How Does Our Collaborative Divorce Retainer Work?
If you have been considering divorce, hopefully you have looked at the private and non-adversarial Collaborative option. If so, you may recognize that it is a better option for most families as you and your attorneys are working together to reach a resolution rather than wasting time and money on preparing for a trial that likely will never happen. After all, 80 to 90+% of all divorces end in an agreement rather than a judge-imposed solution; accordingly, in Collaborative Divorce, the attorneys and other professionals focus solely on reaching an out-of-court agreement and are prohibited from engaging in contested court hearings.
You may have heard that lawyers generally require retainers. Our firm believes in transparency, including transparency of retainers. The goal of this post is to inform you of our requirements and make sure you are knowledgeable on and comfortable with how we operate.
How Our Collaborative Divorce Retainer Works (Updated June 1, 2025)
To begin your divorce case, you’ll pay an evergreen retainer of $8,000 (it may be lower for non-divorce work). This is not a flat fee. We will bill you based on the actual time we spend working on your matter, and we will apply those charges against the $8,000 retainer. The funds will be held in a special bank account (called a “trust account” or “IOTA account”), where your funds are matched with your specific case file. As we work on your case, we’ll take money out of that account to pay for the time we have spent on your matter.
You agree to keep at least $8,000 in that trust account while we’re representing you. If the amount drops below that, we’ll charge your card on file to bring it back up. To be clear, every time we send you an invoice, we will charge the card that we have on file to bring the retainer back up to $8,000. At the end of your case, you will be refunded any unused portion of your retainer.
You can find a range of our current hourly rates in our FAQ page.
The frequency of our invoicing depends on how much is going on in your matter. If your Collaborative Divorce is moving on a fast clip, we may invoice and charge your card as frequently as weekly or bi-weekly, and if you and your spouse have decided to take a pause, it might be months between the invoices you receive.
Caveats about the Collaborative Divorce Retainer
Before we conclude, I want to provide a few caveats.
Every lawyer and law firm has different fee agreements and retainer requirements. This post only applies to how things work at Family Diplomacy: A Collaborative Law Firm and not to other law firms.
Further, the evergreen retainer does not include fees for your spouse’s Collaborative Lawyer or to any other professional (such as a Collaborative Facilitator or Neutral Financial Professional) who may be on your Collaborative Divorce Team. Those professionals will need to be paid separately
Additionally, this is accurate as of June 2025. We are constantly tweaking and attempting to improve our efficiency and the client experience. Accordingly, if you are reading this in the future, this information may be out-of-date. The best way to determine that is to contact us and schedule a time to speak.
Conclusion
Before you hire an attorney for your Collaborative Divorce, it is important that you understand how their retainer works. We value transparency, and we strongly believe the best clients are well-informed clients. If you want to learn more, we invite you to click the button below and contact us.
Adam B. Cordover is one of the most experienced Collaborative Divorce lawyers in Florida. He is a former member of the Board of the International Academy of Collaborative Professionals and recipient of the inaugural Visionary Award of the Florida Academy of Collaborative Professionals. Adam is co-author of an American Bar Association book on Collaborative Practice and has trained judges, lawyers, mental health professionals, and financial professionals in Collaborative Practice throughout the U.S., Canada, France, Israel, and Brazil.
