The Upspring

The Upspring Hi, I'm Marnie. I'm a Family Dispute Resolution Practitioner who provides mediation with specific support to separated parents who need to get on with life.

There’s a conversation many separated parents never have about their children’s expenses.It's obviously not because the ...
02/09/2026

There’s a conversation many separated parents never have about their children’s expenses.

It's obviously not because the expenses don’t matter.

But because the conversation can feel difficult.

School costs. Sport. Tutoring. Activities. Medical expenses. The things that keep arriving as your children grow.

Sometimes one parent simply keeps paying.

Sometimes both parents have very different ideas about what is reasonable.

And sometimes nobody knows how to start the conversation without reopening everything else.

This is exactly the conversation I want to help you prepare for.

One Childhood is my free live workshop for separated parents who want a clearer, more constructive way to approach sharing their children’s expenses.

Friday 11 September at 12:30pm AEST, on Zoom.

Replay included.

Save your place: https://program.theupspring.com.au/one-childhood-workshop

02/09/2026

You’ve separated. You’ve sorted the big things.

Then the school fees, sport, tutoring and activities keep coming.

Who pays for what?

And how do you have that conversation without it becoming another battle?

This is a conversation separated parents struggle with again and again.

The costs are real. The children still have needs. And yet the arrangements between two households can leave some expenses sitting in a grey area.

As a Mediator, I know how much easier these conversations become when a parent comes prepared.

That’s what I’m teaching in One Childhood, a free live workshop about preparing to share your children’s expenses.

Friday 11 September
12:30pm AEST
Live on Zoom
Free, with replay included

Register via the link in my bio or here:

https://program.theupspring.com.au/one-childhood-workshop

A quick word for the parent who read "negotiate your children's expenses" and thought, you haven't met my ex.I work with...
31/08/2026

A quick word for the parent who read "negotiate your children's expenses" and thought, you haven't met my ex.

I work with tricky exes for a living. What surprises people is how often the conversation moves anyway, once one parent walks in properly prepared.

The full cost picture on one page, a fair child-first frame, and options instead of an ultimatum. Preparation works even when the other parent is a long way from reasonable, because the first move belongs to you, and it can be made well.

One Childhood is my free live workshop on exactly this preparation. One hour on Friday 11 September at 12:30pm AEST, cameras off, first names only, questions answered privately.
Save your seat: https://program.theupspring.com.au/one-childhood-workshop

21/08/2026

The free checklist of what actually adds up over a childhood and 5 ways to share it all. The Children’s Expenses Checklist, link in bio.

A lot of negotiation advice online is really instruction on how to get the upper hand.Say this. Do that. Get them to agr...
12/08/2026

A lot of negotiation advice online is really instruction on how to get the upper hand.

Say this. Do that. Get them to agree without them noticing what you did.

I work differently.

Here's a move I teach. When you're asking the other parent to share a cost, connect the cost to something you both want for your child, rather than arguing about the dollar figure alone.

For example:

“The school fees have gone up by $2,000. You need to pay half.”

Instead try:

“We both want her to be able to stay at this school. The fees have gone up by $2,000, so we need to work out how we're going to share that.”

The difference is subtle, but important.

You're reminding both of you that there's a shared goal here. You're not trying to win an argument about $2,000. You're trying to solve a problem together.

And I'm not going to leave you with a technique and tell you to trust me that it works.

I'll explain why it works, what it's doing in the conversation, and when it is and isn't appropriate to use.

That's how I teach negotiation.

No tricks. No hidden moves. No trying to outsmart the other parent.

Just practical strategies you can understand, see in action and use deliberately.

Because when you're going to have an ongoing relationship with someone as your child's other parent, I don't think the goal should be to manoeuvre them into agreement.

The goal is to negotiate well enough that you can both see how you got there.

When parents picture sharing children's costs, they picture two options. Split everything down the middle, or fight abou...
09/08/2026

When parents picture sharing children's costs, they picture two options. Split everything down the middle, or fight about each invoice as it arrives.

There are at least five ways to do it, and none is the single correct answer.

A joint account you both pay into. One parent pays and the other reimburses. You each take whole categories, one takes sport, the other takes music. A fixed amount each month. Or the one that holds the others together is agree before the money is spent, not after.

The relief is not in any one method. It’s in realising you get to choose the one that fits your two households, instead of defaulting to the one that causes the most friction.

The free checklist walks through all five, with the full cost map behind them. It's in the comments.

When we imagine a hard money conversation going well, we picture the right words. The clever line. The perfect way to ph...
08/08/2026

When we imagine a hard money conversation going well, we picture the right words. The clever line. The perfect way to phrase it.

The words matter far less than what happens before them.

What carries these conversations is preparation. Knowing your own numbers. Knowing what you actually need, underneath what you are asking for. Having thought through what the other parent might be worried about, and what you will do if you cannot reach agreement in the room.

Walk in prepared and you no longer need a perfect sentence, because you are not improvising under pressure. You stand firm with what you know to be true. This steadiness carries a conversation further than any script ever will.

Much of what I do with parents happens before they sit down together. Not just rehearsing lines. Building the ground they stand on.

What is the one conversation you have been putting off because you are not sure what you would say?

The divorce internet runs on one idea. Your ex is the problem. It is a profitable idea, and a lot of the time, it is the...
08/08/2026

The divorce internet runs on one idea. Your ex is the problem. It is a profitable idea, and a lot of the time, it is the wrong one.

What I see more often is two parents who both love their children, both believe they are being fair, and still cannot agree.

Why?
They are each holding a different picture of what that childhood costs.
Neither picture is complete.

When something is open to interpretation, we tend to interpret it in ways that make sense from our own perspective. Often sincerely. Often without noticing.

So you can both be acting reasonably and still arrive at a different number.
That changes the question.

Instead of "Who is being unreasonable?", the more useful question becomes:
"Are we actually working from the same picture?"

Once you can both see the same full picture, the conversation becomes something you can actually solve.

Of course, not every situation is like this. If your situation involves safety, coercive control or other serious concerns, the approach needs to be different and I can certainly help you with that.

For the more common situation of two parents who cannot agree on what the children cost, start by building the shared picture.

My free Children's Expenses Checklist will help you do that.

Link in the comments.

Two parents, both acting in good faith, can look at the same even split and each come away feeling they were handed the ...
07/08/2026

Two parents, both acting in good faith, can look at the same even split and each come away feeling they were handed the short end.

There's a name for it. The egocentric bias. When something is open to interpretation, we each read it slightly in our own favour, sincerely, without noticing we're doing it. You are being reasonable. So are they. You're simply each standing in a different spot.

This is why a number that looks fair on paper can still land as an argument. Two people can look at the very same figure and genuinely see two different things.

When I prepare parents for a money conversation, naming this early tends to change the temperature in the room. Once you can see the bias sitting between you, a disagreement stops feeling like proof that the other person is acting in bad faith. It becomes something you can work with.

A question for you. When a fair offer still causes a fight, what do you think is really going on underneath it?

When the other party goes quiet, most people assume the worst.The research suggests something more useful.Delays in nego...
19/04/2026

When the other party goes quiet, most people assume the worst.

The research suggests something more useful.

Delays in negotiation are rarely caused by a single factor. Conflict resolution research identifies four distinct causes of silence, each with different signals and a different effective response.

The distinction matters, because the response that works for a power strategy is the wrong response for fear and vice versa.
Most people treat all four as one problem. That is usually why the response makes things worse rather than better.

Swipe through for the framework. The link Your Upspring newsletter is in the comments. It goes deeper on each cause and what to do with what you find.

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