We use a team model that makes available to you the least expensive and most qualified professional able to efficiently and effectively address the various complex issues of divorce and helps you achieve an affordable outcome not possible otherwise.
Your Collaborative team will consist of a neutral family divorce coach, a neutral divorce financial planner, and two Collaborative attorneys working as co-equal problem-solvers rather than adversaries.
- Phase One: Together, you and your spouse meet separately with each of the two Collaborative neutrals to document your information and explore options:
- You will meet together with your neutral family divorce coach who will, in a series of two-hour meetings (usually 2-4), help you clarify how you feel and think about the issues, help you enhance your communication on sensitive topics and enhance your negotiation skills and help mediate a preliminary parenting plan if you have children. Any unmediated and unresolved issues with respect to the parenting plan will be placed on the agenda for the meetings with the attorneys in phase two.
- You will also meet with your neutral financial planner in a similar series of two-hour meetings (usually 2-4). Your financial neutral will help you document and value your marital and separate assets and liabilities and your expected future income and expenses. Once done, the financial neutral will mediate a preliminary division of marital assets and spousal and child support amounts using long-term projections of your and your spouse's expected future annual cash flow and cumulative net worth. Any unmediated and resolved issues with respect to the divison of marital assets, future income or expenses and spousal or child support will be placed on the agenda for the meetings with the attorneys in phase two.
- Phase Two: This phase involves settling the unresolved issues relating to your parenting plan, division of marital assets and liabilities and preliminary spousal and child support identified by the neutral professionals in phase one:
- Both you and your spouse will meet separately in a usually two-hour meeting with your respective Collaborative attorneys to review the preliminary reports prepared by your neutral family coach and financial planner. Both of your attorneys will have agreed to set aside adversarial strategies and preparations for trial to work toward positive, family-friendly solutions.
Likewise, you and your spouse will have agreed that all records, correspondence, case notes and discussions from the collaborative process are not to be used in any future legal action, other than documents required to be produced in court.
- In a series of two-hour 6-way meetings (usually 2-3), you and your spouse will meet together with your Collaborative attorneys, neutral divorce coach and neutral financial specialist to reach the final settlement by resolving the remaining issues and exploring more options.
- Phase Three: Once phases one and two are done, your Collaborative attorneys craft the final documents that give legal expression to the settlement agreed on in phase two and then appear in court, as needed, to file the required documentation.
Expect the Collaborative process to cost between $5,000 and $10,000 depending on the number of issues to be resolved and on the emotional sensitivity you and your spouse may have toward those issues.
Would you like to arrange a free consultation to explore how Collaboration or other divorce options would work given your facts and circumstances? Yes
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