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Collaborative Family Law - An Introduction
Collaborative family law is designed for clients who wish to resolve their differences with minimal conflict and without litigation.
"Collaborative" and "divorce" are hardly words that combine gracefully. Nevertheless, "adversarial" and "divorce" are concepts that can sometimes escalate the conflict and make matters even worse.
Collaborative law, in all its forms, operates under the stated goal of providing a context whereby couples can successfully resolve their divorce issues through a collaborative process, benefiting themselves, their children, their families and society as a whole. In collaborative law, lawyers, clients, and neutral experts, such as child specialists, mental health experts, vocational counselors, and financial consultants, work together exclusively toward settlement.
If the matter should go to litigation, the lawyers and experts, by prior stipulation, are disqualified from the case. That means that the clients, with assistance from their attorneys, must find new attorneys to litigate their case. Work products from the neutrals on the Collaborative team are, also, unless a stated, to otherwise, excluded from the litigation.
Collaborative law moves the focus away from the threat or expectation of a courtroom battle to a mandate that the parties, assisted by a professional collaborative team, resolve the complex trade-offs to meet their reasonable objectives and thus, maximize their autonomy and priorities in crafting their own compromised resolutions.
Collaborative law models put the parties, lawyers, and other specialists to work as a single problem-solving unit with the expectation that, not only are the parties themselves best able to gauge their individual values and needs within the family context, but that most parties are more willing, and therefore more likely, to abide by their own promises than by edicts imposed by a court. In addition, a court-imposed resolution may often maximize legal principles that might seem arbitrary or unfair within the context of the parties' family.
This spirit of collaboration may also establish a positive tone for continuing post-divorce family relations by building effective communication and negotiation skills, while avoiding the increased animosity and pain often associated with court battles.
Collaborative law is not for all divorces, all clients, nor even all lawyers. Some divorces require litigation. For example, cases involving domestic violence or the inability of one or both parties to fully disclose information are not good collaborative candidates. The same is true of divorces in which the spouses have become so polarized that it is impossible for them to agree on important or even trivial issues; thus, the court must decide for them.
However, in cases involving two basically reasonable people who are going through the emotionally unreasonable time of severing their marriage- with the avowed hope of not making things any worse in the process-collaborative law is a promising alternative.
"Collaborative" and "divorce" are hardly words that combine gracefully. Nevertheless, "adversarial" and "divorce" are concepts that can sometimes escalate the conflict and make matters even worse.
Collaborative law, in all its forms, operates under the stated goal of providing a context whereby couples can successfully resolve their divorce issues through a collaborative process, benefiting themselves, their children, their families and society as a whole. In collaborative law, lawyers, clients, and neutral experts, such as child specialists, mental health experts, vocational counselors, and financial consultants, work together exclusively toward settlement.
If the matter should go to litigation, the lawyers and experts, by prior stipulation, are disqualified from the case. That means that the clients, with assistance from their attorneys, must find new attorneys to litigate their case. Work products from the neutrals on the Collaborative team are, also, unless a stated, to otherwise, excluded from the litigation.
Collaborative law moves the focus away from the threat or expectation of a courtroom battle to a mandate that the parties, assisted by a professional collaborative team, resolve the complex trade-offs to meet their reasonable objectives and thus, maximize their autonomy and priorities in crafting their own compromised resolutions.
Collaborative law models put the parties, lawyers, and other specialists to work as a single problem-solving unit with the expectation that, not only are the parties themselves best able to gauge their individual values and needs within the family context, but that most parties are more willing, and therefore more likely, to abide by their own promises than by edicts imposed by a court. In addition, a court-imposed resolution may often maximize legal principles that might seem arbitrary or unfair within the context of the parties' family.
This spirit of collaboration may also establish a positive tone for continuing post-divorce family relations by building effective communication and negotiation skills, while avoiding the increased animosity and pain often associated with court battles.
Collaborative law is not for all divorces, all clients, nor even all lawyers. Some divorces require litigation. For example, cases involving domestic violence or the inability of one or both parties to fully disclose information are not good collaborative candidates. The same is true of divorces in which the spouses have become so polarized that it is impossible for them to agree on important or even trivial issues; thus, the court must decide for them.
However, in cases involving two basically reasonable people who are going through the emotionally unreasonable time of severing their marriage- with the avowed hope of not making things any worse in the process-collaborative law is a promising alternative.
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