What is Collaborative Divorce?

Collaborative Divorce is a team approach to divorce using a friendly and collaborative process that keeps you in control of your future and maintains what is most important: family, finances, and emotional health. Collaborative Divorce is a “process” option, offering an alternative to either mediation or litigation. In a Collaborative Divorce, each person is represented by their own specially trained collaborative attorney. The participants and their attorneys pledge in writing to stay out of court and to participate in the process in good faith, including voluntarily sharing all relevant information. The attorneys, parties, and other professionals on the team work together to achieve the best possible outcome for all involved.

The Role of Lawyers in Collaborative Divorce

The Collaborative Divorce process is based on providing the parties the support and information they need to best be able to make decisions for their family. Each party hires their own trained collaborative lawyer who acts as their counsel and advocate. However, the lawyers in a Collaborative Divorce take a much different approach than they would in traditional litigation. Rather than each side starting off in an adversarial position, the lawyers’ objective is to help their clients work together to reach a resolution.

As part of the collaborative agreement, the parties and their attorneys agree not to litigate, or threaten to litigate, while working through the collaborative process. The parties, and all the professionals participating, commit to the process and agree to have resolution and cooperative negotiations be the focus. If the parties are not able to reach agreement, or if either party chooses to go to court, then both attorneys must withdraw and the clients must hire new counsel for litigation. This part of the agreement ensures that everyone at the table is focused solely on helping the parties resolve their case.

The Team Approach: Financial Neutrals, Coaches, and Child Specialists

Many of the decisions and issues to be resolved in a divorce are not legal ones. Questions of how best to create a parenting plan for your children, how to afford two households, and how to work together as co-parents when the case is over are issues that are not fully decided by laws. In most collaborative cases, the parties will choose to use other professionals, in addition to their attorneys, to help them when addressing some of those non-legal concerns.

The most common other participants in a Collaborative Divorce are the Financial Neutral, the Coach(es) and the Child Specialist. The Financial Neutral is a collaboratively trained financial planner or CPA who works with both parties to efficiently gather and then share relevant information and documentation regarding assets and income. The Financial Neutral also helps the parties and their attorneys develop and analyze viable financial options, and may prepare business valuations or long-range projections regarding the future effect of alternative settlement scenarios.

A collaborative Coach is a licensed mental health professional who is trained in the collaborative process; sometimes each party has their own Coach and sometimes one Coach is hired jointly to support the parties and process. The Collaborative Coach facilitates an honest dialogue about each divorcing individual’s emotional and material needs and goals.

The Child Specialist is typically a child therapist with extensive experience in separation and divorce. They are a neutral member of the team, not an advocate or custody evaluator. Their role is to gather information about the child(ren)’s emotional state and experience, and to bring that information to you for use in the collaborative process.

Benefits of Collaborative Divorce

The benefits of a Collaborative Divorce are not only in the process itself, but are in the lasting effects of having treated each other respectfully and with dignity during an incredibly difficult transition. The collaborative process allows families to continue, even when a marriage has ended. Couples come to the decision to divorce for many different reasons. In litigated cases, these reasons often become the focus of the battle. In a Collaborative Divorce, the focus is not on blame or judgement, but is instead on creating a supportive team approach to help the family through this life-changing event. The process respects privacy, empowers parties to problem solve, and allows them to begin to communicate and work together in a new forum.