. You can even find free kickboxing classes, and I just bet there’s someone you’d like to pretend to kick during your divorce! (And sometimes that’s not the ex!)
As you can see, to lower your stress during your divorce and after, help is just a click away! If you’d like to learn more about reducing stress during your divorce, or about which divorce process is right for you, contact Joryn Jenkins at Open Palm Law.
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About this week’s author, Lori Skipper.
Lori received her Juris Doctor with honors from the University of Florida Levin College of Law in December 2004, from which she graduated with honors. Proud to be a Florida Gator, Lori had also attended the UF as an undergraduate, graduating with honors with a Bachelor of Science in Psychology, as well as a Minor in Education. Choosing her law school focus early, as a student member of the Virgil B. Hawkins Civil Clinic, Lori assisted indigent clients with family law issues.
