One of the most painful aspects of the traditional divorce process is that it seems to drag on forever. Clients are hauled through case management conferences, temporary relief hearings, depositions, motion hearings, pre-trial conferences, and, finally, oftentimes years later, trial.
But this does not need to be the way you go through one of the toughest times of your life. There is a quicker way to divorce.
Fifty plus attorneys, mental health professionals, financial professionals, and students successfully completed a two-day Introductory Collaborative Family Law Training at Nova Southeastern University in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida. The training was led by Family Diplomacy managing attorney Adam B. Cordover along with psychologist Jeremy Gaies and accountants Kristin DiMeo and David Harper, all of the Tampa Bay Collaborative Trainers.
Adam B. Cordover, Jeremy Gaies, Kristin DiMeo, and Enid Miller Ponn Demonstrate a Collaborative Divorce Team Prep Meeting
The purpose of the training is to educate members of various professions on how they can help families go through divorce privately, efficiently, and as peacefully as possible.
“Excellent! Well organized, informative, funny, and thorough! You kept our attention during some very dry ‘legal-ease,’ and are all great team players,” praised Professor Randy Heller, the organizer of the training.
Adam B. Cordover alongside David Harper going over a fact pattern at a collaborative divorce training.
“You are amazing!” proclaimed Nancy Brodzki, president of the Collaborative Family Law Professionals of South Florida, the main sponsors of the training. When asked what other topics she was interested in attending, Nancy responded, “Any collaborative training you offer.”
“Adam is extremely knowledgeable, well-spoken, and a huge asset to the collaborative divorce program,” said attendee and attorney Honit Simon. “Adam did well in combining practice with theory,” commented another attendee, mental health student Solomon Udo.
Tampa Bay divorce attorney Adam B. Cordover was recently cited in a news article from University of California – Los Angeles’ School of Law. The article discusses books that teach lawyers to help families resolve divorce and other disputes privately and peacefully. You can find the article below:
Three new books by UCLA School of Law faculty shine a light on non-traditional forms of practice in order to create greater access to legal services and to help lawyers master alternatives to litigation.
Adjunct Professor Forrest Mosten ’72, a member of the UCLA Law faculty since 2002, and Lecturer Elizabeth Scully are co-authors of The Complete Guide to Mediation and The Family Lawyer’s Guide to Unbundled Legal Services. Mosten also is co-author, with Florida practitioner Adam Cordover, of a third book, Building A Successful Collaborative Practice, to which Scully is contributing a chapter. All three books are published by the American Bar Association. The Complete Guide to Mediation came out in 2015; the other two are slated for publication in 2017.
“We believe that lawyers should be more than gladiators,” said Mosten. “They can be healers and teachers, and their offices can be classrooms of client education. That’s a theme that runs through all of these books and my UCLA courses.”
When a couple has children, and they are getting divorced, they set up a child custody schedule to determine where their children will sleep at night. But what happens when spouses have a bird? Will a Tampa Bay divorce judge set up a “bird custody” schedule?
Bird Custody
No, a judge will not create a bird custody schedule, but a couple can agree to such a schedule through a private form of dispute resolution such as collaborative divorce.
Financial advisers are tasked with protecting their clients’ wealth. And financial advisers want to help clients going through divorce make smart decisions and preserve their assets. On December 8, 2016, the professionals and staff of the Sabal Trust Company in St. Petersburg, Florida, learned how collaborative divorce can safeguard their clients’ wealth, time, and privacy.
Sarah Hoerber, Tanya O’Connor, and Adam B. Cordover at Sabal Trust Company
Sabal Trust is the largest employee-owned trust company in Florida, and its Principals and staff are invested in creating a strategic approach to its clients financial security and growth. That is why they invited Family Diplomacy managing attorney Adam B. Cordover along with forensic accountant Sarah Hoerber and Brandon attorney Tanya O’Connor to discuss collaborative divorce.
Anthony Mazzola
BUL 3310 – 0002
November 23rd, 2016
For this assignment, I had the pleasure of interviewing Adam Cordover. Mr. Cordover practices in Family Law and works for a company named Family Diplomacy: A Collaborative Law Firm. During the interview, I received a lot of great insight on a new field of law that I have never heard of before, and overall had a great, memorable experience. I mostly used the sample interview questions for this assignment, but I also added a few of my own as I listened to his responses.
-Why did you become an attorney?
“I became an attorney because I like to figure things out. I was always good with puzzles and it seemed like the law was encoded and used all of these complicated terms. I wanted to get to know what all these terms meant and how to decode these terms. Going through law school and becoming a lawyer has helped me out on that.” This response was really interesting to me because most of the time the answer to this question is to help better society or help people out, which is also true for Mr. Cordover as mentioned later, but the idea of law being like a complicated puzzle was a very interesting point to me.
-What type of law do you practice?
“I practice collaborative family law. What that means is that I help families who are going through divorce and other family law matters outside of court. I am not a divorce trial attorney. I practice exclusively out of court dispute resolution.“
If you are separating from your spouse and you are grieving, you are not alone.
In the video below, Canadian divorce lawyer Brian Galbraith discusses the pain he went through during his own divorce.
George Melendez is a close friend and colleague of mine here in Tampa, Florida. He is an attorney who, like me, has a firm belief that most families can resolve their disputes outside of court, and he is a strong proponent of collaborative family law.
In a recent post, George laid out his philosophy on collaborative practice and wellness. You can find a portion of the post below.
Divorce court here in Florida is a terrible way to resolve disputes. Divorce litigation is an adversarial proceeding where husband is pitted against wife, mother is pitted against father.
And it is the children who end up suffering the most.
But don’t take my word for it. Tampa psychologist Stephanie Moulton Sarkis writes about the consequences of high conflict divorce on children:
Tampa attorney Adam B. Cordover lead a workshop at the 17th Annual Educational and Networking Forum of the International Academy of Collaborative Professionals (“IACP”). The Forum took place in Lake Las Vegas, Nevada, and was attended by hundreds of attorneys, mental health professionals, financial professionals, mediators, and other supportive of helping families resolve disputes respectfully and privately via the collaborative process.
Cordover lead the workshop alongside Barrie, Ontario lawyer Brian Galbraith and Seattle, Washington attorney Kevin Scudder. The program was called “Collaborative Multiverse,” and the idea was to lead a townhall-style debate and discussion among experienced collaborative practitioners on issues affecting collaborative practice.
Brian Galbraith, Adam B. Cordover, and Kevin Scudder at the 17th Annual IACP Forum (2016)
One topic that was discussed was determining the best collaborative model to use for each particular family. Different parts of the world predominantly use different arrangements of professionals to resolve divorce and other issues. In Florida, the main model that is used is known as the Neutral Facilitator model, where each party has an attorney, a neutral facilitator with a mental health licensure helps with parenting issues and ensures discussions are future-focused, and a neutral financial professional aids in creating family budgets and ensures financial transparency and disclosure.
