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Marital Infidelity Affects Children

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photo by Arvind Balaraman

The reasons for your divorce or break up are between you and your spouse, but even if you try to keep infidelity under wraps and your divorce is not front page headlines, it still has an impact on your kids. Even if you don’t tell your kids about infidelity, they are likely to find out if they are old enough to understand, simply by overhearing arguments between parents or conversations you have with other people. Kids react in individual ways, but the following reactions are almost universal.

Embarrassment

Kids whose parents are unfaithful often feel deeply shamed by the situation. A parent has done something that deeply hurt the other parent, and which is considered a no-no by society. Kids are afraid people will talk about the situation and that by being part of the family your child will be tainted by association.

Confusion

Kids are expected to follow the rules, so why can parents break them? That is a question kids ask themselves or even you, as they try to work their way through the situation. It’s not uncommon for children to react by testing the rules themselves to see what they can get away with.

Disgust

Anything that has to do with parents and sex is just gross as far as your child is concerned and a situation that calls attention to the fact that a parent is actually having sex is beyond what any kid wants to think about.

Anger

A common reaction is anger – often at both parents. The cheating parent is easy to blame because he or she took action that ended the marriage and hurt everyone involved in the situation. Kids will frequently freeze this parent out or rage at him or her. It’s also not unusual to blame the non-cheating parent, believing that he or she could have done something that would have prevented the cheating, like being more loving, working harder to please the other spouse, etc.

Distrustfulness

When a parent betrays the entire family, children frequently experience doubt that they can trust anyone ever again. If a parent broke trust with the family, who can you rely on? Children will experience insecurity in all of their relationships. Teens may find it hard to trust members of the opposite sex and say that love is not worth the risk.

How to Help

You can’t undo what has happened, but you can get your child into therapy to help work through the issues. Be available to listen to your child. Let him or her talk and just listen. It’s also important that both parents talk about the situation, as hard as that may be. The cheating parent may be met with silence or ignored, but it is important to apologize for the hurt that has been caused and offer to talk about it with the child in therapy. The non-cheating parent is often in a better situation to have a conversation with the child. It’s hard to do, but the best course is to emphasize that this happened between the parents and does not affect the relationship and the love between the cheating parent and the child. As with all divorces, it takes time for your child to accept what has happened and move forward. Being supportive through this process is the best thing you can do.

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Tax Time

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photo credit: Arvind Balaraman

Taxes are on everyone’s minds as we inch towards April 15. As if taxes weren’t complicated enough, being a divorced parent adds another wrinkle to the process.

Child Exemptions

At this time of year, I get a lot of questions about the dependency exemption for children and which parent gets to claim it. Your divorce decree may specify how this exemption is to be taken. Some parents alternate years. Sometimes one parent always gets it. So, first check your divorce decree. You should follow what it orders. However, you are permitted to change this if you both agree to do so. You may be in a situation where one parent earns a lot more than the other this year and the exemption will be of more value to that parent (always check with your tax preparer to find out if and how you will benefit from taking the exemption). If you want to shift the exemption to the other parent, there is an IRS form that allows you to do so.

Default Rule

If your divorce decree does not specify which parent gets the exemption, the IRS does. According to the IRS, the parent who has the child for the most nights in the year is the parent entitled to take the exemption. Period. It has nothing to do with who pays child support or how much is paid or what kinds of expenses the child has. This is the default rule to follow.

Head of Household Status

Head of household status is separate from the dependency exemption. Even if your ex takes the dependency exemption, you may qualify for head of household if your child lived with you more than half the time, you paid more than half of your household expenses, and you are unmarried. As always, check with your tax preparer to make sure you qualify.

MSAs and HSAs

Although the IRS has a hard and fast 50% rule for the dependency exemption, it is possible for both parents to claim children for the purposes of Medical Savings Accounts (MSAs) and Health Savings Accounts (HSAs). If you have one of these employer-provided benefits, check with your tax preparer about claiming your child.

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