Divorce in the workplace
Uncoupled colleagues
November 1, 2000
Web posted at: 6:38 p.m. EST (2338 GMT)
By Larry Keller
CNN.com/career Senior Writer
(CNN) -- "I think they've handled it better than most people," says Monica Collins, the rival Boston Herald's TV critic. "But I think it makes viewers uncomfortable."
Like members of a family rocked when the parents' marriage comes apart, many viewers of Boston's NewsCenter 5 evening broadcasts didn't find it easy to get over a shocker of a local news story: The ABC affiliate's popular longtime husband-and-wife co-anchors had separated.
To some, Chet Curtis and Natalie Jacobson are as synonymous with Boston as Paul Revere, the Charles River, the Red Sox and the ongoing saga of the "Big Dig" road-and-tunnel project. When their marital breakup was announced in December, it seemed as unthinkable as a Lucille Ball-Desi Arnaz divorce had been to an older generation.
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"Most people aren't able to handle it. When people are working together, there's not a lot of time for healing because the wound is constantly being re-opened."
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— Bill Ferguson, "How To Heal a Painful Relationship"
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But after spending 27 years together on the air and 24 years as man and wife, Curtis' and Jacobson's parting is every bit as real as that of Lucy and Desi's.
For some eight months, Curtis and Jacobson continued to share the anchor desk. Then he was moved to a Sunday night slot; she kept the 5 p.m. and 6 p.m. newscasts but not the 11 p.m. the two had co-anchored.
"They've always exemplified professionalism," says Don Aucoin, television critic for the Boston Globe, "and they continue to do so."
While Boston media have reported changes of house and home for the two news personalities, Jacobson and Curtis are widely seen as having shown a grace that may be the exception, not the rule, when it comes to marital breakups among co-workers.
"Most people aren't able to handle it," says Bill Ferguson, a former divorce attorney who's now a Houston relationships consultant and author ("How To Heal a Painful Relationship," Return to the Heart books, 1999). "When people are working together, there's not a lot of time for healing because the wound is constantly being re-opened."
Divorce attorney Donald C. Schiller agrees. "Generally speaking, if people can't stay married, they're better off not staying in the workplace together," says Schiller, a partner in Schiller, Du Canto and Fleck. That Chicago firm is one of the United States' largest practices devoted to matrimonial law.
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"Co-workers can take sides. That really can mess up an office."
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— Bill Ferguson, "How To Heal a Painful Relationship"
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"You've got all that baggage that's not business-related," Schiller says. "It creates inflammatory opportunities you don't want in the workplace. In today's environment, it could very well be fraught with dangers such as sexual harassment charges."
If neither spouse in an acrimonious breakup wants to leave the company, Schiller suggests that one of them at least try to transfer to another division or department.
The marital separation may be toxic to more than the couple. Its emotions can spread through a workplace. "Co-workers can take sides," Ferguson says. "That really can mess up an office."
Coping with couples working in the same office is a delicate issue for companies, at best. Ferguson says it's illegal to refuse employment to someone because of marital status, but it's less clear whether it's legal to turn down an applicant whose spouse already works for the company.
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MESSAGE BOARD
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Of course, many couples don't become couples until after they meet at work. Some firms institute an employee non-fraternization policy in an attempt to nip the bloom of office romances in the bud, says Melissa Calhoon, a San Francisco attorney specializing in labor and employment law.
Companies sometimes bar partners from being in a "report to" relationship with each other at work. And management still can transfer workers to another department -- or even fire them -- if their breakups are deemed to be affecting their productivity.
"It's a performance issue," Calhoon says.
Nan DeMars, a Minneapolis-based office ethics consultant, lecturer, author and Internet columnist, recommends that co-workers whose personal relationships are dissolving declare a truce at work.
• Don't complain to colleagues about problems with an ex, she advises. "Keep your personal relationships out of the office." Even when they're going well.
• Be cordial to an ex. "That's part of being professional."
• If an ex is making life miserable at work, have a candid talk with your boss about the problem. "So you both don't get fired. Just make sure you behave professionally."
Ferguson adds his advice to couples that as rough as a breakup is, each partner has to accept responsibility for his or her part in it and for how to treat an ex in the future.
"As bad as things may be," he says, "you have the ability to make them much worse"
Although a breakup with a colleague may seem unimaginably torturous to most of us, some couples manage to muddle through.
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"We parted on real good terms and remained friends. She's friends with my current wife and we all get together when she's in town."
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— Dan Norman, Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel"
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Dan Norman, deputy managing editor for features and sports, at the Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel in South Florida, was married to the paper's fashion writer, Elizabeth Snead. She took another job and they divorced, but Snead later returned to the paper and to Norman's department, while not reporting directly to him. Snead subsequently left again for another job.
"I'd say, 'If you want to go for it, go for it,'" Norman says.
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QUICK VOTE
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Working so close to his former spouse was not a problem, he says. Not even when male co-workers occasionally inquired as to whether Norman objected to them asking Snead for a date.
"We parted on real good terms and remained friends. She's friends with my current wife and we all get together when she's in town."
Schiller, the divorce lawyer, says he recalls that after a Chicago television news couple separated, the woman continued to produce her former husband's show. In another case Schiller cites, the CEO of a company and his wife, an executive with the same firm, divorced but continued working with the firm for several years.
A financial incentive might also hasten the healing for co-worker couples on the outs. Ferguson is counseling an estranged couple and the husband's girlfriend, and all three remain colleagues at the same company.
"They're all about five years away from retirement and none of them wants to give it up," Ferguson says.
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Are you involved in divorce proceedings with a co-worker? If so, how do you see your career's future?
