COLLABORATIVE LAW--NOT
JUST ANOTHER CHOICE, BUT THE RIGHT CHOICE
WHAT IS COLLABORATIVE LAW?
Collaborative Law also known as Collaborative Divorce, is a process occurring
in a safe environment that enables parties involved in a dissolution of a marriage or partnership, and any other family law
or civil matters, to be represented by specially trained lawyers and other mental health and financial professionals to help
them resolve their differences in a non-adversarial setting. The process utilizes interest based negotiation and allows
the parties to focus on the needs and interests of all family members. The resulting agreement reflects a win-win for
both parties. The process operates in an environment grounded in good faith, cooperation, integrity, honesty and professional
ethics. The process enables the parties to avoid the increasing hostility caused and encouraged by litigation and collaborative
law succeeds because the parties and their counsel are committed to incorporating reasonableness into achieving settlement.
Everyone, including the lawyers, are focused on creating a stable, fair, legal Agreement together.
New methods of communication and problem-solving must be achieved since during
the partnership old methods have failed. The collaborative professionals participate in separate meetings with the clients
as well as joint meetings. Each client has his or her own attorney to represent his or her interests but they try to
be partners rather than adversaries in keeping the environment a safe place for each client to express his or her own desires,
goals and needs without being judged by the other party.
Mental health professionals may be used to aid the clients in dealing with emotional
issues, learning these new communication skills, seeing the benefit of trust-building, and coaching the clients to understand
that child-related decisions must be made with each child's individual and developmental needs in mind.
One fianancial
professional assists the lawyers and the parties in obtaining all of the necessary financial information and to help design
financial strategies that maximize the financial benefits for the entire family who no longer have just one household, but
two.
To maximize the potential for creative problem-solving and amicable resolution without any behind the scenes threat
of court, each client contracts with his or her attorey not to engage in litigation. There is a promise that if good-faith
negotiating fails after all efforts at consensus-building are explored, or if any party fails to disclose all pertinent information,
then the collaborative process ends. Under the Collaborative contract (Participation Agreement), all communications
which occur during collaborative meetings, and documents provided, as well as the use of collaborative attorneys and other
professionals are precluded from participation or admissibility in any future litigation. The collaborative attorneys
must withdraw and new counsel for each party must be retained. All professionals involved in the collaborative process
are precluded from being involved in the litigation process or subpoenaed by either party.
HOW THE COLLABORATIVE TEAM WORKS
Collaborative Teams are a multi-disciplinary approach
to helping familes make decisions related to separation and divorce. The couple has access to a team of professionals,
each specializing in a different field of expertise. The collaborative team model uses licensed mental health professionals
as coaches for the partners, child psychologists to give the children a voice in the process, and a financial specialist (such
as a certified financial practitioner) as a neutral to help advise the parties on the impact of their financial decisions.
All the professionals involved have special collaborative and mediation training to help them take a holistic view of the
family's needs.
The TEAM CONCEPT
benefits the clients and the whole family by:
- Allowing maximum input of information needed to make good decisions
Sharing knowledge is how things get done. When people
get together, interact, and talk, they achieve results
- Providing an open, non-judgmental process that will accommodate changing circumstances as the family
grows and changes after the divorce
- The clients are able to see
techniques to respond to anger, grief, fear and other feelings without allowing these feelings to drive the dispute-resolution
process
- Helping the clients learn to recognize, understand and
accept that their feelings are present but that they should articulate their real needs and interests instead of feelings
which interfere with progress
Tough problems can be solved through adaptation when
impasses are reached. This requires the clients to get outside of their past roles and to find new ways to listen and
learn--to develop new ways of knowing, by partnering with the other party to help create new possibilities, compromises, and
creative alternatives
- Providing resources so clients can listen and understand the needs and goals of each other without dwelling on the
past
All of the members of the team engage in coaching. They encourage the clients to work as an integral part of
the team. Coaching is designed to create the possibility for new and different results. The team allows
clients to question and clarify their true priorities and facilitate the parties to distill and expand their thinking about
how each client must help the other meet their collective priorities together
- Creating an atmosphere for negotiations
that lets the clients retain the residual core of positive connection for those with children who will share life milestones
in the future or for those without children who still might share a deep bond with the extended family of the ex-spouse or
just want to be allowed to remember the value of the past and part with respect and dignity
Creating an environent that fosters feelings of human decency and self respect
Clients often leave the collaborative process having learned
how to compromise, how to see the needs of others, experience success, learn new problem-solving techniques and better communication
skills, feel optimism that together they can work in the future for a new type of family relationship and be better at co-parenting.
AVOID BEING PULLED INTO
THE WHIRLPOOL OF THE COURT SYSTEM
CHOOSE COLLABORATIVE DIVORCE, THE NO-COURT ALTERNATIVE
