Divorce with significant wealth: how to protect your children from the fight

“Tell your father he’s not getting the house by the sea.”

The girl who hears this is ten years old. The sentence isn’t meant for her, but she will carry it — on Sunday evening, when her father comes to collect her, or she won’t say it and will carry it inside her all week. Either way, something happened in that moment that none of the adults planned: she became part of the division of assets. Not as an heir, but as a courier.

When a couple who have a great deal separate — a house, a flat, a company, investments, perhaps family wealth that goes back generations — the dispute is almost always longer and more complicated. Lawyers, valuations, deadlines, negotiations. In this piece I won’t talk about how to divide assets — that is for a lawyer and a notary, and where children are concerned also for the court and the social work centre. I will talk about how to carry out that division so that your child does not become part of it.

When the dispute has many stages

In most divorces there are only a few things to argue about: a flat, a car, savings, maintenance. With significant wealth there can be dozens. And each of them has, besides its market value, another, quieter value. A house is not just property; it is the place where the children were born. A company is not just a share; it is twenty years of late nights that the other person “never saw”. A holiday home is not just a holiday home; it is his parents’ legacy, which she never felt was hers.

That is why, for wealthy couples, the dispute over assets often isn’t about money at all. It is about recognition: who contributed what, who gave up what, who was betrayed. Numbers are simply the language in which these old accounts can be voiced without anyone having to say “you hurt me”. And because these accounts run deep, the dispute doesn’t end with one agreement — it moves. From the lawyer’s office into the kitchen, from the kitchen into the car on the way to school, from the car into the child.

I have written more about how money shapes power in a couple, long before any separation, in Money and power in a couple: when one partner earns most. Divorce often simply exposes a balance that had been upset much earlier.

What really weighs on children

In 1991, Paul Amato and Bruce Keith combined 92 studies of children of divorced parents in a meta-analysis. On average, the differences between children from divorced and intact families were smaller than many had feared — and, most importantly for us, they depended strongly on how much conflict the children experienced. Later research has confirmed this again and again: what harms a child is less the divorce itself and more a lasting, open dispute between the parents, especially when the child is drawn into it.

Psychologists John Grych and Frank Fincham explained why. A child doesn’t watch conflict from a distance; they interpret it. They ask themselves whether it is their fault, whether it is dangerous, whether they will have to choose. A row that revolves around the child, or needs the child as a witness, is far heavier for them than a row that stays between the adults. Joan Kelly and Robert Emery, in their review of research on children’s resilience after divorce, wrote something similar: what matters is not whether the parents are divorced, but whether the child feels safe with both and whether the conflict leaves them alone.

You can read more about what protects children after divorce in general in Children and divorce: what the research really says about what protects them. Here I want to focus on one danger that is particularly great in long disputes over assets: that the child is given a role.

The child as messenger, confidant, spy or judge

In the early 1990s, Christy Buchanan, Eleanor Maccoby and Sanford Dornbusch followed adolescents whose parents had divorced and introduced a phrase still used today: children “caught between parents”. Those who felt this way — who carried messages, listened to one parent talk about the other, or had to hide what went on in the other home — reported more distress and poorer wellbeing. What mattered was not how much the parents disliked each other, but whether that hostility ran through the child.

In systemic therapy we call this triangulation: tension between two people is relieved by pulling in a third. In divorce, this third person most often has four faces.

• The messenger carries messages the parents can’t say to each other directly. Sometimes innocent (“say I’ll drop you off at six”), sometimes barbed (“tell him to pay the school fees if he cares so much about you”).
• The confidant listens to how deeply Mum has been hurt or how unfairly Dad behaved. Often this is the most mature, most “sensible” child in the family — and for exactly that reason the most burdened. When a child becomes a parent’s emotional support, we speak of parentification.
• The spy answers questions on returning: who was there, what you ate, whether Dad has a new girlfriend, what car he drives now.
• The judge has to decide who is to blame, or choose where to spend the holidays, knowing full well that one parent will suffer whatever they choose.

A child doesn’t take on any of these roles because they want to. They take them on because they love both parents and want there to be peace. But each takes away something that is theirs: carefreeness, room for their own grief, loyalty to both parents and the right to have both.

Why the trap is deeper when there is great wealth

None of the above is unique to wealthy families. But a few circumstances make the trap deeper.

The dispute lasts longer. When a company has to be valued, property in several countries divided or family holdings untangled, proceedings can drag on for years. A child who was at nursery when it began may be at school by the time it ends. Their entire early childhood unfolds in an atmosphere of waiting for the next hearing.

There are more people around the family. Nannies, housekeepers, grandparents, business partners, friends from the same circle. Any of them can unknowingly take sides — and the child senses it. If the nanny the child is attached to asks, after a weekend at Dad’s, “so how was it over there?”, with an edge in her voice, the triangle widens.

Reputation is at stake. When a family is publicly known, the pressure for everything to look orderly from the outside is enormous. This can mean the dispute is hidden in public and flares all the more at home. The child learns that there are two truths — one for outside and one for inside.

The child hears numbers. Adults often assume a child doesn’t understand sums of money. Perhaps they really don’t understand the amounts, but they understand the tone. When they hear that someone “wanted everything”, that the other “stole”, that someone “will be left with nothing”, they build a story about who is good and who is bad. And because they are half of one and half of the other, that story is always also a story about them.

Gifts, holidays and the contest for loyalty

One of the quieter forms of conflict in wealthy families is a competition in giving. One parent takes the child skiing abroad, the other buys a new bike. One throws a birthday party with entertainers, the other books a popular musician. From the outside it looks like generosity. But the child quickly works out that a gift is also a message — and that they are expected to tell the other parent how wonderful it was.

When gifts become a currency of loyalty, the child is in an impossible position. If they are delighted, they betray the other parent. If they aren’t, they disappoint the one who gave. Some children respond by becoming very careful and never showing anywhere what they really feel. Others learn that affection can be traded. Neither is a good preparation for relationships in adulthood.

This doesn’t mean a parent isn’t allowed to spoil a child after a divorce. It means it is worth asking who the gift is really for: the child who wants it, or the other parent who is meant to see it.

What gets said in front of the child

The hardest moments usually don’t happen in court but at home, when it seems the child isn’t listening. One of them might sound like this (a composite, not a real person):

Mum (on the phone, in the kitchen): “No, he’s not getting half of the company my father built. Let him sue me if he wants.”
Jakob (12, from the living room): “Mum, will we have to leave the house?”
Mum (after a short pause): “You heard that, didn’t you? I’m sorry. That’s a conversation between me and your dad, not something for you to worry about. The house isn’t at risk. And one more thing: what I said about your dad wasn’t fair. I’m angry, but he’s still your dad and he loves you.”

The mother in this scene didn’t get it perfect. The mistake had already happened — the child heard. But then she did three things that count: she acknowledged that he had heard, she returned the worry to where it belongs, and she repaired the picture of his father. Repair after a mistake is often more valuable to a child than there never having been a mistake, because it teaches them that adults can catch themselves.

Two separate tables: assets and children

An image I find particularly useful in divorce is that of two tables. At one, you negotiate about assets. At the other, you agree on the children. People can be hard, careful, even mistrustful at the first — and still cooperate at the second. The trouble starts when the tables get mixed up: when giving way on the schedule becomes currency for giving way on the house, or when a late payment is punished with a cancelled weekend.

The first table is not my field. Assets are for a lawyer and a notary; questions about children are decided by the court, and the social work centre can offer parents counselling and help in reaching an agreement. The second table, however, is a place where you can do a great deal yourselves or with a therapist’s help. It helps if the agreement is written down — the knowledge base has a template for a co-parenting agreement — and if it has clear rules for communication: what you write to each other about, how quickly you reply, what goes strictly between the two adults.

I have described how to go from being a couple to being a parenting team in more detail in Co-parenting after separation: how to stay a team when you are no longer a couple. How couples therapy can help you end well is the subject of When you decide to separate: couples therapy that helps you end well.

Exercise: a firewall around your child

You can do this exercise on your own, even if the other parent doesn’t take part. Take half an hour and a sheet of paper.

1. Write down every channel. List all the ways your child might find out about the dispute: phone calls at home, conversations in the car, papers left on the table, grandparents, the nanny, friends, the news. Don’t judge, just list.
2. Set one rule for each channel. For example: I only talk about assets when the child isn’t at home. I tell my parents we don’t discuss the divorce in front of the grandchildren. I write messages to the other parent myself, never through the child.
3. Prepare one sentence for the moment your child hears something anyway. Something along the lines of: “That’s between me and your dad. You don’t need to sort anything out. If something worries you, ask me.”
4. Check whether you are questioning your child. This week, notice every question you ask after they come back from the other home. Are you asking because you’re interested in your child — or because you’re interested in the other parent?
5. Fix one thing. Choose one channel that has been leaking and close it this week. Just one. Once that becomes a habit, choose the next.

The exercise doesn’t require you to stop seeing the other parent as an opponent. It only requires that your child isn’t on the battlefield.

For many parents the hardest part of this exercise is the second step — talking to their own parents or to the people who help with childcare. Grandparents are often hurt on behalf of their own child and unknowingly pour that hurt into their grandchild. When you tell them clearly what you need, you are actually giving them the chance to be on the grandchild’s side rather than on the side of one parent.

Where this doesn’t apply

Everything I have written assumes that both parents are safe and that between them there is a bitter but ordinary dispute. That isn’t always the case.

When there has been violence in the relationship — physical, psychological, economic or sexual — calls for cooperation are out of place. Then the first task is safety, not good relations. In Slovenia, the SOS helpline for women and children who are victims of violence is 080 11 55, and in an emergency the police on 113 or 112. Economic abuse is more common among wealthy couples than people think — when one partner controls all the money and uses it as a means of control.

When cooperation isn’t possible, because the other parent persistently undermines every agreement, parallel parenting is sometimes healthier: each parent runs their own home their own way, with minimal contact and everything in writing. It isn’t ideal, but it protects the child more than an endless search for common ground that ends in a row every time.

When the child is older, they have a right to be heard. Protecting a child from conflict doesn’t mean not asking what they want. It means their voice doesn’t become one parent’s weapon — and that in the end the decisions are made by the adults, not by them.

And finally: no article replaces legal advice. If you are wondering what you are entitled to, how to protect a company or how contact with the children will be arranged, the right place to go is a lawyer or a notary, and for questions about children also the social work centre.

What therapy can offer

In relational family therapy, in which I am training, divorce is seen as an event that concerns not just two people but the whole system — the children, the grandparents, even future partners. Christian Gostečnik describes how disputes often replay old patterns from our families of origin: the feeling that nobody saw you, that you had to earn everything, that what was yours was taken from you. Once these patterns are recognised, the fight over the house or the company often calms down, because it becomes clear that it was never only about the house.

You can come to therapy together, even if you have already decided to separate — not in order to stay together, but to part in such a way that in ten years’ time you can both sit at your child’s graduation. You can also come on your own if the other parent doesn’t want to. Sometimes it is enough for one parent to change for the child to have one home where the dispute stays outside the door. I also work with English-speaking clients.

If the divorce affects you as a loss and not only as a negotiation, you may find Divorce as grief helpful. How to tell your children that you are separating is covered in How to tell your children that their parents are separating.

What to remember

• After divorce, what harms a child more than the divorce itself is lasting conflict they are drawn into.
• With great wealth, the dispute lasts longer and has more witnesses — so the child needs to be protected more deliberately.
• A child must not be a messenger, confidant, spy or judge. All four roles take away something that is theirs.
• Keep the table for assets separate from the table for children. The first is for lawyers, notaries and the court; the second is for the two of you.
• If your child hears something anyway, repair is what counts: acknowledge it, return the worry to where it belongs, and don’t run down the other parent.