Why is Divorce different in "the bubble" of Highland Park, University Park, and Park Cities in Dallas?
Families in Highland Park and University Park face a divorce experience that is both legally complex and socially distinct from the rest of Dallas. This guide from The Ashmore Law Firm, P.C. — a family law firm serving the Park Cities and greater Dallas area for more than 30 years — covers how parents in HPISD communities can talk to children about divorce at each school stage, what co-parenting commitments protect children's wellbeing in a close-knit community, and how Texas law governs the assets most relevant to high-net-worth Park Cities families: the marital home, vacation properties, country club memberships, club sports and extracurricular costs, college tuition agreements, and child support when income is high. Managing Attorney Gary Ashmore leads the firm's family law practice with extensive experience in high-asset and complex divorce across Dallas and DFW.
Divorce is never simple. But in Highland Park and University Park, the stakes feel different in ways that generic divorce advice rarely acknowledges.
Your children's school is their entire social world. Their teammates, classmates, and neighbors all overlap. The family home may be the only one they have ever known. The life you have built together — the clubs, the travel teams, the traditions — is deeply woven into who they are as Park Cities kids. And in a community this interconnected, a divorce does not stay private for long.
Deciding how and when to tell your children you are divorcing is one of the most important conversations you will ever have. For high-net-worth families in the Park Cities, that conversation happens against a backdrop of financial complexity that requires just as much care as the emotional dimension — from what happens to the family home to how your children's club sports, private lessons, and college are addressed in the divorce settlement.
At The Ashmore Law Firm, we work with families across Highland Park, University Park, and the Park Cities every day. We see both sides — the human and the legal — and this article is written to help you navigate both.
PART ONE: TALKING TO YOUR CHILDREN ABOUT DIVORCE IN THE PARK CITIES
Choose the Right Moment — and Know Your Options
There is no single right way to have this conversation, and the approach that works for one family may not be appropriate for another. What matters most is that the conversation is intentional, calm, and centered on your children rather than on the conflict between parents.
Some families are able to tell their children together — both parents present, united in message if not in marriage. When the relationship between parents is functional and relatively cooperative, this can be a powerful signal to children that both parents remain a team for them even as the marriage ends. If this is possible for your family, it is worth considering.
In other situations, a joint conversation is not realistic or appropriate. If there has been a pattern of emotional control, intimidation, or volatile behavior, putting both parents in the same room for a high-stakes conversation can create more anxiety than it resolves — for the children and for the parent managing those dynamics. In those cases, one parent telling the children calmly and clearly, with the other parent following up separately, is a reasonable approach.
A third option, and one that family counselors in the Park Cities often recommend in higher-conflict situations, is having this conversation with professional support present — a child therapist or family counselor who can help structure the message and hold space for the children's reactions in real time. This is not a sign of failure. It is thoughtful parenting under difficult circumstances.
Whatever the approach, the timing matters. Not before school. Not the night before a major game or competition. Not in the middle of a conflict or an emotionally charged moment. Give your children space to ask questions and to feel what they feel without rushing them toward reassurance they are not ready to accept.
If you are looking for a family counselor in the University Park area experienced in helping families navigate this conversation, we are glad to make that connection.
We have referred clients to Corbella Counseling as well as Stanford Couples Counseling.
What to Say to Your Children About Getting a Divorce at Each Stage in HPISD:
Children need different things at different ages. Here is a general framework for HPISD families:
Elementary School — Bradfield, University Park Elementary, Hyer, Armstrong, and Boone
Younger children need concrete, simple reassurance more than explanation. The question they are really asking is: Will my life still be mine? Focus on what stays the same — the same school, the same teacher, the same friends, the same parents who love them. Avoid explaining why the marriage is ending. Young children do not need that information, and providing it rarely helps and sometimes harms.
Intermediate and Middle School — McCulloch Intermediate School (MIS) and Highland Park Middle School (HPMS)
HPISD's intermediate and middle school years are housed on the same campus — McCulloch Intermediate School (MIS) serving the intermediate grades and HPMS the middle school grades. Students at this stage are acutely aware of how they appear to peers, and in a community as socially interconnected as the Park Cities, your child may be genuinely worried about what their friends will think, what gets mentioned at the club, or whether their social world is about to fracture. Acknowledge this directly. It is okay for them to feel embarrassed or anxious about what others know. Let them know you will work to protect their privacy, and that managing the social dimension is your job, not theirs.
High School — Highland Park High School (HPHS)
Teenagers at HPHS are carrying a great deal — college applications, varsity sports, social pressures, developing identity. A parental divorce at this stage can feel destabilizing at exactly the wrong moment. Older children can handle more honesty, and they will fill in the gaps themselves if too much is left unsaid. What they need is clarity about what is changing and what is not, and genuine reassurance that their trajectory forward is still their own.
The HPISD Residency Issue Most Families Don't Think About Until It's Too Late
This is a practical legal issue that surfaces in Park Cities divorces more often than parents expect, and it is one that should be addressed in your parenting plan while both parents are still in agreement.
Enrollment in Highland Park ISD is tied to residency within the district's attendance zone. If one parent relocates outside HPISD boundaries — to another part of Dallas, to a different suburb, or to another county — the question of which parent's address governs school enrollment can become a genuine source of post-divorce conflict.
If keeping your children enrolled at HPISD matters to both of you, address it explicitly in the custody and conservatorship arrangement. Which parent's address will serve as the child's enrollment address? What happens if that parent later relocates? What triggers a renegotiation? These are questions that are far easier to resolve before the decree is signed than after.
Our attorneys regularly address school district residency as a specific term in parenting plans for Park Cities families. If your children's enrollment in HPISD is a priority, make sure it is protected in writing.
The Social Reality of Highland Park and University Park
Highland Park and University Park are remarkably small communities for how much happens within them. Families who have lived in the Park Cities for years know the same people across school, sports, neighborhood, and the country club. Your divorce will become known in the community — that is simply the nature of living here. What matters enormously is how it is managed.
How both parents conduct themselves at school events, games, and community gatherings shapes your children's experience of this transition far more than the community's awareness of it. Children in the Park Cities who watch their parents treat each other with basic civility at school events and sports — even when things are difficult between them — carry that forward. Children who watch their parents avoid each other, argue in parking lots, or signal hostility through body language carry that forward too, in a different way.
What Your Children Need Both Parents to Commit To
The legal and financial dimensions of a high-net-worth divorce require experienced professional guidance. The co-parenting dimension requires something different — a daily, deliberate commitment from both parents to protect their children from the weight of adult conflict.
The following principles are ones we share with the families we serve, drawn from the work of child specialists and family counselors who work alongside divorcing parents. They are straightforward to read and genuinely difficult to practice, particularly in the early months when emotions are at their most raw. The families who take them seriously see a real difference in how their children come through this experience.
Guidelines that Help with Navigating Divorce and Co-Parenting:
Do not speak critically of the other parent in your children's presence or hearing — not directly, not in passing, not through tone or implication. Children who hear one parent diminished by the other carry that conflict internally in ways that shape their sense of self, not only their relationships with each parent.
Allow your children to maintain warm relationships with the other parent's family and friends. The adults your children love on that side are not your adversaries, and treating them as such asks your children to make a loyalty choice they should never have to make.
Keep adult matters — the legal proceedings, the financial terms, the reasons the marriage ended — between adults. Children are not equipped to carry this information, and sharing it places a burden on them that belongs to you, not to them.
Do not discuss money, support amounts, or financial grievances within your children's hearing. Children who absorb the financial details of their parents' divorce frequently feel like a transaction rather than a person.
When your children return happy from time with the other parent, receive that happiness warmly. Their capacity to love both parents is healthy. It is not a verdict on either of you.
Honor the other parent's scheduled time and your children's right to direct contact with both of you. Blocking calls, limiting access, or encroaching on possession time — regardless of the grievance behind it — harms your children first.
Never argue with the other parent in your children's presence — not in person, and not on the phone within earshot. The anxiety children carry from witnessing parental conflict is among the most consistently documented harms in divorce research.
Do not use your children as information sources about the other parent's home, relationships, or daily life. Asking a child to report back places them in an impossible position between the two people they love most.
Do not ask your children to keep secrets from the other parent, and do not place them in the role of messenger — by word or in writing — between the two of you. Both create anxiety and erode the sense of safety children need in both homes.
Let your children share what they want to share about time with the other parent, without prompting or questioning. They will tell you what matters to them when they feel safe doing so.
Find your own support — through trusted friends, a therapist, a pastoral counselor, or a community — rather than turning to your children. They are not your confidants, and treating them as emotional equals places a burden on them they are not yet equipped to carry.
At school events, games, performances, and milestone moments, conduct yourselves as co-parents. Sitting on opposite sides of the room, refusing to acknowledge each other, or bringing visible tension to these occasions communicates to your children that their happiness comes at a cost. In a community as close-knit as Highland Park, this is also what others observe — and what your children see others observing.
Allow your children to move between both homes with their belongings, their comfort objects, and their sense of continuity intact. Both homes are real. Both matter. Children who hear one parent minimize or dismiss the other home frequently struggle to feel fully at home in either.
Do not put your children in the position of demonstrating or quantifying their love for you, and do not ask them where they want to live. These are adult decisions that belong to adults. Placing children at the center of them assigns them a role that is not theirs to play.
Give your children genuine, repeated permission to love both of you fully. And when life calls for flexibility in the schedule, extend it when you are reasonably able. The grace you show the other parent in small moments becomes part of what your children carry forward.
These principles are adapted from a co-parenting framework developed by child specialists and family mediators. Original framework: MediationMatters.com. We are grateful to the counselors and child professionals we work alongside who bring this guidance to life for the families we serve.
PART TWO: HIGH-NET-WORTH DIVORCE CONSIDERATIONS FOR PARK CITIES FAMILIES
The financial complexity of a Park Cities divorce is real and specific. Substantial real estate, investment portfolios, business interests, and lifestyle assets that feel like permanent fixtures — country club memberships, travel sports programs, vacation properties — all require careful attention and clear legal strategy. The decisions made here have long financial consequences, and the time to think through them carefully is before the decree is signed.
The Family Home
For most Park Cities families, the marital residence is not only the largest single asset — it is the center of the children's world. The decision of whether to keep the home, sell it, or negotiate a buyout is one of the most financially and emotionally significant choices in a high-asset divorce.
In Highland Park and University Park, where property values are among the highest in North Texas, the equity in the family home can represent a substantial share of the marital estate. If one spouse wants to remain in the home, a buyout requires an accurate appraisal and a realistic analysis of whether that spouse can carry the property independently — mortgage, taxes, insurance, and maintenance — over the long term.
There are also cases where parents agree to defer a sale until the children reach a certain age or until HPISD enrollment is no longer a factor. These deferred arrangements can work well when structured carefully; they can become contentious when they are not.
Our attorneys help clients think through the trade-offs between holding the home for continuity versus the financial flexibility that liquidating the asset provides — and we work with appraisers and financial advisors to make sure those trade-offs are evaluated with accurate numbers.
Vacation Properties and Second Homes
Many high-net-worth Park Cities families own vacation properties — a lake house on Lake Travis or Possum Kingdom, a mountain property in Colorado, a beach house on the Texas coast or beyond. These properties often carry substantial emotional weight alongside their financial value, and in a divorce, both dimensions need to be addressed.
In Texas, vacation properties acquired during the marriage are generally community property subject to characterization and division. Whether a property was purchased before marriage, acquired with separate property funds, or received as a gift affects how it is characterized. Rental income generated during the marriage, appreciation in value, and improvements made with marital funds all factor into the analysis.
Practical questions — who uses the property during proceedings, who pays the mortgage and carrying costs in the interim, and what happens if one spouse wants to sell while the other does not — should be addressed in temporary orders as early as possible.
Our team works with forensic accountants and certified appraisers to ensure vacation properties are accurately valued and strategically addressed in your settlement.
One important distinction worth flagging here: if the property your family has used throughout the marriage belongs to your spouse's parents or extended family — or was personally inherited by your spouse — different legal rules apply. Property owned by your ex's family cannot be divided by a Texas court, and property your spouse inherited is their separate property, not subject to community claims. However, parents can agree in a parenting plan to specific provisions for the children's continued access to those properties, and in some cases where marital funds paid years of carrying costs or improvements on an inherited property, there may be reimbursement considerations that affect the overall settlement. If this situation applies to your family, the legal and practical path forward looks different from standard vacation property division.
Club Sports, Travel Teams, and Competitive Extracurriculars
This is one of the most frequently contested financial issues in high-income Park Cities divorces — and one that most general divorce resources do not address with the specificity this community requires.
Travel lacrosse, competitive tennis, club soccer, elite gymnastics, select baseball, YBOA basketball, competitive dance — the cost of these programs in Highland Park and University Park is significant. Families commonly spend thousands of dollars per year, per child, on participation fees, travel, equipment, coaching, and tournaments. In many cases, these programs are not a luxury — they are a core part of how your children identify themselves and how they are preparing for high school athletics and college recruitment.
Standard Texas child support guidelines do not specifically allocate for extracurricular expenses. However, parents can agree — and courts can order in appropriate cases — additional expense-sharing arrangements for specific activities, above and beyond guideline support amounts.
If your children are currently enrolled in competitive programs that both parents have historically supported, make sure those expenses are specifically addressed in your settlement. Leaving extracurricular costs to "work out later" frequently leads to conflict.
Country Club and Athletic Club Memberships
Club memberships in the Park Cities carry both financial and social significance. Equity memberships — particularly at premier Dallas-area country clubs — can represent substantial assets that require proper valuation and allocation as part of the property settlement.
Beyond the financial questions, there are practical ones that arise during proceedings: Who retains membership and use? Can the non-retaining spouse maintain access while the divorce is pending? What happens to the children's access to club facilities, swim team, and junior golf programs? And what are the transfer rules and timing if a membership is being reassigned?
These questions are best resolved as part of the comprehensive property settlement rather than addressed ad hoc after the fact, when negotiating leverage has diminished.
College Tuition: What Texas Law Does and Does Not Require
This is an area where Park Cities families are frequently surprised — and where planning ahead makes an enormous difference.
Texas courts generally cannot order a parent to pay for college after a child turns 18. For high-income families in the Park Cities, many of whom simply assume that a well-earning spouse will be required to contribute to their children's education, this can be a significant revelation.
What Texas law does allow is for both parents to reach a contractual agreement — incorporated into the divorce decree — that obligates one or both parents to contribute to college expenses. These provisions can address tuition, room and board, fees, books, and can include cost caps, specific school criteria, or GPA requirements.
For Park Cities families with teenagers at or approaching college age, negotiating a college support provision before the decree is finalized is one of the most important steps you can take. Once the decree is signed and your child turns 18, this window closes. It cannot be reopened through the courts.
Child Support When Income Is High
Texas child support is calculated as a percentage of the obligor's net monthly resources, up to a statutory cap set by the guidelines. For high-income earners — executives, business owners, physicians, professionals — income substantially above the guideline cap means that standard formula calculations do not automatically apply. Courts have discretion above the cap to consider the proven needs of the children and the standard of living established during the marriage.
In high-income Park Cities divorces, lifestyle analysis, budgeting for children's established expenses, and documentation of actual monthly costs all become relevant components of establishing appropriate support. This is where working with a forensic accountant alongside experienced family law attorneys makes a material difference.
Privacy in a High-Asset Park Cities Divorce
For many high-net-worth families in Highland Park and University Park, privacy is not a preference — it is a genuine concern. Court proceedings are public record, and a contested divorce that goes to trial can expose sensitive financial details, business interests, and personal matters in ways that are difficult to undo.
Mediation and collaborative divorce offer meaningful paths to resolution that protect privacy. In mediation, both parties work with a neutral third party to reach agreements outside of open court proceedings. Collaborative divorce involves a structured team — attorneys, financial specialists, and sometimes mental health professionals — working together toward resolution without litigation.
For families who need the formality of a judicial process but want to maintain confidentiality,private judging under Texas Chapter 151 is another option — a retired judge is retained by agreement of both parties, and proceedings remain private.
The decisions made during a high-net-worth divorce in Highland Park or University Park will shape your children's lives and your financial future for years to come. From how you first tell your children to how your property settlement is structured, the details matter — and the time to address them carefully is before the decree is finalized.
At The Ashmore Law Firm, our team of Dallas family law attorneys has guided Park Cities families through the full range of complex divorce issues — from conservatorship and school enrollment planning to forensic accounting, club membership valuation, and college tuition agreements. We take a team approach to every case, combining decades of experience with the personal attention that high-stakes matters require.
We invite you to schedule a confidential consultation to discuss your situation. If you are already working with an attorney and have concerns about how your case is being handled, a divorce strategy session may be the right first step.
Call 214-559-7202 or contact us online. Our family law team serves clients throughout Highland Park, University Park, the Park Cities, Dallas, Plano, Frisco, and the greater DFW area.
