Originally published in the Verve newsletter, Fall 2003.

• Do you find it absurd to spend 25% of your family’s savings to get divorced?
• Are you aware that in a divorce two conflict-oriented lawyers can add extra fighting that the couple does not want?
• Are you aware that sometimes the two lawyers fight more than the divorcing couple?
• Would you resent visiting a child specialist to learn how your dissolution will impact the children, only to find that the child specialist spends most of the session how you can "nail" your spouse?

If you answered yes to some of these questions, you might agree that the collaborative law process is a step in the right direction for divorcing couples.

Maura ended a 22 year marriage when she found out her husband was engaged with dishonest business practices. Proven dishonesty can rattle a person's faith in settlement negotiations. But Maura and her husband Roger were committed to the collaborative process and not having the typical divorce experience of spending thousands of dollars and taking a year to get divorced.

"Collaborative Law," as coined by founders Stu Webb and Pauline Tesler, is a method where two lawyers agree with their clients not to litigate the matter and then all four work towards a win/win resolution where both parties leave the marriage in the best possible position. Sometimes collaborative attorneys will invite other professionals to assist the couple such as a certified divorce planner to give insight about the family money issues, or a mediator to break a particularly difficult log-jam. The couple doesn't give up the option of going to trial by electing to try the collaborative approach. The only difference is that the couple will need to hire new lawyers to go to trial. This preserves the confidentiality of the four way meetings that are the back bone of the collaborative process.

Collaborative law has been practiced since the early 1990's starting in Minnesota with Stu Webb and has spread to 26 states and Canada. Stu Webb stated at a conference last year that the reason he developed this new way of doing divorce is because he started noticing that nobody appeared happy after divorce trials, or settlements reached after especially grueling 11th hour settlement conferences. Not the lawyers. Not the clients. When he asked the other lawyer and his client, he was often told that they felt that they lost or did poorly. No one was coming away from the traditional divorce feeling that they had benefited from the process. So, as Stu Webb says, he wrote a letter to ten of his favorite divorce attorneys asking if they would like to try helping clients in a gentler way. Four lawyers responded, and a movement was born - the collaborative movement.

The benefits of this model are: the ability to reach a settlement without large litigation fees; to craft custom-fit divorce parenting plans and property settlements that might be more sophisticated than what the court would produce; and both spouses are helped to learn communication and relationship skills that will serve them in the future.

The process also helps create bigger pies to split, according to Pauline Tesler, author of the book Collaborative Law. Tesler was a hard-nosed litigating divorce attorney who typically charged $10,000 retainers for a contentious divorce before she discovered the model over ten years ago. She discovered that when the clients and lawyers are focused on amicable resolution without the fear that comes from a looming threat of trial, the four people feel more comfortable and creative solutions start to surface. Good things happen when four or more minds are dedicated to finding the best solution for everyone. The divorce stops being about who gets the most out of limited resources, and starts being about how can we make sure everyone, kids included, are taken care of and supported during the process. It becomes a positive focus, rather than a negative one.

According to the rampant lawyer jokes, one would think that the lawyers weren't doing anything noble or noteworthy. Collaborative law is one area where the lawyers are showing responsiveness to public desires. In this case, a new way of looking at divorce.