What Are The Benefits Of A Collaborative Divorce?

While divorce can be a messy and emotionally wrought experience, many couples part ways without that sort of venom and drama. If you are in the latter group, a collaborative divorce may be a great fit for your divorce.

What is a Collaborative Divorce?

Collaborative divorce dispenses with the bitter battles, and relies on the spouses to cooperatively come to agreements as they forge through the divorce process. Each spouse can have their own attorney to keep an eye out for the client’s best interests, and can also invite counselors, financial planners, and others to guide them on decisions related to custody, property division and the like. Throughout the process, you learn skills to reduce conflict—skills that may come in useful even after the divorce when issues related to parenting plans and so forth arise.

Benefits

There are numerous benefits of choosing a collaborative divorce process:

• Perhaps the best thing about a collaborative divorce is that former spouses can move forward with their lives with less resentment and hostility. Although you are adversaries and have your own legal representation, the climate is that of collaboration, and the temperature is generally significantly warmer than it can get in traditional divorce court.
• One of the biggest benefits of collaborative divorce is that the cost is significantly less than a contested divorce. It can literally save thousands of dollars.
• Another big bonus is the time saved! When partners go into a process with a goal of working toward mutually beneficial solutions, and pre-scheduled meetings occur to accomplish that, you avoid having to work with court schedules that can drag the process on for months.
• Finally, because both parties worked together to come to an agreement together, there is usually much less to worry about in terms of litigation post-divorce.

What are the Steps? 

It can’t be overstated how easy the process is! Each partner starts out by meeting with their personal attorney to lay out preferred terms and goals. Then you decide what specialists, if any, you want to involve in the process. Next, you and your attorney meet with your spouse and their attorney to work out an agreement.  This may take several meetings. Finally, the attorneys draw up a draft of your agreement, which each party signs if they are on board. After that, it’s just a matter of getting a judge’s signature to finalize the divorce.

Is it for You? 

If you can work with your spouse and you both are capable of negotiation, a collaborative divorce may help you to get where you’re going more quickly, easily, and inexpensively. To discuss the possibilities, schedule a confidential consultation with the experienced Springfield divorce attorneys at Courtney & Mills in our office today.

Source:

forbes.com/advisor/legal/divorce/collaborative-divorce/