Understanding the Collaborative Divorce Process, Part 1: What it is and How it Works

If you want to resolve your marriage without fighting in court, the collaborative divorce process may be right for you. By working with skilled professionals who guide you through conflict resolution and negotiation, you can find an outcome that works for your whole family.

What is a Collaborative Divorce?

Collaborative divorce (sometimes called collaborative law) is an alternative to traditional divorce litigation, in which you and your spouse work with lawyers, a divorce coach, and other professionals, and collaborate toward finding the best solution for your family regarding custody, finances, and other issues. Through a series of facilitated meetings, you, your spouse, and your lawyers will gather the needed information, plan your futures, and negotiate a settlement agreement that keeps everyone’s interests in mind.

What makes collaborative divorce different from mediation is that you and your spouse make a commitment to find the best solution overall, not just a compromise, so as to make the best of the ubiquitous problem: what result when one household becomes two?. By agreeing to get advice and input from professionals, you can give your family’s plan for the future the best chance of success.

What You Need for Collaborative Law to Work

The collaborative law process depends on both parties being willing to collaborate and communicate openly. Collaborative divorce only works if you treat each other with respect, participate honestly, and be transparent about your needs, wants, and boundaries. Because of this, it works best for families with low conflict and a mutual desire to reduce stress and stay out of court. If one person insists on placing blame or being argumentative it could cause negotiations to fail entirely. In addition, if your relationship has a history of a one-sided power dynamic, including domestic violence, abuse, or controlling behaviors, collaborative divorce may not be right for you.

How the Collaborative Process Works in Connecticut

One of the benefits of the collaborative process in Connecticut is that it can be adjusted to suit your family’s needs and timeline. Here are the steps you can expect along the way.

Signing the Collaboration Participation Agreement

Before the collaborative law process can begin, you and your spouse need to sign a participation agreement, committing to foregoing litigation and working together within the collaborative law framework. If you or your spouse have already filed a traditional divorce complaint, your counsel will file a notice with the court that the collaborative process is underway. The court will usually give the parties more flexibility, time-wise, to resolve the case.

Building Your Collaborative Law Team

Next, you need to hire your collaborative divorce attorney. In Connecticut, each spouse must each retain their own collaborative divorce attorney. This may be the same lawyer hired for traditional litigation, as long as that lawyer has collaborative training and feels that a collaborative approach is realistic in your case. .

In some cases it may be helpful for the parties to hire a collaborative divorce coach. This coach is usually a mental health professional, hired to act as a neutral facilitator and to guide you through the collaborative law process. The coach can help you and your spouse process emotions that come up along the way, and will hold everyone to their commitments to honesty and respect.

Facilitated Team Meetings

Once the legal professionals are on board, the attorneys may schedulean initial facilitated team meeting. At this meeting, you and your spouse will have the opportunity to set out your goals, priorities, and concerns for the collaborative process. The goals of this first meeting should include:

• Identifying shared priorities
• Laying out the issues to be addressed
• Defining areas where you and your spouse already agree
• Establishing areas of conflict or dispute
• Identifying where additional information or guidance is necessary

In the course of this meeting, you should expect to identify documents that need to be exchanged, information each spouse needs to provide (this could include anything from tax returns to school schedules), and additional professionals who may need to be retained. While there will likely be some things you already agree on (such as each person keeping the car they currently drive), it is unlikely that you will resolve any big disagreements that day.

Professional Reports and Advice

Once you know what you don’t know, your collaborative law attorneys can help you retain professionals to provide your family support in the collaborative divorce process. This could include:

• • A Certified Divorce Financial Analyst (CDFA) or other financial neutral to help both sides understand the family’s financial situation and make decisions about budgeting, financial planning, and dividing assets.
  • Individual or family therapists for each party and any children involved to handle the big emotions that come with divorce.

• Parenting coaches who can teach you and your spouse techniques to co-parent and resolve conflicts without going to court.

• Realtors and property appraisers who can establish the fair market value of homes, businesses, and other high-value items.

• Accountants and tax professionals who can inform you of any tax implications of your proposed settlement.

There could also be other specialists, depending on your specific needs. For example, you may need to hire someone to establish the value of a unique collection, or help you navigate a child’s special needs and government benefits.

Individual Sessions for Legal Advice

In between sessions with your divorce coach, you may also have one-on-one sessions with your own collaborative divorce attorney. These confidential conversations allow you to receive personalized legal advice, consider possible solutions, and understand how any agreements will be enforced in or out of court.

Follow-Up Sessions to Resolve Disagreements

As you and your spouse gather the necessary information, you will need to come together again to negotiate a resolution to your disagreements. These can be emotionally charged meetings. However, working through these differences is also good training for parents who will need to resolve disputes over their children’s schedules, medical care, or other needs later on.

Entering the Settlement Agreement

Once you and your spouse have reached agreements on all the issues, your collaborative divorce attorneys will put those terms together in one final binding settlement agreement, usually called a “separation agreement”. Then, the documents are submitted to the Connecticut Superior Court for approval. The family court judge will review the documents and then sign the final divorce judgment, officially ending your marriage. The court’s judgment in a collaborative case will be based, almost entirely, on the separation agreement and will define both parties’ legal rights and responsibilities going forward. So, a well-crafted separation agreement is the key to both parties’ post-judgment success. And, while it’s not the only way to obtain a workable divorce judgment, the collaborative process offers the best possibility for a detailed, nuanced separation agreement that meets the needs of both spouses, thereby reducing the possibility for post-judgment disputes.

Get Help with Collaborative Divorce in Connecticut

The family law attorneys at Lawrence & Jurkiewicz can help you identify if collaborative divorce is right for you. We represent clients in Hartford and Litchfield County, offering a variety of traditional divorce litigation, mediation, and collaborative law options. To schedule a confidential consultation to see how we can help you, please contact us today online or at 860-264-1551.