Collaborative professionals around the country and, indeed, around the world are getting the word out that there is a better alternative to traditional divorce court battles: Collaborative Divorce.
In the video below, New Jersey attorney Linda Piff has a great short video that provides a brief overview of the collaborative process.
If you are considering divorce, whether here in Florida or elsewhere, and you are doing online research about family law attorneys, you will come across many firms that describe their attorneys as “aggressive” and “ready to fight for you.”
You will not find that type of language on Family Diplomacy’s website, as we believe that spouses should not be pitted against one another, and family issues should be resolved via the collaborative process in private offices rather than public courtrooms. And yet, we concede that our approach may not be for everyone.
So, when should you look elsewhere for an “aggressive” divorce lawyer?
A few years ago, the International Academy of Collaborative Professionals released the results of a survey of 933 collaborative divorce and family law cases. Collaborative divorce is a process by which parties, instead of going to court to litigate, agree to a private framework that lends itself to developing more creative options for financial, child custody, and other family issues. In Florida, oftentimes a neutral facilitator/communication coach and a neutral financial professional are engaged to facilitate and lend their expertise to the process.
The survey was conducted from October 2006 through July 2010, and these results were compiled in the Spring 2012 edition of The Collaborative Review: The Journal of the International Academy of Collaborative Professionals (“IACP Research Regarding Collaborative Practice (Basic Findings)” by Linda Wray, J.D.):
More and more people in the Tampa Bay area and beyond are finding themselves in relationships that do not quite fit the traditional mold. Many are in long-term romantic relationships with more than one partner, where the other partners are also in romantic relationships with each other.
These relationships are oftentimes referred to as “polyamorous,” or love involving more than 2 people. Polyamory is not about sex, just as traditional marriage is not about sex, but about the relationship between the partners.
And just as many traditional marriages end in separation, polyamorous relationships can also end in separation. The problem is that the laws and the court system are not built with polyamorists in mind.
Collaborative divorce starts out with a pledge by both spouses: We will not fight one another in court. Each spouse hires his and her own attorney, and the two attorneys and two clients sign a participation agreement formalizing the pledge not to fight one another. The attorneys are then barred from filing any contested legal pleadings or appearing in any contested hearings on behalf of the clients.
In the most common collaborative divorce model that we use in Tampa Bay, a neutral facilitator, who generally has a mental health background, is retained to help the clients focus on the future and the issues (such as parenting) that are most important to them rather than the arguments of the past. Additionally, a financial professional is retained to cost-effectively ensure that each has retained sufficient financial disclosure (i.e., trust but verify) and to help them development financial options that are tailored to their family.
Cypress collaborative, a group of experienced collaborative professionals in Washington State, have put together a fantastic video that further explains the collaborative process. You can see the video after the jump.
The Lawyer Magazine has published an article co-authored by collaborative attorneys Adam B. Cordover and Jeremy Gluckman on “A Simplifed Protocol for Collaborative Dissolution.” The article is on page 22 of the Summer 2015 edition of the Lawyer Magazine, which is published and distributed by the Hillsborough County Bar Association.
The article is reproduced below:
One objection that most professionals have heard regarding the collaborative process is that it is too expensive and complicated. Though there are many arguments against this objection, in some cases it is valid. If there are relatively few assets and debts and clients are in general agreement regarding their children, a simplified process may be in order.
What follows is a step-by-step guide to simplify the use of a full team in a collaborative dissolution. This process has been successfully tested in Tampa. It requires more preparation from the professionals and clients than other versions of the full team model; however, it can promote two important goals: (i) speed up the process and (ii) reduce costs to the clients.
Below are simplified protocols for our full team model:
(1) A party meets with a collaboratively trained lawyer where the pros and cons of all processes, including litigation, mediation, and collaborative divorce, are explained.
(2) The attorney provides the party with names of at least three other collaboratively trained lawyers (and perhaps access to membership lists of local collaborative practice groups), who then provides those names to his/her spouse along with materials about the collaborative process. Read more →
Divorce is difficult, but not all divorces are created equally. Here in Tampa Bay and Greater Sarasota, more and more people are choosing to resolve their family law issues via the collaborative process. Collaborative divorce is a method of dispute resolution where the spouses agree from the beginning that they are each going to retain attorneys who will work as settlement specialists and who will not engage in court battles.
Collaborative divorce has one simple requirement: The spouses must each retain attorneys who focus solely on helping them reach an agreement on all issues. The collaborative attorneys are private problem-solving specialists, and they cannot be used in contested court hearings. This requirement creates a safe, non-adversarial environment so that each spouse knows that the other spouse’s attorney is not attempting to gather information to use against him or her later in court. It also ensures that resources are directed towards helping the clients reach an agreement rather than wasted in opposition research or dirty trial tactics.
There are many different models of collaborative divorce that are used throughout the world. The model that is most frequently used here in Florida involves one neutral facilitator, who generally has a mental health background, and one neutral financial professional. This model was created in Texas by, among others, Linda Solomon, a Licensed Mental Health Counselor and Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist.
You can learn more about Linda Solomon and the beginning of this model in the video below from Cutting Edge Law:
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:
When most people think of divorce, they think of a courthouse battle. Florida’s court system pits husband versus wife, mother versus father, and what ensues is many times not too different from divorces depicted in War of the Roses or Kramer vs. Kramer.
But collaborative divorce is something different altogether.
