The goal of Collaborative Divorce is to assist people choosing to end their marriage without destroying their family in the process.
Q: What is a Collaborative Divorce?
A: The goal of Collaborative Divorce is to assist people choosing to end their marriage without destroying their family in the process. Collaborative Divorce is a dispute resolution process where spouses and their attorneys work together cooperatively to negotiate equitable settlements without going to court. The focus is on constructive problem solving based upon the divorcing couples’ individual and shared values rather than on adversarial bargaining and court imposed solutions. A Collaborative Divorce differs from a traditional divorce because in a collaborative divorce, there is not a financial incentive for a lawyer to go forward with contested issues. In fact, if the lawyer believes he or she must go forward with contested issues, each of the lawyers must ultimately withdraw from the client’s representation. The parties in the Collaborative Divorce always retain their ability to go forward with contested court proceedings — although this ends the collaborative divorce process and the lawyers must withdraw from the representation.
Collaborative Divorce is process in which you and your spouse will each have your own specially trained and experienced Collaborative Divorce attorney and work through the issues of your case using a method known as “interest-based negotiation,” which enables spouses to formulate agreements that focus on their most important individual and mutual goals.
It’s Confidential
Collaborative Divorce is a private and confidential process. Just as in a traditional divorce, each of you will have confidential conversations with your attorney and a strategy for accomplishing your goals in the case, but in the Collaborative Divorce process those goals are reached without destroying your relationship with your spouse or exhausting your community estate on a court battle. Collaborative Divorce professionals manage this confidential process — in an office rather than a courtroom setting — that provides the resources, structure and emotionally safe space needed for a divorcing couple to consider their unique situation and arrive at a mutually-agreeable settlement–outside the eye of the public.
It’s Client, Child and Family Centered
The Collaborative Divorce approach is a settlement process that focuses on helping couples and their families find their way to respectful resolution, creating an emotionally safe environment for the parties to express their interests and goals, negotiate and resolve their conflict without going to court.
The Collaborative Divorce process recognizes that, even though a marriage may be ending, relationships and obligations often continue, especially when children are involved. It allows spouses to formulate agreements that focus on their most important individual and mutual goals. This process helps all family members, even extended family, learn how to move forward in a positive way – focused on the future, rather than dwelling on arguments and disputes of the past.
The Collaborative Divorce process results in solutions that enables each person impacted by a divorce – especially children – to have the best post-divorce lives possible. Parents divorcing collaboratively are better able to protect their children from the damaging effects of a highly contentious divorce and preserve more of their mutual respect for each other as parents.
It’s Creative and Customized
Collaborative Divorce provides divorcing couples an innovative alternative to a traditional courtroom divorce. In Collaborative Divorce, control isn’t handed over to a judge unfamiliar with a couple’s or a family’s unique circumstances and who has a very limited time to hear their case. Instead, the divorcing couple works with specially trained Collaborative Divorce professionals — and without court interference — to arrive at a creative and customized solution, just for them, that will deliver the most positive outcome possible for the couple and the family.
It’s Out of Court
Most couples agree that they would prefer to work through the issues of their divorce outside the courtroom. In the Collaborative Divorce process, clients actually sign a contract that they promise to try to settle all the issues of their case outside of court and that they even promise not to threaten to go to court. When that threat is removed, clients are able to more comfortably and satisfactorily negotiate the issues in their case.
It’s Convenient
Collaborative Divorce operates on a family’s schedule. Couples have the flexibility to schedule meetings with their collaborative team when all participants are best able to meet, unlike the litigation process in which clients are subpoenaed for depositions and court hearings without consideration for their own schedules.
It’s Cost-Conscious
Collaborative Divorce is a more cost-effective and efficient process than a traditional divorce. It is structured so that divorcing couples work with specially trained professionals to resolve financial, parenting, and other pertinent issues. It’s a process that enables couples to invest directly in solutions rather than costly litigation.
