Fundamentals of Collaborative Law Archives

Divorce is Divorce except when…

March 15, 2015 by Tracy Leave a Comment

One of the most frequent questions I am asked by College Station clients is about the difference between Collaborative Law divorce, litigation (going to court) and mediation or informal settlement.

My clients ask this question when they are consumed with fear and negative emotions at the start of their divorce process. Often they don’t trust their spouses to be rational and reasonable. They are fearful that they will lose what financial security they may have and face poverty in the near future. They cannot believe that litigation is as expensive as they are warned because they have never experienced it and cannot imagine what it is like. Likewise, they do not know what to expect of mediation. They usually think mediation is a process separate and apart from litigation. In fact, mediation is an event within the traditional litigation process. Mediation can also be used to settle tough disputes inside a Collaborative Law case.

My good friend and colleague, Camille Milner, has beautifully explained the differences in her blog. She talks about Collaborative Law, mediation, traditional litigation (the courtroom style) and settlement conferences. Please hop on over to her site, Milner-Law.com, and read about it for yourself.

New York Times Divorce Tips

August 13, 2013 by Tracy Leave a Comment

The rich and famous are seeing the benefits of out-of-court divorce settlement. They have the money to slog it out in court, but in the past few years, more of them choose not to do so. Last Saturday in a New York Times article, columnist Paul Sullivan delved into the lessons we can learn from such famous divorcing couples as Rupert and Wendi Murdoch.

Mr. Sullivan interviewed me on dividing up assets in divorce. Specifically he wanted to know the best and worst ways people go about sorting out the money part of a divorce. He notes in his column there are four areas to be considered in a divorce: agreements, assets, children and fees. All these points apply not just to the rich and famous, but also to normal people like you and me. Near the end of the article, Sullivan quotes me on the advantages of collaborative law divorce in out-of-court settlements.

Why Collaborative Law Divorces Save You Time, Money and Hassle

July 22, 2013 by Tracy Leave a Comment

The collaborative law divorce process is the preferred process of educated couples seeking divorce. Like you, they want to save time, money and hassle. These couples like the benefit of being able to make decisions with the help of experienced collaborative professionals. These couples like being in control.

Collaborative couples don’t have to wait for lawyer responses or court dates. They can wind up their divorce at their own pace. When they have obligations in their “real” lives, they can schedule team meetings around those events. Their professional team works around the couple’s schedules instead of the court dictating their schedules.

Most collaborative alumni tell me they are now communicating better than when they were married. This is because they selected a Mental Health Professional for their team who taught them how to effectively communicate as co-parents.

Collaborative couples select a single neutral CPA who understands their financial situation. The neutral financial professional analyzes the finances to maximize how the redesigned family will cover the children’s expenses and spousal support. The collaboratively trained CPA helps the couple decide how to stretch their limited funds to benefit the entire family.

If you would like to learn more about collaborative law divorce options in Bryan/College Station, just let me know.

How to Keep Control of Your Divorce Costs

July 8, 2013 by Tracy Leave a Comment

Divorce costs can spiral out of control if you don’t keep track of them. There are two easy steps to keeping control of your divorce costs. Whether you live in Bryan/College Station or Houston, these steps will work for you.

In a collaborative law divorce case, you will know at all times what your combined expenses are. It is part of the transparency of the collaborative process. Unfortunately, that is not the situation with traditional litigated cases. Finding out what your spouse’s expenses have been and will be is a challenging task in a litigated case.

The first step in controlling your divorce costs is to choose the collaborative law divorce process. Spending money on such items as valuing the real estate or the family business is a decision discussed in meetings. The issues regarding whether and how to incur costs are openly discussed in joint meetings with attorneys and the neutral CPA until both spouses understand the pros and cons and come to a mutual agreement.

The best way to control costs is to continually see what they are. The smartest collaborative divorce couples with whom I have worked were the ones who opened a new checking account just to pay the divorce bills. They moved money into this new account and then tracked what they were spending via the new account. If they paid for a divorce bill with a credit card, they paid that one credit card charge from the new account. All costs were shown in this account. These couples knew exactly how much they were spending on their divorce and were able to ratchet the costs down when desired.

I have worked on about 100 collaborative law divorces. If you would like my advice on which collaborative law attorneys to interview, feel free to contact me at stewart@texasdivorcecpa.com.

Know Your Options: Reduce Your Divorce Costs

June 24, 2013 by Tracy

Bryan/College Station couples who are contemplating divorce struggle with the fear of running through all their money. You have heard stories of normal people like you having scorch the earth divorces, huge attorney fees and an empty retirement account when it is over. You can avoid those horrors by understanding your divorce options.

At the basic level there are just three kinds of divorce processes. You and your spouse can choose the best on for you. I’ll give you my take on these from the vantage point of a financial advisor, not an attorney.

Do it yourself

This is the kitchen table option. I have seen this work best when couples have no minor children, no mortgage and no retirement savings. This option can be done without attorneys, if you have a very simple situation. I have seen couples with just one of those attributes (children, mortgage or retirement accounts) try to go the DIY route and crater before they could reach an agreement – but after they argued themselves into a tense situation. Your situation really does need to be simpler than simple for this process to work.

Lawyer up for litigation

This is the traditional route. You hire a lawyer and you start the old fashioned process. Each side demands the same information from each other. Attorney fees climb as each attorney prepares for trial. If you and your spouse don’t agree on everything, you will end up in mediation – and if that fails, you end up court. The cost of that is shocking plus you have lost control of the outcome. As bad as I have made this sound, there are cases that belong in litigation.

Get a collaborative law divorce

A Brazos County collaborative law divorce is one that operates under the protocols of the Collaborative Law Institute of Texas. You want to work with an attorney who has been trained by the Institute. (I have been in cases with untrained attorneys. The divorces were painful and expensive.) In a collaborative law case, you are in control of the outcome, the speed and the cost. You learn how to co-parent with your ex-spouse. Everything is focused on helping the two of you resolve your differences with dignity and more forward to your newly defined lives. Everyone is sensitive to your costs and work with you to minimize the financial hit.

When you are ready to look for a divorce attorney in the Brazos County, contact me. I can help you find the divorce attorney who best fits your preferences.

Use Mutual Interests to Save Money in Divorce

June 17, 2013 by Tracy Leave a Comment

canstockphoto2553614nest egg

Understanding your mutual interests will help you and your spouse to negotiate a satisfactory divorce settlement. Traditional litigation does not foster mutual interests. Collaborative law divorces use mutual interests to get couples to quick, lower cost resolution. Savvy couples seek out the Brazos County collaborative law professionals. The lower cost of collaborative divorces means longer financial security for each spouse.

When couples head into divorce, rarely do they chat about their mutual interests. They usually lawyer-up and entrench in their respective positions. Then the long, slow process begins. Attorneys write letters back and forth. In Brazos County, they use snail mail. One begins to wonder if the attorneys are purposely dragging these divorces out as long as they can.

I’ve seen hundreds of divorces in Houston, Bryan, College Station and Austin. I have observed that in the litigation divorce style, the couple cannot see that they have mutual interests. In the collaborative law divorces, the couples use their mutual interests to get to a faster, lower cost settlement.

The collaborative divorce couples got themselves into a better process because they knew what to ask each attorney they interviewed. Each spouse asked attorneys whether they are collaboratively trained. Those attorneys who do both litigated and collaborative divorces have a wider range of tools to help their clients.

Collaboratively trained attorneys also understand that when couples work together in the collaborative process to reach a settlement based on their mutual interests, the case goes faster and their clients reach better settlements. All this means lower cost to the couple. That translates to financial security.

If you are concerned about dropping a lot of money on a divorce, work towards a collaborative settlement that is based on mutual interests. For help in effectively defining and achieving your mutual interests or in finding the best collaborative attorneys for you, contact me at stewart@texasdivorcecpa.com.

Collaborative Divorce: Most Common Mistake Men Make

April 15, 2011 by Tracy Leave a Comment

It’s the “I don’t need to do that” guy thing. If you have been making more money than your wife, you are particularly prone to this mistake.

In collaborative divorces in College Station and Houston, we look at post divorce cash needs to help us see options for splitting investments, property, etc. Wives are fine with listing their expenses. They want to show their husbands that their needs are authentic and accurate. These husbands are glad to see that I am going to show their wives – in black and white – that they can’t keep up the spending level.

You guys don’t feel you need to do a budget. You know how much you make. Your personal spending needs are modest. She’s the one who has been spending all the money. She needs the budgeting, not you.

Bingo. There’s the mistake. You need to let her see your living expenses. They may be modest, but they are not as modest as you think. In my experience, people consistently and reliably underestimate their expenses by at least 50%, many times 100%.

I worked with a couple a few years ago. The husband wanted me to work with his wife on her expenses. He told his attorney we didn’t need to look at his expenses. He said he made enough money that he was going to be just fine. He said he had modest expenses. We got well into the collaborative divorce process when he started to put his own numbers on a spreadsheet. He stayed awake that night thinking that he was offering a settlement he couldn’t afford.

The next morning, I showed him that he wasn’t worried enough. He was underestimating his living expenses. The divorce went on pause while I nailed down his true expenses. He backed off his settlement offer. You can imagine how well that went over with his wife and her attorney. After all, he had been saying for months that his expenses were modest. His mistake and the aftermath of it slowed down that divorce by about three months.

Guys, you need to show your living expenses early in the collaborative divorce process. You need to show, in black and white, that you are not an endlessly deep pocket. Listing accurate living expense is time consuming and boring. If you don’t want to do it yourself, let your financial neutral do it. Be accurate. Be honest. Don’t guess.

Spending from One Bank Account During Divorce

January 25, 2011 by Tracy Leave a Comment

When clients ask me for advice on divorce, one common question is “When should we stop using the same bank account?”

I have a lot of collaborative law divorce clients. These people are working together to have a private divorce that they control. During the divorce, they are commonly both using the household checking account for their living expenses.

If you have chosen a collaborative divorce and/or are able to communicate with each other, you can both keep using the joint checking account until you are divorced. Many of my clients go this route. They both have had access to the bank account activity. They choose a date just prior to the anticipated date of divorce. On that day, they print online account statements and “freeze” the balances for the purpose of division. The attorneys and other advisors hand over their final invoices prior to that date. Those invoices are paid from the joint account before the account balance is divided. This eliminates the need for the couple to reimburse each other for spill over divorce expenses.

How to Stop Dithering in Divorce

September 28, 2010 by Tracy Leave a Comment

Psychologists have been mulling over the human brain for eons. Only recently they have been studying how people make decisions. They have concluded that some people see life as black-and-white and others see shades of gray.

Yeah, I know…. Duh. But a recent Wall Street Journal article, Why So Many People Can’t Make Decisions, offers some useful tips to those who are going through a divorce (whether litigation or collaborative law) and those professionals who are assisting them.

Shades of gray people have more trouble in relationships. They can’t seem to make decisions and when they do, they regret them. It’s easy to see that troubled relationships may end in divorce, but the key concept here is the difficulty in making decisions during the divorce negotiations. Having to make decisions on how to divide the family wealth and debt is sure to make anybody stop and think carefully before committing.

Black-and-white thinkers tend to focus on what is important to them. If your spouse is one of these, pay attention to what is important to him or her. Focus on those things to find a way to reach a compromise in your divorce. Shades-of-gray people are overwhelmed with too many choices. If your spouse is one of these, try to pare down the number of options for dividing property or sharing time with the kids.

You can avoid making the big divorce decisions altogether by choosing the litigation route and tossing the decision to a judge. Or you can maintain control of your divorce by choosing the collaborative law process. In the latter, you get to make quick or slow decisions. You can pare down your choices or expand them. Collaborative law divorce is a process than can be molded to fit black-and-white thinkers and shades-of-gray thinkers, even if they are husband and wife.

Celebrity Collaborative Law Divorce

September 25, 2010 by Tracy Leave a Comment

Cameron Crowe and Nancy Wilson have used the collaborative law process to end their marriage. Cameron is writer and director of movies like Singles, Jerry Maguire and Almost Famous. Nancy is a singer and songwriter from the rock band Heart.

This couple is demonstrating unusually mature and intelligent behavior for what the public has learned to expect from entertainment celebrities. This is role model behavior here.

Given the length of their marriage, their separate and combined careers, their separate and community property and their children, this collaborative case must have been complex. They kept it private while working to a collaborative resolution over a number of months.

For what little there is to read on this divorce, go to http://tiny.cc/zoof0 and http://normatrusch.com/blog/.