What is collaborative divorce?
Divorce doesn’t have to be an ugly affair. Spend less time feuding — and more time working with your spouse and a team of collaborative professionals to creatively (and cooperatively) resolve the complex needs of your divorce.
With divorce comes a host of logistics, this much you know, right? In a traditional divorce, spouses spend time bickering over the “little” things, all the while getting more and more stressed — and making slow progress on planning for immediate and long-term financial needs. Don’t let this be your divorce.
In a collaborative divorce, you and your spouse work with an interdisciplinary team of divorce professionals to navigate legal options, discuss intricate financial details and tend to your mental health and well-being throughout the process. It’s comprehensive, it’s cooperative, it’s a collaborative divorce.
How does collaborative divorce work?
In a collaborative divorce, each spouse will retain their own collaboratively-trained divorce attorney to serve as their legal point person throughout the process. Unlike a courtroom divorce, these collaboratively-trained attorneys have the goal of saving you and your spouse time and money, keeping communications smooth and transparent, and looping other members of the collaborative team into conversations.
Alongside your collaborative divorce attorney, you and your spouse will work with two neutral professionals — a divorce CPA as well as a communications and mental health professional. These neutrals are team members brought aboard to serve both spouses, work toward common and individual goals, and enhance transparency and communication. Divorce isn’t a one-dimensional event &mdash and all too often the financial, communication and mental health needs go unnoticed in the traditional, litigated approach to divorce.
With such a comprehensive approach to your divorce, goals like co-parenting, stronger communication, drama-free divorce process and keeping retirement needs on track are likely targets, which is very rare with a courtroom divorce. Collaborative divorce gives you and your spouse freedom and flexibility to address your specific needs together, rather than scratch and claw to (maybe) get what you want and need (and spend a fortune doing it.)
What makes collaborative divorce so different?
Forget what you’ve ever heard about the agonizing courtroom divorce. In collaborative divorce, spouses engage in cooperative, transparent communication to resolve the complexities of their divorce.
Some differences you’ll notice about the collaborative divorce process include:
- No “discovery” process, which ends up saving you money, time and unnecessary stress.
- No “winner” and “loser”, as spouses develop mutually-beneficial solutions.
- Flexible, customizable settlement options, which would be otherwise unavailable in a courtroom divorce.
- Financial and mental health pros serve on divorce team to provide comprehensive support throughout the divorce process.