Divorce at Altitude: A Podcast on Colorado Family Law
Divorce at Altitude: A Podcast on Colorado Family Law
The Ins and Outs of Reintegration Therapy in Family Law Cases in Colorado with Dr. Kathleen McNamara | Episode 213
Welcome back to another insightful episode of Divorce at Altitude. This week, host Amy Goscha is joined by Dr. McNamara, a licensed psychologist with over 30 years of experience working with families navigating the complexities of divorce and two-home parenting. Together, they explore the topic of reintegration therapy and its role in family law cases.
Episode Highlights:
- Introduction to Reintegration Therapy: Dr. McNamara explains what reintegration therapy is and how it is defined by Colorado law, specifically in the context of the recent 2023 changes to 14-10-127.5, known as Cadence Law. The focus is on reestablishing or strengthening the relationship between a child and a parent with whom contact has been strained or lost.
- The Role of Therapy in High-Conflict Cases: Amy and Dr. McNamara discuss the challenges of parenting in two households, especially in high-conflict situations where children may resist or refuse contact with one parent. The episode highlights how therapy can provide guidance, emotional support, and tools to help families navigate these difficult dynamics.
- Family Therapy vs. Reintegration Therapy: Learn the key differences between general family therapy and reintegration therapy. While both aim to improve relationships, reintegration therapy specifically addresses parent-child contact issues in situations where relationships have been disrupted.
- Impact of Recent Legislation: Dr. McNamara explains how Cadence Law impacts reintegration therapy, especially in cases involving allegations of abuse or domestic violence. The law now prohibits the court from removing a child from a protective parent or restricting contact with a protective parent to improve the relationship with the accused parent, fundamentally changing the approach in these cases.
Key Discussions:
- Therapy Structure and Expectations: Dr. McNamara outlines the structure of reintegration therapy, emphasizing that it is a goal-driven, flexible process tailored to each family’s unique circumstances. She discusses how therapy can last several months to over a year, depending on the needs and progress of the family.
- Measuring Success in Reintegration Therapy: The episode delves into how success is measured in reintegration therapy, including milestones like improved communication, increased comfort in joint sessions, and the rebuilding of trust between parent and child.
- The Role of CLRs (Child Legal Representatives): Amy and Dr. McNamara highlight the importance of CLR
What is Divorce at Altitude?
Ryan Kalamaya and Amy Goscha provide tips and recommendations on issues related to divorce, separation, and co-parenting in Colorado. Ryan and Amy are the founding partners of an innovative and ambitious law firm, Kalamaya | Goscha, that pushes the boundaries to discover new frontiers in family law, personal injuries, and criminal defense in Colorado.
To subscribe to Divorce at Altitude, click here and select your favorite podcast player. To subscribe to Kalamaya | Goscha's YouTube channel where many of the episodes will be posted as videos, click here. If you have additional questions or would like to speak to one of our attorneys, give us a call at 970-429-5784 or email us at info@kalamaya.law.
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DISCLAIMER: THE COMMENTARY AND OPINIONS ON THIS PODCAST IS FOR ENTERTAINMENT AND INFORMATIONAL PURPOSES AND NOT FOR THE PURPOSE OF PROVIDING LEGAL ADVICE. CONTACT AN ATTORNEY IN YOUR STATE OR AREA TO OBTAIN LEGAL ADVICE ON ANY OF THESE ISSUES.
Good afternoon. Welcome back to another episode of Divorce at Altitude. I'm Amy Goscha, and I'm here today. I have the pleasure of having on Dr. McNamara. How are you doing today, Dr. McNamara?
Dr. Kathleen McNamara:I'm great. How are you? Thanks for having me.
Amy Goscha:Great. If you don't mind just telling our listeners what is your background?
Dr. Kathleen McNamara:So I'm a licensed psychologist in private practice. I'm in Fort Collins, Colorado, and I have worked with families who are separated or divorced, doing two home parenting for over 30 years now, and I've worn a lot of different hats, but that's essentially what I do is work with families in that scenario.
Amy Goscha:Yeah, that's great. Today we're going to be talking about what's called reintegration therapy and kind of the place of therapy and, family law, cases. So what I'll start with is from your perspective, maybe if you could just talk to the listeners about what reintegration therapy is.
Dr. Kathleen McNamara:Well, reintegration therapy was defined by our state legislature in recently, I think it was May 2023, in a recently passed law that modified 1410 127, it's 127. 5 now. And it defines reunification therapy as therapy that is aimed at reuniting or establishing a relationship between a child and an estranged parent or rejected. parent or some other family member of the child. That's how it's defined in the statute. So we do have a statutory definition and it's really focused on a particular kind of problem that might come to a therapist for services.
Amy Goscha:A lot of times when I'm dealing with families, especially in two households, you have two parents that maybe depending on the percentage of parenting time that they have, they don't really know what's happening sometimes if the communication is not great in the other household. So one thing I look at is if there's, issues around, the child isn't doing well, I think about getting You know, a therapist involved. I know we'll talk more about specifically the place for reintegration therapy, but from your perspective, what is the issue with dealing with kids and families? In these two household situation where can therapy really, be a useful tool?
Dr. Kathleen McNamara:In my experience, families come in for therapy for a variety of reasons. They might come in and want their child to be seen to assist them in adjusting to all of the changes and perhaps the turmoil that has come with the separation or divorce, or the parents may come in for some help and guidance around their child. How do we do this? How do we do this better? How do we do this with our unique circumstances? These are really one whole sort of level of therapeutic services for families who are dealing with these kinds of issues. The families that come in for reunification therapy or family therapy as part of a court order or as part of a high conflict situation are usually families that are grappling in some way with a parent child contact problem. A child is either resisting contact with a parent or refusing contact with a parent or is having a lot of problems adjusting to the parenting time schedule. Maybe the parents are at odds about what's best for the child regarding the schedule and contact and relationship with the parent. And you have a whole host of issues around that problem of a child doesn't want to do this. And Here we are, something needs to be resolved, or it's been resolved, there's been an order put in place, but there are still a lot of issues in the family, and here comes the therapist. Now the therapist has either been appointed, or the attorneys are calling and asking, can you be of assistance, and that's how these families commonly deal. present.
Amy Goscha:Yeah, and you mentioned family therapy. Let's just talk a minute about what is the, what is family therapy and how does it differ, how is it differentiated from reintegration therapy?
Dr. Kathleen McNamara:So family therapy is a form of psychotherapy that involves family members wanting to understand each other better, support each other better, work through difficult situations. There's a whole host of problems that might be presented that are affecting a family system, a group of people who are in a family relationship, a family system relationship. So when you think about reunification therapy, it's a type of family therapy. And yet it's not a form of family therapy that are any of the major models of psychotherapy. So for example, we have cognitive behavior therapy and we have family systems therapy. We have these therapies that are known and recognized and we have these theoretical models. Reunification therapy It's a particular kind of problem and there are, there's a literature around what kinds of strategies and approaches and structure might be helpful in those kinds of therapies, but it's really a type of family therapy.
Amy Goscha:Okay. And you mentioned a law change, and that happened in May of 2020 or three, correct?
Dr. Kathleen McNamara:23, I believe. Yeah.
Amy Goscha:Yeah. And that was the codification of 1410. 127. 5, which we refer to as the cadence law. Let's talk more specifically about what you said that reintegration therapy was defined, but what are some other? implications that came from that statute being enacted?
Dr. Kathleen McNamara:The law itself has to do with when there's been a claim or an accusation of domestic violence or child abuse, including child sexual abuse, or the court has reason to believe there's been domestic violence or child abuse. The law prevents the court from doing certain things. For example the statute the law states that the court cannot remove the child from a protective parent or restrict contact with a protective parent solely to improve the relationship with the accused parent. That's a pretty powerful argument. piece of legislation right there. The court cannot do that. And then that has implications for this broader pool of families that I think we're talking about when we're talking about family therapy or parent child contact problems because there are many reasons where a child might resist or refuse contact with a child abuse. Exposure to domestic violence is one category, but it's not the only category. And there are other things in that law about the courts not to order reunification therapy unless there is generally accepted in scientific law. That's another really important part of that law that now therapists need to be very mindful of and thoughtful about, and we need to be able to articulate what the empirical base is for therapy. And the other thing about that law that stands out, at least for me, is that the order must address the actions of the accused party, primarily. It must focus on the actions of the accused. So rather than flipping it around and talking about maybe the other parent as a gatekeeper or an alienator or something like that, the focus should be on the accused party's actions. And it has some language in there about what the accused parent needs to be doing. So those are the key components of that law that then have implications for how all of this work is being done.
Amy Goscha:And I look at the first section of that law. It's the legislative intent, there's some stark, like statistics talking about approximately 15 million children are exposed. So I think and you and I were discussing this, but the intention of this law was probably, intentioned. But there are some limitations that have come with it. So what are some of those limitations that you're seeing in your practice when it comes to reintegration therapy that have transpired since the codification of this law?
Dr. Kathleen McNamara:I, gosh, there's a lot of aspects to that. One is that, as I've mentioned earlier, When a child is resisting or refusing contact with a parent, we professionals of all stripes, legal professionals, mental health professionals, all of the professionals who are interfacing with the family, the court system, we need to be thinking about the many contributing factors to that situation. And when we come into these situations and we assume it's one thing or another, or we're quick to label it as one thing, and very commonly in these cases, we go quickly to, is it parent alienation, or is it abuse? Which is it? A or B. And I think that's an oversimplification in many cases, but not all cases. There are some cases where there has absolutely been child abuse. There's been intimate partner violence. Kids have been exposed to this either directly or indirectly. They're deeply affected by that. And the case gets bungled by all these other kinds of possibilities when that's the root cause. That's the core issue. That's why this child is having a lot of anxiety and resistance. And That's one, one particular scenario. We need to remember that the vast majority of separating and divorcing parents and families have positive, healthy, nourishing relationships with their kids. We're talking about a small percentage of separating and divorcing families who continue to have turmoil and problems in these parent child relationships and the co parenting relationships. Serious problems. We're talking about a small group. So what are some of the other things that might be going on? Well, kids are affected by the conflict between the parents or communication between the parents. There might be a child who has. A long standing, strained relationship with one parent, and now at the time of the separation and the divorce, it's whoa, wait a minute, now I've got to spend time with this parent without my other parent, who has always been my source of kind of comfort and security, and I don't want to do that. And what is that going to look like, and how is that going to work? But there really hasn't been abuse or intimate partner violence. It has to do with the nature of the history of the family relationships. It could be a situation where there's repartnering going on with the parents that kids are having a lot of problems with. It could be a change in the parent's lifestyle or ways of living that are, they're suddenly changed at the time of the divorce that kids are having strong reactions to. These aren't abuse or neglect. There's no parent alienating behavior necessarily going on, or there's just small sort of lower level kinds of things going on in those categories. But we've got some other things that are really driving this child's reactions and response to the situation. So I think, one of the things about this law is we need to not forget. That in these cases of parent child contact problems, there are many reasons why a child may be responding in this way. And the intervention should be proportional and should match what those causes and what those contributing factors are. So there needs to be a matching of the therapy to the problem. And that would be true. Any therapy that we do,
Amy Goscha:well, and when you say Dr. McNamara, that it can also, like with high, at least I see this with my clients where it can be very high conflict and very intense, and then it can level out and the family can kind of, exist and not have as much conflict. It can ebb and flow. And so probably the needs of a child in therapy. Okay. There's, they're going to have needs at different points. Like when you talk about like the frequency of therapy or how to structure it, it almost, to me, seems like it has to be a flexible model. They are constantly looking at what is the need. And how do you, like you said, proportionally address it. So in your practice, since we're talking about how you structure it what are some things that you see that are really, like really affected, what are some tools that you use to really figure that out when you're the therapist?
Dr. Kathleen McNamara:I, oftentimes when when these cases come in, somebody has, else has already looked at them. So there might have been a CFI, there might have been a PRE, there might be a CLR, a Child Legal Representative on the case who is really, got their eyes on the whole situation and is representing the child's best interests. and can convey quite a bit of information. But usually the therapist does need to get to know the family members who are going to be involved in the therapy and understand their concerns and understand their hopes and their wishes. And you also have to be aware that you're in this sort of legal arena where issues may still be pending. Or maybe they've been newly resolved, there's been an order, the parenting plan's been finalized, but there's, somebody's decided, we do need to get some family therapy going or reunification therapy going because we've got this strained parent child relationship. There needs to be some assessment of where is the family, what are the primary issues, what's on people's minds. And then there needs to be this structuring of what is the goal here? What are we trying to accomplish? And in my experience, you have Parent A's hopes and wishes and goals and parent B's hopes and wishes and goals and they don't always match. And then you've got the child or the children's aspirations and so one of the early parts of therapy is often getting ourselves straightened out on what is our overarching goal? What are we trying to accomplish here? We trying to just make you adhere to the parenting plan. Are we trying to, in which case, I'm likely to say you got the wrong person here. I'm here to help with relationships. I'm here to help improve relationships. I'm here to help improve feelings of support. I'm here to help with deepening understanding. And the parenting plan, the parenting time schedule, that is not my job in the therapist role. Now, somebody else may have said, here's what the parenting plan is, and I may help you adjust and cope with the stress of a parenting plan that you didn't prefer. That may be part of the therapy. But the therapy is structured around the goals. So there's an overarching goal. There might be one or two or three of those. Each family member may have one or two or maybe three goals they're working on. One parent may be working on how do I support this other parent child relationship, given many problems. The parent who is in the strained relationship with the child may be, what do I need to make change? to improve my relationship with the child. The child's goals might be, how do I manage anxiety? How do I develop coping skills for a situation that I didn't ask for or want, but I find myself in? And as you're working in therapy, people know what they're what they're aiming for. In my experience, a lot of therapy isn't structured very well. People don't know what the goal is or they don't know what their goal is. And there's just a lot of rehashing of the problems. without really getting traction. But when you have goals, now we're in a position to start evaluating are we making progress toward those goals? And how are we going to make progress toward those goals? And we can begin to measure whether we're making progress or not. And it's usually an ebb and flow, two steps forward, one back, three forward, one back, this sort of thing.
Amy Goscha:Yeah, I think my role as the family law attorney is defining You know what authority does the therapist have? What kind of information is given to the therapist? Also I try to give the therapist just You know, that's your expertise, so I want to give the therapist as much flexibility on the process as possible. And you mentioned CLR, a child legal representative. You and I have seen how more of them are getting appointed and they can be a useful tool. Can you explain just to our listeners how can just briefly a CLR, how has that been a tool that you've seen in cases?
Dr. Kathleen McNamara:It's been incredibly useful in a number of cases that I've had because the CLR is an attorney, represents the child's best interest, and that person is in a position to talk with the parents who represent the, excuse me, the attorneys who represent the parents. And that person can reach stipulations, that person can help move a case forward, can help try to bring it to resolution, and can help craft an order that is going to give the therapist what the therapist needs in terms of frequency of therapy, who's paying for therapy, who's bringing the child to therapy what are the expectations of all of the family members Is the therapist going to get, give reports on progress? And if so, how much information is going to be divulged? Is everybody going to sign releases so the therapist can do that? There's just a lot of structuring of that, that the CLR, and sometimes if you don't have the CLR the representing attorneys can help craft all of that, or you'll just get a great order from a judge who has a lot of experience with this, and all of that is spelled out. It takes the wind out of the sails for a lot of potential problems in just getting the therapy going, that everybody understands up front, okay this is what's expected.
Amy Goscha:Yeah, and sometimes if that's not defined, getting the therapy started is a huge problem.
Dr. Kathleen McNamara:Oh, yes, absolutely. And even when they arrive, when it's a very vague order, go to therapy, then the therapist is in the position of who's going to bring the child? I'd like to see this. Child weekly. I don't, I'm not going to pay for weekly, I'll pay for every two weeks, or I'll pay for once a month, or and now the therapist is trying to grapple with all that stuff. And you have to remember that therapists get very pulled to align with people's perspective. And the therapist is trying to float above that and work toward those overarching goals, which have to be established. What are we here to do? And that's what I'm here to help accomplish with all of you. And if you get caught up in somebody wants it this way, and somebody wants it that way, and you're trying to broker that deal, now you've just compromised that role of being the therapist who's focused on the therapeutic goal. So it gets very tricky when you're dealing with court involved families, how to manage all of this.
Amy Goscha:Yeah, that makes sense. Before we, I just want to make sure that we do cover this. So with the new law, It talks about allegations of abuse. Can you explain to me the implications and what that has on whether or not you can do reunification therapy?
Dr. Kathleen McNamara:Yeah, the law is clear that it is a claim or an accusation that triggers these shalls and shall nots in the law. So it is a claim. So I can tell you in my experience over the past year, what frequently happens is there hasn't been a finding, but there has been a claim. And so when the family comes in, there's dispute about. the truth of the claim, of the accusation. And that's a real obstacle to overcome right out of the gate. The law is clear that, the accused party should be taking responsibility for their actions. That's hard to do when there's no finding and there's been no admission of, so these are some of the really difficult things that you've got the law written the way it is, but it's not really addressing that we don't have findings in some of these cases. And we have situations where everyone can agree on what happened, but what you label it, how you label it, was that child abuse? Was that harsh parenting that was inappropriate and not okay, but doesn't cross over into the line of child abuse? Was there a finding of child abuse? What ab and is it the therapist's job to be figuring out the truth of these matters? I would say not. It's not the therapist. So you're working with the family on moving forward. How are we going to move forward? What are our goals that we can try to strive toward? And this involves a lot of motivational and a lot of empirically based back to that thing about, Evidence based practice. Evidence based practice is you're using all of the skills and all of the best available information about effective therapeutic interventions to, to ground your work. So everything you're doing should be grounded in empirically based practice. And that's a combination of clinical experience and practice. And research basis, not just a random clinical randomized clinical trial of a particular therapy. You're dealing with a unique family, with a unique set of issues, and you're using the best available information to guide you in your in your clinical judgment.
Amy Goscha:Before I go to measuring success and reintegration therapies, particularly, I have a client, who will come in and say what is reintegration therapy? What does this look like? How long is it going to take? Can you just briefly talk about, the structure of it and like the length of time? Is there a length of time? Which I think then you can talk about how do we measure success? Because that could also be linked to the duration.
Dr. Kathleen McNamara:And I don't want to speak for all therapists. I can tell you how I approach it. I I, in my experience, most families come in and they're, they can expect that this therapy is going to last several months. Is it going to last more than a year? Is it going to last years? Maybe, I wouldn't say that's typical, but I would say several months for sure, maybe up to a year. This is usually, by the time they're coming to me and a quarter's been written, that's typically in my practice what we're looking at. Now, sometimes it goes longer, but it's less frequent. Things have improved at that point or there's been a determination that people are not benefiting from this therapy. It needs to end. That, that's one. Possibility two. That's what I would say about length of time. It all depends on the issues. It all depends on what's going on, so that it's hard to say broadly.
Amy Goscha:Right.
Dr. Kathleen McNamara:And I think, just in terms of what to expect, people should be able to expect that they're going to receive informed consent, that they're going to receive information up front, preferably in writing, and Orally in conversation. This is how this will work. Here's what you can expect. Here's how you can communicate with me. Here's what you can imagine about how this is going to go. This is what your responsibility is. This is what my responsibility is. Here's where you report a complaint. If you have a complaint, all of those mandatory disclosures and also just informed consent and how this is going to go. That helps with buy in, that helps with consumer protection, it helps with ethical practice, and it's just plain best practice. And then the way I do it, not everybody does it this way, and there's empirical base for both. I work with people, typically, individually. Initially, because I'm working with individuals trying to understand and trying to get them prepared for sessions that are going to be, say, parent child, or maybe both parents, maybe the favored parent, maybe the out parent, whatever the case may be. By the time I bring them together, I've got them ready to do that work because I've done some individual work. So initially it's costly because you're talking to child and you're talking to parent A and you're talking to parent B and maybe you're reading some documents and maybe you're talking to other therapists and But then by the time you get to the joint sessions, it's less often because people are together. It's goal driven. We're adjusting goals as we go, but we're working on goals. We're working on the tasks and the process that's going to get us to reaching goals. And we try one thing, we try another, but there's a structure. There should be an empirical grounding to that, and there should be explanation of what we're doing and why we're doing it. Now that doesn't mean it's always in everybody's comfort zone, but you hopefully aren't pushing people too far outside their comfort zone. That's the work of therapy. Now we're doing the work and you're dealing with it and you're trying to gauge are we making progress? What would progress? Are you feeling better? Are you doing things you weren't doing before? That you were afraid to do, but now you're not afraid to do. Are things functioning better? Is the co parent communication, has it improved? Is the parent child, um, contact better? Higher quality. Has parenting behavior improved? Whatever these goals are we making progress? Is there doc can you document what the progress has been? And you're trying to make reasonable progress toward those goals, and how will we know when we get there? And so That would be my general description of how it goes.
Amy Goscha:Yeah, and I would say just to listeners, like from the attorney perspective, we also have usually an order appointing the reintegration therapist and it will delineate within the order. When is reintegration therapy, terminated? Is it determined by the reintegration therapist? Is it determined by having a status conference with the court and hearing from the reintegration therapist? And like you had mentioned, sometimes it's determined that It's really not benefiting anyone anymore. And I've seen with progress and you can probably weigh in because you do this work. Progress can even be just sitting in those joint sessions probably, or going out to, have ice cream with a parent, depending on, like how severed the relationship is. That's at least, my What I've, what I've seen, it can be very little progress or really a lot of progress.
Dr. Kathleen McNamara:Yeah, you might, the goal might be to try to create a more comfortable positive. safe, nurturing relationship between a parent and child. The tasks might be, we talk about some, you sit in the room in therapy, just getting into the room and being emotionally, collected, calm and collected, that can be progress. And then we talk about some things, that can be progress, feeling heard, practicing some communication skills. Going for ice cream with the therapist and then without the therapist. It's very specific little goals like that are building toward this goal of, are we building a better relationship? Are we understanding each other better? Have problems in the past? Are they being addressed? Um, that, that's ex, that's exactly the way it goes that's this goal and the tasks of therapy and the clarity, trying to have the parties understand and the therapist, that we're all on the same page, this is what we're trying to do.
Amy Goscha:And I think the final remark, at least I tell this to my clients, that um, kids want two parents, and they want to have a good relationship with each parent and you want to do what you can to make sure that happens but it is very hard, when you're representing one party, and there's maybe some things, their viewpoint is the other parent is You know, the worst parent ever, but I think from a kid's perspective, they always want relationships with their parents. I view reintegration therapy as a tool to really, help with that. But do you have any final remarks? From your perspective on how, this type of therapy really can be, can help, in high conflict cases.
Dr. Kathleen McNamara:Yeah I guess my takeaway would be, I would not be doing this work if I hadn't seen with my own eyes over the years. People get better. People might not get what was initially hoped for or wanted, but that doesn't mean that they can't get better, and they do get better. So there is reason to be hopeful. Not all cases. Some cases, there's a lot of reasons why it's just not going to go anywhere, and people are not benefiting, and we need to stop. And that's just the, what needs to happen. And I guess the other takeaway comment I would have here is I do think these CLRs are professionals that we should be looking a little more toward in these very high conflict cases where we've got cadence law coming into the mix here and therapists who are anxious about doing the work under this new law and all of that. I do think those professionals. They come in, they represent the child's interests, I think they can help pave the way forward and help address roadblocks in the process that help get things moving in a way that the parents who are representing the parents may have a much harder time navigating. So the problem there is cost. But when they're there and they're good they're really helpful.
Amy Goscha:Yeah. No, Dr. McNamara, I really appreciate your work and helping children and families. And thank you for talking to us about reintegration therapy and the status of, some changes. So with that thank you listeners and we'll be back for another episode of Divorce at Altitude.
Dr. Kathleen McNamara:Thank you.
Ryan Kalamaya:hey everyone. This is Ryan again. Thank you for joining us on Divorce at Altittude. If you found our tips, insight, or discussion helpful, please tell a friend about this podcast. For show notes, additional resources or links mentioned on today's episode, visit Divorce at Altittude dot com. Follow us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen in. Many of our episodes are also posted on YouTube. You can also find Amy and. Law or 9 7 0 3 1 5 2 3 6 5. That's aaa.