If you are going through divorce, you should have a lawyer. Divorce is one of life’s traumatic moments, and it is smart to have a steady hand to advise you during uncertain times.
However, you don’t need to have a lawyer to get divorced.
You have the option of going through pro se mediation (mediation without legal representation).
The Tampa Bay Times is reporting that Florida Governor Rick Scott has vetoed SB 668, a bill that was intended to make large-scale changes to the state’s alimony and child custody laws.
For the first time, the bill was set to create alimony guidelines that calculated a presumptive range for the amount and length of spousal support. Further, the bill would have directed judges, when establishing custody schedules, to start out with the premise that each parent should have approximately an equal amount of time with children.
It was that second point that seemed to be the sticking point for Governor Scott.
I have noticed lately that there is a trend among divorce mediators in Tampa Bay: keep spouses separate from one another. This is known as “caucus”-style mediation, where the spouses are kept in separate rooms from the very beginning of mediation, and the mediator travels back and forth between the rooms relaying information and offers.
There is a good reason why many great mediators prefer caucus-style mediation. As divorce is a highly-emotional process, spouses can set each other off when they are facing one another, and negotiations can descend into argument and cease being productive.
I can see where caucus-style mediation may be appropriate for some families, but it is not my preferred method.
Rather, when I act as the neutral mediator, I prefer to practice face-to-face mediation.
Senate Bill 972, the “Collaborative Law Process Act,” is making its way through the Florida Senate and will hopefully become law this summer.
The Collaborative Law Process Act creates a legal framework for families to resolve disputes outside of court. The bill specifies that family law matters under chapters 61 or 742 of the Florida Statutes may be resolved via the collaborative process. These family law matters include the following:
Families in Tampa Bay, Greater Sarasota, and throughout the state of Florida are already utilizing the collaborative process to resolve divorce and other matters privately and respectfully, but a big improvement with this bill is that there will be a statutory framework to ensure discussions had in the collaborative process can be enforced as confidential. Read more →
If you are divorcing in Tampa Bay and you have children, Florida law requires that a parenting plan be created. The parenting plan outlines parental responsibility (decision-making authority) along with a time-sharing (custody) schedule.
The time-sharing schedule should not only address where the children stay during the school year and in summer months, but also how holidays, such as Christmas, are to be handled.
Below are some sample Christmas time-sharing schedules:
Cynthia Schwarzkopf, daughter of General H. Norman Schwarzkopf, Jr, discusses how she and her husband utilized the collaborative family law process to dissolve her marriage in a video released by the Tampa Bay Collaborative Divorce Group.
You can see the video below the jump:
I strongly suggest that any person who is in the initial stages of a Florida divorce consider engaging in the collaborative process from the very beginning. This simply means that each spouses hires an attorney solely for the purpose of helping them reach a divorce agreement.
The attorneys are contractually prohibited from wasting time and money on preparing for trial (90% or so of all divorce cases settle, yet millions and millions of dollars are spent each year preparing for a trial that rarely happens). Discussions are held in a private, respectful, and transparent atmosphere, and other professionals are brought in as needed to tend to the parties’ financial and emotional needs.
But some clients are resistant to the collaborative process because of perceived cost issues or they feel they need to have a gunslinger to take out their spouse. And many attorneys will not engage in the collaborative process because litigation work is pretty profitable or they have not invested the time and money in taking an introductory collaborative training.
And so there are plenty of divorce battles going on in the Florida court system. It is not uncommon for those battles to go on for two, three, four, or more years, and for the parties to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars in attorneys’ fees, expert witness fees, deposition fees, document production fees, forensic evaluation fees, court reporter fees, and so on, and feel no closer to a final resolution of their divorce.
But there is something that can be done to change the dynamics.
Many people come to my Tampa office because they heard collaborative divorce is private, respectful, conducive to co-parenting, and usually quicker than the traditional courtroom divorce. But they do not quite understand logistically how the collaborative process works.
The first thing to understand is that each party is represented by his or her own attorney whose sole purpose is to help the parties reach a settlement. The attorneys are contractually barred from engaging in costly, damaging contested court battles. If parties want to fight one another in the court system, they must choose different litigation attorneys.
A neutral facilitator, who usually is licensed in a mental health profession, is involved in most collaborative cases. The facilitator not only helps the parties (and attorneys) focus on the future rather than rehash the arguments of the past, but he or she also teaches the parties communication and dispute resolution techniques that will help them and their families long after the divorce is finalized.
A neutral financial professional is also oftentimes used to efficiently ensure financial transparency between the parties, to develop personally-tailored options for support and the division of assets and debts, and to help the clients budget to give them the best chance for financial security once their divorce is finalized.
Some folks are visual learners, and so my firm has created a flowchart that shows how a collaborative case might proceed. Please understand that, depending on the facts of your case and the needs of your family, your collaborative divorce process may be customized differently:
When two people are getting divorced in Florida, and they have one or more minor children, a custody schedule (now known in Florida as a time-sharing schedule) must be established. Approximately 90-95% of all cases settle at some point (whether it is before the filing of a petition for divorce or after spending tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars preparing for or even going through trial), and so the parties generally end up agreeing to a child time-sharing schedule. But in those times where they do not agree, a Florida family law judge will take the decision out of the hands of the parents and set a time-sharing schedule.
But divorce doesn’t only affect the children. It also affects the family pets. So will a Florida judge order a doggy (or kitty) custody schedule?
Last Sunday, I met a lot of people who had a lot of questions regarding their parental and family law rights. My law firm sponsored a booth at the St. Pete Pride festival in St. Petersburg, Florida, where I discussed topics such as adoptions, name changes, and LGBT child custody rights. I also had the chance to talk about collaborative family law, a private form of dispute resolution which I have used to help same sex partners amicably separate.
At the pride festival, I was wearing a metal name tag that I received from my collaborative family law practice group, Next Generation Divorce. Next Generation Divorce is comprised of over 100 caring attorneys, mental health professionals, and financial professionals dedicated to helping parents and divorcing spouses handle difficult issues amicably and with their dignity intact. I happen to be Next Generation Divorce’s current president and, needless to say, I strongly support the organization’s drive to help folks resolve disputes respectfully through the collaborative process.
