Collaborative divorce tends to be described to people in terms of the differences with a litigated divorce. Divorce professionals sometimes forget that, for most clients, this is their first divorce. That's exactly what the problem is when trying to describe what's different about a collaborative divorce.
If it's your first divorce and you're reasonably sane, you haven't seen the dirty tricks, power plays and all-out psychological warfare that can accompany highly-conflictual divorce litigation battles. Emptying accounts, freezing credit, locking spouses out of the family business - just a few of the methods of war. The end result is a trail of financial, emotional and personal losses that can be staggering.
Unless you have witnessed the true cost of a battle like this up close and personal, I'm not sure you can appreciate the difference between divorce litigation collaborative divorce process. In collaborative divorces, the parties
- Pledge not to go to court until a full agreement has been reached
- Agree to complete, voluntary financial disclosure to one joint expert
- Have structured settlement meetings with everyone present
Each one of those is the opposite in a litigated divorce. You're in court because some files to start the divorce. A small (or, sometimes, large) fortune of time and money is spent on mandatory financial disclosure. And each of you hires a financial expert to opine about the financial records. The settlement negotiations go between the lawyers. When you go to mediation, each spouse is in a separate room with his or her attorney and the mediator goes back and forth.
Imagine how different it feels to agree to make a reasonable settlement, face-to-face, after cooperating to get all the financial information on the table and to develop the best parenting plan for your kids. The collaborative divorce process really is different.
