What is Collaborative Divorce
Preserving Family and Finance
Ending a marriage is hard. Traditional divorce treats it as a purely legal battle: each spouse hires a lawyer, positions are argued, and if no settlement is reached, a judge decides. Once the paperwork is signed, couples with children are often left to figure out, on their own, how to keep raising those children together.
Collaborative family law offers a different path. With the guidance of attorneys and other professionals trained in principled negotiation, you and your spouse work through disagreements together rather than against each other. That’s where Win Win Divorce comes in. We’ve been helping individuals and families navigate this team-based approach since 1998.
More Than A Legal Process
Divorce is far more than legal paperwork. It’s an emotional, financial, and often spiritual transition that happens to include a legal component. Just as a marriage is much more than a license, a divorce is much more than a judge’s signature on a decree.
Win Win Divorce brings together the full team you actually need for that transition: attorneys, financial professionals, mental health practitioners, and real estate appraisers. Every member has completed foundational collaborative law training, and many pursue advanced training year after year.
What is Collaborative Law
In this process, both you and a soon-to-be ex-spouse agree to resolve your disagreements reasonably and respectfully without resorting to adversarial court proceedings. Negotiations will focus on both of your interests (known as interest-based negotiation).
These interests are the important issues you care about and the concerns you have moving forward. Understanding these will help guide the professional team in moving you both to a final agreement, based on your needs. These negotiations take place in private (the atmosphere is one of honesty, transparency, cooperation, and integrity), looking at the future well-being of you and your family members.
Lawyers and neutral coaches, child specialists (mental health professionals), and financial professionals (CPAs, CDFAs, and CFPs) are all part of your professional team and may be consulted and involved as necessary based on your situation and circumstances. This interdisciplinary method facilitates creative resolutions tailored by you for your family.
Requirements to Begin on the Collaborative Road
To begin, all parties must sign a collaborative participation agreement. You and your spouse will need to seek representation from collaborative family lawyers. Hopefully, you will both choose attorneys who have had collaborative training.
The collaborative family law process is transparent. You must agree to make timely, full, candid, transparent, and informal disclosure of information related to the collaborative matter. This will occur without formal discovery (as occurs in litigation). This also requires that information is updated promptly when material changes arise along the way.
Communications with lawyers in the collaborative family law process are privileged, as they are in other legal matters. But privileged communications also extend to those made between the parties and nonparties designated to participate in the process, such as financial professionals and family coaches.
For parents, the process focuses on building effective co-parenting communication and decision-making skills. Children and their ideas may also be honored in the process. Neutral expertise in areas of financial decision-making, co-parenting, and creating a developmentally responsive parenting plan surrounds the counsel of each client’s collaborative attorney.