Ending the Failed Project of the Lovesome -- Holistic Divorce with Collaborative Family Law

Separation and divorce are times of psychic turbulence, emotional imbalance, and enormous stress. The process indicates the failure of a project that began with passion, during which intimate weaknesses and injuries were entrusted to another. Divorce marks a personal failure, a breakdown in communication, and misreading of character, often giving rise to questions of judgment.

The traditional legal process of divorce court often adds another component: hostility. When spouses – already feeling they have failed in love – enter a court battle, they risk further loss, heightening the sense of a fight that someone wins and someone loses. Actually, the pain and injury of a “bad divorce” can arise from husband and wife giving up control over their decision-making and relying too much on others – especially in a courtroom divorce – to solve problems best resolved by the parties themselves.

Fortunately, a heartening alternative to divorce litigation now exists. Collaborative family law is for couples who prefer to legally end their marriage quickly, efficiently, and without avoidable cost.

The collaborative family law process gives an all-inclusive answer to the complex process of separation and divorce. The collaborative process involves two lawyers working together with the two spouses to resolve the divorce issues. This allows the divorcing couple to spare themselves, their families, and their children the effects of a lengthy courtroom battle. By prohibiting themselves from representing the spouses in open court, the collaborative lawyers dedicate themselves to finding creative, mutually beneficial solutions tailored to the unique needs of the spouses and their children.

During any divorce, important and complicated legal questions arise. Who gets custody of the children? How will visitation be arranged? How much child support is fair, and who should pay? Is alimony appropriate? What about the cars, the house, and the financial accounts? And how are potential tax traps avoided?

Divorce lawyers know the governing laws and possible results if a trial ensues. In addition, divorce lawyers are accustomed to the heavy negotiation required in contentious family disputes. The collaborative process offers the security and benefits of having legal counsel by your side, but without the threat of a battle that one – or both – of the spouses is going to lose. And because the parties in the collaborative process are not bound by the schedule of overburdened, under-funded courts, the spouses and attorneys decide when and where to meet. Thus, collaborative divorces typically come to completion much more quickly (and economically) than litigated divorces, usually taking months rather than years. Collaborative family lawyers can level the playing field, while avoiding much of the substantial expense and the lengthy process that burden divorce litigation.

To begin the collaborative family law process, each party hires an attorney. Next, husband, wife, and both attorneys sign a contract committing to a peaceful, joint resolution of the family’s issues. The contract prohibits these attorneys from representing these clients in any related family litigation. The essential key to collaborative law is that a courtroom battle is voluntarily rejected. Why reject the court? Though courts can be powerful arbiters, family litigation is frequently a lose-lose prospect when judges are asked to solve problems for which they are not well-equipped – problems with purely emotional, rather than legal, foundations. Instead of having your day in court, you may feel that the court had its day on you. Thus, collaborative law is revolutionary in that the lawyers agree not to use their prevailing tool, the court. Removing this tool shifts the focus onto settlement rather than battlement. As the founder of the collaborative movement, Stu Webb, says, “If you’re a hammer, everything looks like a nail.” Removing the option of litigation requires everyone to work harder at working together and developing creative, win-win solutions for the family. The lawyers are working toward a fair, mutual settlement – not toward anger and judgment.

In the collaborative process, parties retain control by engaging in four-way meetings, during which resolution is discussed reasonably. The wife and husband are essential to the process. As such, the collaborative approach allows for thorough consideration of the issues, since the people who know all the facts are the people making the decisions. The lawyers keep the process productive, giving legal counsel when necessary – in a word, collaborating. Both short-term and long-term decisions are made by the couple, after full disclosure and contemplation, realizing that decisions made during a divorce can be life-changing.

Most divorcing couples are guided by an emotional compass. This is natural; logic alone does not typically drive us. But often in family battles, anger overrides reason, and a husband or wife may choose to fight and “win” at all costs. Neither party really wins, and the children suffer most of all. Moreover, emotions can camouflage reasonable win-win solutions. If the wife and husband can avoid the emotionally and economically costly pitfalls of a litigated divorce, they also may avoid – or even overcome – the debilitating effects of their anger. Collaborative family lawyers are trained to intermediate even the most corrosive family conflicts, focusing not on how to wage war, but on achieving a peaceful, holistic resolution of family issues. If your marriage turns into a war to be won or lost, you have already chosen loss. But by dodging the battle of a litigated divorce, collaborative family law may actually transform that failure and loss into success and closure – a holistic end to the failed project of the lovesome.