The trauma often presented by the breakdown of a marital relationship presents a fight (can I win?) or flight (can I escape?) reaction. The fight can be moved from the bedroom to the courtroom easy enough; the flight, however, can be a transformative journey. The change can be embraced or it can be resisted. A respected mentor has often reminded us that the devil we don’t know is often scarier than the one we do know.

Sometimes I feel like a pebble being washed by the ebb and flow of time towards the great expanse.  I assume most couples facing the abyss of separation and divorce feel similarly; lost in a dark vortex.  In my work, however, as a Collaborative attorney, I feel most alive when I’m taking a risk by “putting my self out there”, interacting with people, creating, working in Nature, exercising, discovering anything.

Several years ago, a fellow Collaborative lawyer and mediator who, through our countless hours of collaboration with one another, has become a most trusted and dear friend, advised me to follow my heart and understand from whence my inner peace flows. She encouraged me to fully commit to peacemaking and the Collaborative way, and to leave my litigation practice behind. I was faced, it seemed, with having to pull the sword from the stone. I have, however. found my inner peace and my passion. Until we change our appearance, and see the world from another’s vantage point, as the wizard changed young Arthur’s, and we see the world in a different light, we often cannot see what is our true reality and our own strength. I have never looked back.

What makes humans beings different from other creatures, is that we are endowed with free-will. We have the ability to make decisions and judgments that take our past, present and future into consideration. Sometimes our decisions work out for the best, sometimes not so good. As sure as day follows night, one decision follows another, however, and the sum of them will define who we are at any point in time and in the end, what our life and our time on this Earth have stood for. Have we left the world a better place than we found it? Have we been kind? Have we used our talents to make life better for our fellow time travelers? Do our families, friends and clients love us? Attorneys, mental health professionals and financial planners in our field are involved in heady work. Work, that finds us in a subjective interpersonal space that can be either good or bad. This place can either be a place of healing and safety, or a place of fear, helpless and surrender. A place to take a deep breath, compose oneself, gain insight and awareness, or a place to extract revenge, impose guilt and waste precious time and money.

I have committed to a Collaborative Law practice. I have made a choice to abandon litigation. I have not abandoned my knowledge of the law; my negotiation skills; nor my creativity, I have found a passion and I have chosen to do what I believe is good and just. I do it from a place of safety. The disqualification clause in every Collaborative Participation Agreement is my protection from what I know is antithetical to resolution of family conflict. This protection provides me with safety and my clients are derivative beneficiaries of the strength I find in that safe place. The moment my clients sign the same Participation Agreement and commit themselves, and their energy and their money, to meaningful resolution of conflict, it is a decision that has the potential for re-defining their family and their lives. While not always the case, the choice is an expression of the hope that always exists for a better way. Some say this is unrealistic; I say life is too short, and too special, not to try.

All of our experience and training in undergraduate colleges and universities, law schools and graduate programs, courtrooms and conference rooms; hospitals and counseling sessions; mediation trainings and Collaborative Law seminars have been meant to enable us to calculate the risks and potential rewards of choosing Collaborative, both for ourselves and our clients. If one wishes to reap the greatest rewards certain amounts of risk must be undertaken. A choice between a process designed to give couples control over their own lives and their own families or a choice to encounter the risks and rewards of divorce court litigation? Where is the value for the client?

]]> http://www.collaborativefamilylaw.biz/2010/02/10/conflict-resolution-for-families-in-crisis/feed/ http://www.collaborativefamilylaw.biz/2010/01/20/considering-divorce-or-dissolution/ http://www.collaborativefamilylaw.biz/2010/01/20/considering-divorce-or-dissolution/#comments Wed, 20 Jan 2010 17:35:15 +0000 maury http://www.collaborativefamilylaw.biz/?p=238 If you are considering divorce or dissolution of marriage, I can help you. I have been practicing law since 1978. I am certified by the Ohio State Bar Association as a Family Law Specialist. I am an experienced Family Law Mediator. I have also served for two years as the President of the Cincinnati Academy of Collaborative Professionals.

You probably have questions about your marital assets, liabilities, support obligations and, or, custody of children. Many people today are concerned about their declining real estate values and shrinking retirement funds. I have seen it all, and I can help you find creative solutions to your most pressing problems; both inter-personal and financial. The courts are only one avenue. You have other choices. Mediation and Collaborative Law are two other ways to transition your life.

Through my years of practice, I have discovered that the problems couples face (i.e.: affording divorce, protecting the children, restarting a career) are the real problems; the people themselves (i.e.: the other spouse) are not really the problem. When facing separation you, in fact, will be leaving the other person, so if your first order of business is re-directing your focus onto the problems involved with uncoupling, as opposed to problems which were present during your marriage. Most people are stuck in old patterns of conflict, which stalls the process of separation. This is where the horror stories about courts and lawyers are most often bred. If you can find a way to leave old patterns behind, this is the way to your future. It is within your personal power to do so. Once separating couples realize this, we can work collaboratively towards a Separation Agreement and, if there are minor children, a Shared Parenting Plan.

I earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Finance from the University of Virginia. I have worked in a closely held family business. I have raised a family and have enjoyed building my own law practice. I can help you if you are willing to call or email.

Ending a marriage is an important life-cycle event. Professional advice can greatly enhance the quality of your negotiations and ultimate settlement. Caring professional advice can also greatly enhance the quality of your life going forward. You can benefit from my years of experience with other clients who have previously walked down the same path you are considering. Call me; I can help; that’s what I’m about. It will be worth it, I promise.  (513) 770-4350 or maury@mowhitelaw.com.

Dissolutions are granted by courts to those couples who have been able to reach all of their agreements in advance;  divorces are available for couples who cannot agree in advance, and who require a court to force decisions upon themselves.  Once divorcing parties realize that the court has this power, they are, more often than not, inclined to find a way to reach an agreement, but only after they have found themselves in a courtroom before a judge.

Collaborative Law (also referred to as Collaborative Divorce, Collaborative Practice, and Collaborative Family Law) is one of several alternative dispute resolution methods frequently utilized by couples who wish to end their marriage and reach agreements in advance, before asking a court to dissolve their marriage.  Each spouse hires his or her own Collaborative attorney.  As an alternative to the Collaborative Process, couples often seek the assistance of a single attorney mediator, who will function as a neutral, and who will not provide slanted legal advice to one or the other party. The neutral, however, cannot help the couple petition a court for Dissolution; that, they will have to do themselves, or find legal assistance elsewhere, other than the mediator’s office.

I personally believe that Collaborative Law offers couples the “best possible divorce”.  Each spouse has the benefit of legal counsel regarding very important legal rights; however, those lawyers are not hired to litigate in an adversary manner. The lawyers’ representation is limited to advocacy in Collaborative negotiations and then filing the Dissolution papers at the conclusion of the negotiation.

Some couples do not wish to limit the scope of their attorneys’ representation.  Some couples want their attorneys to negotiate a settlement and, if that doesn’t work out, to also be able to go to court with them to convince a judge of the validity of his or her position on any number of issues that need to be decided for them. I do not think this is “the best possible divorce”. I know that if it is not a Collaborative case, that there is trial strategy embedded in all discussions and, that the inherent nature of litigation limits the degree of transparency in every conversation.  Both clients and attorneys are constantly on guard against missteps and misstatements.  Because one never knows when one might be in the courtroom litigating, positions are established early, and time and money are wasted waiting for the other side “to blink” first. Collaborative Practice, on the other hand, gets right to the heart of the matter, and focuses on what is most important to you the client,  sooner rather than later.  That is the best divorce possible .

I hear your concerns! The last thing you want to be doing at a time of such uncertainty and doubt, especially about matters financial when you are facing cutting “your pie” in half, is writing a big check to an attorney for what seems to you to be a simple proposition.

I have dedicated my practice to meeting the real needs of my clients. I have also discovered that there are other attorneys with the same dedication. We vigilantly strive to provide legally sound and effective solutions to your most pressing problems, instead of “stirring the pot” and inadvertently exasperating an already volatile situation with irrelevant legal mumbo jumbo and courtroom antics.

This is not to minimize your very important legal rights. Even though you and your spouse have discussed what makes sense to you, each of you needs to know that you are making the right decisions; for yourself and for your family. The only way to do this is to speak to your own attorney. You each need independent legal advice from Collaborative attorneys dedicated to out-of-court settlements and who know what they are talking about.

I have developed a model based upon tried and true mediation practices within the parameters and protocols of Collaborative Family Law to provide our divorcing clients with trustworthy, compassionate and fair divorce settlements, ending in Collaborative Dissolution.

Please contact me for a free phone consultation and discover a Collaborative process centered upon what you, the client, know that you need.

Law Offices of Maury White • 513-770-4350 • www.collaborativefamilylaw.biz

Collaborative Models

In the Collaborative community there has been much discussion about which Collaborative model is most appropriate. Lawyer only models; two lawyers and one mental health professional; two lawyers and two mental health professionals; a financial specialist can be added to any model, as can a mediator and we have even seen on a single Collaborative team two lawyers, two mental health professionals as coaches, a child specialist and a financial specialist. If we are honest, aware and empathetic, as we are trained to be, which model is chosen will actually be the first collaboratively reached decision made by our clients, who have individually made their own informed decision to attempt the Collaborative Process.

Recently, in a letter to the editors of the Sunday New York Times Magazine, Captain Thomas R. Beal, U.S. Navy, retired, who studied at the Naval Postgraduate School, noted that “a great lesson for all those who work with (mathematical) models as tools to understand the real world, is that models provide insights, not answers.” I believe that this lesson is an important one for Collaborative professionals as well. In my ten years of Collaborative practice, I have found that each case, and every set of clients, have unique characteristics and various sets of circumstances that affect not only the course of the Collaborative process, but also the quality of the Collaborative experience (for both the clients and the professionals) and, of course, the actual level of satisfaction with the substantive outcome. Our Collaborative models provide us with insight about how to go about collaborating. I have worked with other Collaborative professionals who have allowed orthodox approaches become an end in and of themselves, with frustrated clients wondering how things ever got so bad, and the disenchanted Collaborative professionals wondering if its worth all the effort. Your model can refer to the make-up of the Collaborative team; the protocols which lay out how each professional should interact with his/her client; how, and when, the teams work together or apart; and, how the case concludes.

The Central Tenet and Core Principles

We have long understood that the central tenet of the Collaborative Process is that it is intended as a “Client’s Paradigm”. The process is based upon dual legal concepts called “informed consent” and “limited representation”. Each client has consented to be represented by an individual attorney who will assist the separating couple while they are engaged in a working relationship designed to problem solve around a specific set to generally encountered issues. The purpose of our limited representation is to assist a separating couple collaborate. We have not been hired to litigate or further inflame, what is usually, a pre-existing adversarial relationship. After being fully informed of their process options, as every Collaborative case begins, our clients make this choice. In order to truly “collaborate” with the couple, and to advocate for our client’s goals and interests, we who hold ourselves out as Collaborative Professionals, must be vigilant about our empathy for the clients’ individual, and collective, situations. Our different models provide opportunities for the development of such awareness. This does not, however, mean allowing the clients to “take over the process” inasmuch as we are the Collaborative Professionals and they are lay participants.

The clients’ frame of reference is their “real world”. In order to effectively problem solve with them (i.e.: collaborate) we need to see and understand their world(s). From that reference point, the clients can hear us. If they are not hearing us they are not getting their money’s worth. We too often forget that we have the luxury of being in a process which we can actually and, in a mindful way, control. We can speed it up; slow it down; direct the twists and turns; understand what needs to be discussed. This is what was contracted for; not some indefinable, yet definitive end (“I just want it over”) (“I just want what’s fair”). And even we, the professionals, may lapse into the comfort of thinking that the object of our game is a Separation Agreement and/or Parenting Plan. Such an attitude ignores the informed consent which was consciously, and affirmatively, granted when the clients signed the Participation Agreement.

As we begin to learn about the couple’s real world, in the fishbowl known as a four-, five-or even six-way, we cannot forget that in addition to hiring us for our Collaborative skills, our limited representation requires injection of our specific legal, psychological or financial knowledge and experience into the “collaborative” conversation. This knowledge and experience, however, has is own language; a language, or code, which we cannot expect our clients to speak very fluently; especially in such stressful times.

The Essential Building Bock: Trust

The clients’ real world has not included such things as alimony, child support or mixed and marital properties. Can we expect clients to know how to problem solve using these terms? By way of example, they are instead concerned with their mother’s inherited diamond ring, how will the children’s expenses be paid and what will their retirement years look like. Our legal labels only confuse our clients’ reality. I have found that if we allow the process to unfold, the time spent collaborating will provide opportunity for new meaning to attach to these labels which will ultimately appear in the lawyers’ documents. As we proceed through the process, the opportunities for newfound understanding and comfort (with what was, at best, a foreign language) will appear. This is how we meet our clients where they are; this is how we work with them so that they can feel comfortable making decisions. This is how we build trust. IACP members, responding to the 2009 Practice Survey, identified lack of trust in the other client, or a core professional, as the most prevalent cause of “terminated” or “difficult” cases.

Whether it is the second or fifth or tenth meeting, before either client can be expected to say yes or no, the best and worst alternatives to a negotiated settlement must be measured against the goals and interests which have been identified when we are processing and understanding the clients’ real world. This is where we can provide the benefit of all our experiences in the world of domestic relations and often the time when that interest of “just wanting to get it over with” is balanced against a judgment of just how a judge might apply the relevant spousal or child support provisions. What is, or is not “fair,” to each client, will be encountered, in full transparency, at this crossroads. This is where “the test” is administered.

Conclusion

Thus, it remains the Clients’ Paradigm. Only then, at that appropriate point in the Collaborative Process, is a meaningful and fully informed opportunity to accept or reject an Agreement available. Getting the clients to this point is my goal for the Collaborative Process. Together, as a collaborating team, we arrive at a place where all of the information has been addressed, all of the options have been developed and all of the consequences have been fully weighed. Time has been our friend.

Does your model provide space for a Clients’ Paradigm to evolve?

Thoughts on My Collaborative Divorce

It was raining as I drove to my lawyer’s house to sign my divorce papers. His house is on the corner of Coolidge Avenue, and every time I turn the corner, onto his street, I think the same thought…that I can never remember what the history books say about Calvin Coolidge, what kind of president he was. I do recall that his wife was named Grace. Such a pretty name: Grace Coolidge, all elegant and cool and graceful, qualities that I would not have ascribed to myself during this divorce process. Disheveled is more like it, or maybe dis-levelled. I pulled up to the curb. The purple lilac bushes on the corner were soaking up the rain, reminding me of the lilacs that hold court over the back fences along the alley behind my house. The purpose of alleys is lilacs a far as I am concerned.

Signing my divorce papers… how did I ever get to this point? Where did it all begin? The ending, that is. Was it when I decided, finally, to let go of trying? Was that before the year of marriage counseling? Was there a specific moment when the pronouns changed: when our children became my children? Was there a specific moment when I lost myself completely? Whose fault was it that I sank into a marital swamp that I could not pull myself out of? Does it need to be anyone’s fault? Our lives had become unmanageable, and I had tried to take care of everything I possibly could to prevent the crash. But the crash had happened anyway.

Jess, our oldest child, was in his first year of college, far away, and his younger sisters, Lissa, 16, and Lyric 10, were missing him with a grief I hardly knew what to do with. Such timing. I had ached for all of us: my husband, myself, and of course for our children.

I remember thinking that I needed a process that would respect our marriage, and its dissolution. A process that would not be judgmental or adversarial or use words like “broken”–that would honor what we were and would be as a family, with the least emotional fall out to each member. And I found it. Worn out, wasted, and without ego, I had washed up on the shores of the Collaborative Law Institute. And now, these many months later, I was finally signing my divorce papers.

My lawyer just celebrated his 75th birthday. He greeted me at the door in slippers, his white hair flopping over his eyes as he bent to pick up newspapers lodged in the screen door. Taking my shoes off at the door, I noticed the meditation mat in its usual spot, underneath his couch, and books stacked on every surface, as always. What’s he reading now? I wondered, The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, and an even thicker book, Esalen, caught my eye first.

My lawyer works off a stack of fourteen books at a time, he’s told me. War and Peace was another one on the stack, I noted, — the irony not entirely lost on me. I can never see that book without thinking of these words from Tolstoy: “We imagine that when we are thrown out of our usual ruts, all is lost, but it is only then that what is new and good begins. While there is life there is happiness. There is much much before us. I say this to you.”

My lawyer had set up a table in the living room, with bottled water and a stack of documents. A nearby lamp cast a circle of light on the official looking papers. We sat down and then he got back up to track down a pen. I settled back in my chair. Images of the divorce process flashed through my mind as though from a slide show, or I guess the more present day image would be a power point presentation:

• My husband sitting across from me, in our very first meeting with the lawyers, his head in his hands: “How did we get here?” he asks.
• Pulling into the huge parking lot by that tall building with the remarkably green roof, guided there step by step, as if coming in for a landing, by my husband’s lawyer giving me directions via cell phone. The entrance to the offices, the waiting area, open and beautiful, windows everywhere allowing light from all directions, calm, quiet, order, and beauty. Feeling nervous… taking a deep breath, while waiting for our meeting to begin, soaking in the stillness, the light.
• My husband and me in our first “four-way” meeting with our lawyers, he looking drawn and way too thin, not fully understanding, or trusting, that this was not going to be an adversarial process, glancing at his watch, while closing his laptop computer, his body shot with fatigue and agitation: “Are we about done here?” His words staccato. Me trying not to feel that it was my responsibility to calm him, trying, instead, to let my husband’s lawyer take care of him, and feeling like he could … feeling alone and lonely, as usual withthis man, my husband, yet feeling strength from the other two men here, the lawyers. I am not even noticing that, I am the lone female in this group. They feel like OUR lawyers. My lawyer speaking quietly to my husband and seeing his faceregister relief.
• The second meeting, one week after the first, I am speaking as clearly as I can about money, the subject that is so agitating for my husband that it may as well spark a neon light flashing DANGER: DO NOT WALK THIS WAY. How can I navigate here? Me tipping my head sideways trying to make eye contact with him as, again, he snaps his computer shut. He has not made eye contact with me for a long time, a long, long time, years. In subsequent meetings, a financial expert from the collaborative offices joined our meetings, presenting a detailed picture of our finances, present and future, bringing clarity, giving us a way to plan and make decisions.
• Another four-way meeting months into the process. I have been home all week with youngest daughter, Lyric, who has been sick and missing school. I am fatigued beyond measure. When my husband starts to implode, I move into rescue mode, trying to calm him. Or am I trying to calm myself? The meeting has taken every last ounce of my ability to think. I drop my head into my hands. My lawyer and my husband’s lawyer guide the conversation through this difficult part… I ask my husband to take the two girls this evening, just for dinner. “Oh!” he says, “You would not believe the day I have had!” I DO believe the day he has had. Does he believe the days I have? Tears sting my throat. My husband’s lawyer asks if I am okay. My lawyer suggests a break.
• The following week’s meeting. I am crying right there in the hard office chair in the room with the big oval table, water glasses and papers everywhere. Things disintegrate. I announce that I am giving full custody of our very spirited and very adorable youngest daughter, Lyric, to my husband. Both lawyers suggest a break. We all stand; then my lawyer says he has a joke. He proceeds to tell a joke about two convicts shackled to a high wall along an abyss, ankles, wrists bound to the wall, no hope, no escape and one convict turns to the other and says: “Okay, here’s my plan…”
• A month later, sitting in the office of the Collaborative Divorce Law coach, next to my lawyer’s office, sun shining through the south-facing windows, learning ways to ground myself in the meetings, ideas about what to do when I feel agitated or caretaking of my husband, how to turn things over to my lawyer when I am flooded with feelings, or unable to think, getting a sense of who else I am, besides a divorcing person.

My lawyer returned to the living room, sat back down and handed me a pen, a serious looking pen very fitting for the occasion. I sifted through the papers and then, in spite of my best intentions, signed in the wrong place. Calmly, he got up again to make more copies. I shifted sideways in my chair, heard the hum of the refrigerator kick in and the rain’s steady patter against the windows. I was saving my soul with the dissolution of my marriage. I was restoring sanity to my home and my life and the lives of my children. Finding words to explain that to three children of varying needs and developmental stages had challenged me: “I don’t speak divorce very well,” I wanted to tell them. More images overcame me:

• I remember my husband and me sitting with our youngest child, Lyric, on her bed, her so blond hair wisping over her cheeks, explaining that Daddy would have a different house now, and that we, she and her sister, rather, and her brother when he was home, would go back and forth between the houses, but that we are still and always will be a family. My husband and I had exchanged glances above her head as she said brightly: “Well, at least you’re not getting a divorce or anything!”
• And I remember that it was hard for me to watch our three children walk down the hall to the child specialist’s office; I had wondered what was on their minds and if they would say what was on their minds to this person. Lyric had bounded out of the session ahead of her siblings to tell me that Lissa had cried in the meeting, which sparked an image of Lissa insisting on leaving the house one cold midnight, telling me she couldn’t stay, that a friend’s mother was picking her up, making me realize that the stress of the marriage was felt by the kids… certainly by Lissa.
• And then how helpful it was really, my husband and me sitting in a meeting with the child specialist, learning what the kids wanted us to know, where they feel safe, who they worry about, what was important to them as their parents separated.
• The kids were my first concern, of course, but then, the roof fell in… the real roof, on what was now my house. I had been warned about house maintenance expenses, and that the house was too expensive for me to support, and that the best time for me to sell was two years ago. But then sometimes all three kids were home, the college ones and the youngest, and that meant the house was full right up to that roof. Besides, I was wedded to the house. That was the relationship that offered me solace, comfort, containment, safety. And didn’t every house require maintenance? I had said, — even houses that were not 80 years old? The house seemed to contain all that I needed, as had my marriage, but then both had so much brokenness that needed so much attending to, and my husband had not seemed to be available to attend to either, the marriage or the house.
• The roofers trooped in, laid a complicated architecture of scaffolding over the red clay tile perimeter of the roof and replaced the flat roof. The roof had collapsed through the attic tearing down the study ceiling beneath, bringing clouds of insulation and dust with it. The sheet rock people put a huge piece of sheetrock over the gaping hole in the study ceiling and said they would be back. That’s what they all say. We know this. The people who specialize in cleaning Oriental rugs said they had to charge extra to get all the attic insulation out of my Grandmother’s ancient Caucasian rug which had been on the floor directly under the ceiling collapse. The rug expert told me the rug was very old and very valuable and very frail and should be displayed on a wall and never, ever walked on. I did not tell him that I had once just washed that rug in the washing machine.
• During all of that, the roofers noticed the chimney was crumbling. That in fact the entire chimney needed rebuilding, the estimate totalling more than the entire roof replacement. It seemed whenever I asked for an estimate, for whatever it was, I always got surprised, and not in a good way.
• I am so proud of myself for getting divorced! If my ex-husband or his family or my kids ever heard that it might sound… I’m not even sure how it might sounds to them, really… It feels right, though, to say it. I feel like I have just stepped into my truth. The roof? The chimney? I would be alone, anyway, to deal with all of that. I was on my own in that marriage. And it is just so much more honest to be legally on my own, to name it, live it, right out here, with the sun shining all over that brand new roof, and my Grandmother’s rug that is so valuable and so worn that it should be displayed on a wall, right beneath my bare feet.
• The Collaborative Divorce process saw us through this family reformulation in a way that left each and every one of intact and our relationships intact as well. Another slide: my husband and me talking on the phone, just last week, laughing, together, about the fact that Lyric had ordered a turtle on line… “Only Lyric,” we both said.

So as I sat there in my lawyer’s living room, that rainy day, signing the papers, I took in a deep breath. I put the cap back on the pen, and handed it to my lawyer. He told me he had enjoyed working with me and I told him I had always appreciated his presence beside me. All of this is true, but our words didn’t seem enough as we looked at one another, so I leaned over and hugged him and he hugged me right back. Then I stepped out into that merciful precipitation which spattered all over the folder of divorce papers. And I remembered again Tolstoy’s words:

We imagine that when we are thrown out of our usual ruts, all is lost, but it is only then that what is new and good begins. While there is life there is happiness. There is much much before us. I say this to you.

Every client who sits with me in my law office has questions. To provide them with valuable counsel, I must listen very carefully to each and every one of those questions. My professional knowledge, my experience and my temperament, require that I make sure every husband, wife, mother and father, who I have the privilege of meeting, is asking the “right” questions.

In his book, Divorce Is a Mitzvah: A Practical Guide to Finding Wholeness and Holiness When Your Marriage Dies, Rabbi Perry Netter, addresses many of the questions which those considering divorce ask. The questions are universal; Rabbi Netter, a divorce’, a father, a congregational rabbi and a pastoral counselor provides insight and wisdom taken from his personal experience and Jewish tradition. The tradition dates back as far as Deuteronomy 24:1, wherein the Torah mentions grounds for writing a bill of divorcement and, Rashi, who in the 11th Century made the pronouncement, “Divorce is a mitzvah.” (From whence the title of Rabbi Netter’s book is derived).

Is divorce a good deed? Is divorce a commandment? No, those are the wrong questions. The questions that Judaism answers have to do with how we conduct ourselves. The miztvot inform us as to that process; they are our guides. A marriage is not defined by the wedding, nor does the settlement, the court hearing or the decree define the divorce. Both are cycles of life aptly suited for guidance by Jewish ethics and values. Rabbi Netter prompts us to ask, what does G-d expect of us? If we are to obey the commandment that “As I am holy, so shall you be holy”, how are weto go through divorce without destroying our souls?

The nine chapters and epilogue address questions such as, Why Is This Happening to Me? How Do I Decide to Leave? Is Divorce Kosher? What Do I Do with All This Anger? How Do We Tell the Kids? How do I Get Closure? What Do You Say? To Litigate or to Mediate? How Do We Continue to Raise Children Together?

Some people ask me, “How can you stand to do what you do? Isn’t it depressing?” If I am able to help my clients focus on the correct questions, my work becomes sacred work. Rabbi Netter has validated my experience. By choosing process options such as the Collaborative Family Practice, which focuses on a couples’ underlying motivations, goals and interests, as opposed to a legal model based upon a lawyers’ paradigm, I am able to help, as Rabbi Netter suggests, increase wholeness and holiness in our world.

Rationale

The process of divorce, driven by the choices and desires of the divorcing couple, fundamentally alters the experience and structure of family life for both adults and children in the divorcing family.

The challenges, stresses and dilemmas divorce introduces into the lives of children whose parents are divorcing have been well researched and documented. For most children, divorce is experienced as a profoundly unwelcome and unhappy change in family life. While most divorcing parents worry about how divorce will affect their children, in the midst of the complicated and often chaotic process of divorce, concerns and interests pertaining to the children are often eclipsed by other immediate and pressing demands. During divorce, parents are overloaded with the turmoil of ending a marriage, taxed by the demands of decision making and stressed by the loss of their parenting partnership with the other parent. Even the most sensitive and committed parents may be drawn off track during divorce. They lose sight of their children’s needs and worries for brief moments or for protracted periods of time. Meanwhile, children are left burdened with many questions, worries, hopes and uncertainties about what is going to happen to them and to their family. In order to ensure that children don’t get lost in the shuffle during divorce, a child specialist works with the children to help identify and understand their experiences and perspectives. The child specialist provides information and recommendations to the parent about how they can best help their children through the divorce process and how they, as co-parents, can develop sensitive and sound plans for the future.

Scope of the Child Specialist’s Work

The child specialist works with the children to assess their needs and interests, provides information and feedback to parents regarding these interests during the divorce process, and collaborates with the other professionals working with the divorcing family as decisions pertaining to the children are considered.

Working with the children, the child specialist 1) offers support and comfort during a stressful time, 2) makes available a place and context for them to share their story about what’s happening in their family, 3) allows them an opportunity to ask questions and discuss concerns they may be reluctant to bring up with their mother or father, and 4) encourages them to identify specific hopes and fears about their immediate circumstances and the future.

The child specialist is then able to provide valuable, impartial information to the parents, and to those helping the parents, as plans for dealing with the immediate family changes and for the future are discussed and decided upon.

Working with the parents, the child specialist 1) informs them about common reactions children have to divorce, 2) discusses development and practical considerations important in making custody agreements, 3) assists parents in developing realistic and thoughtful custody plans and 4) helps parents look ahead to anticipate the challenges they face as co-parents after divorce.

Working collaboratively with the other professionals engaged in helping the family through divorce, the child specialist provides specific recommendations and advice for protecting children during the divorce process itself as well as for developing the best plans for the future.

The child specialist is knowledgeable about family dynamics, child development, parenting, psychopathology, and children’s responses to change, stress and loss. Maintaining a comforting and supportive relationship with the child, the specialist identifies their role as one of helping children with the changes of divorce. The child specialist provides information and recommendations to the parents in a framework that acknowledges common ground as well as differences. As an advocate for the child, the child specialist conveys an attitude of supportive, confident, expectation that parents will be able to work collaboratively to develop thoughtful and successful plans for the family, holding their child’s interests and needs foremost in mind.

Benefits to Children and Their Parents

The Children benefit by receiving support and careful attention during a time of stress and change, a time when, due to their own distress, parents may be less clearly attuned to their children’s needs and worries and less able to fully function as parents. Children feel heard and are relieved when their thoughts and feelings about their changing family are acknowledged, considered and represented. They are reassured to know that their parents are able to work together to address the many details and difficulties that characterize this time of family transition.

The divorcing couple benefits when the child specialist, operating as an advocate of the child, does not take the side of either parent against the other. Rather, the child specialist provides information, feedback and recommendations in a supportive way, appreciative of the unique contributions and roles of each parent. This helps the divorcing couple use the child specialist as a neutral resource while working together to develop plans that are in the child’s best interest. The child specialist’s firm and unambiguous commitment to represent the best interests of the child is compatible with the hope that the divorcing parents will each give their best and get the most out of their experience of parenting in the post-divorce years.

Benefits to the Other Professionals Working With the Divorcing Family

During divorce, parents can have trouble distinguishing their own needs and wants from their children’s. They often present a very skewed picture or incomplete account of what’s going on with their children. This, of course, makes it difficult for others (attorney’s, divorce coaches, financial specialists) to feel confident they have a good grasp of they key child-related issues and concerns. The direct, clear feedback and recommendations the child specialist formulates are of great benefit to others working with the family, as they represent knowledge and expertise from an impartial source able to separate the point of view of child from point of view of parent.

The child specialist offers recommendations about urgent and/or immediate child-related concerns as well as recommendations for a parenting plan extending into the future. These recommendations are thoughtfully tailored to the unique circumstances of each family. They are usually quite helpful and stabilizing and can have the effect of “steadying the boat”, which of course can be of benefit to other professionals working with the divorcing couple.

Collaborative Divorce is an integrated cross-disciplinary system for problem solving in a divorce situation. Collaborative Divorce requires collaborative lawyers to coordinate their work with other collaborative professionals who specialize in addressing the emotional and financial problems of divorce. Working together as a team, they seek to contain conflict and to help the family to restructure from a single-family system into a two family system. This team system facilitates the use of the collaborative process for families at varying levels of serious conflict by forming a safety net that helps the parties through difficult situations: putting out wildfires and generally dampening down minor conflicts threatening to generate the heat that could easily lead to major conflict.

Because each individual hears the respective professionals’ different perspectives of the family undergoing divorce, he or she gains a more balanced view of the problems faced and the family dynamics involved. This process also allows the professionals involved to better understand the whole family system. Gaining this new knowledge and a broadened view can be essential for finding creative solutions and working out strategies to solve problems. As the old adage goes, two heads are better than one. When this knowledge comes from “heads” from several different disciplinary approaches, the resulting synchrony can result in vastly enriched patterns of problem solving. Working together, we can create more possibilities.

The goal of Collaborative Divorce is to conserve both the emotional and financial resources of the family. When mental health experts address the emotional forces that drive the conflict, their power can be significantly deflated. When that power is decreased, we have more effective use of the disciplinary skills of all involved professionals, including the more efficient use of specific legal services. The average range of cost of a Collaborative team intervention (typically $2,500 to $3,000 exclusive of attorney’s fees) is significantly less than the cost of a child custody evaluation. The fee for the teams’ mental health services includes all the psychological assistance described below.

The Team

An independently selected Collaborative Lawyer represents each party. In addition, the couple works with a male/female coaching team comprised of two-licensed mental health professionals (usually psychologists or licensed clinical social workers) who initially work with the clients individually and subsequently, jointly. A child specialist assists and enables the child to be heard above the roar of the conflict. One member of the team, usually one of the coaches, acts as a case coordinator to keep all team members abreast of situations that arise and to keep the process on track. The team also includes a practical counselor who works with both parties.

The Gender-Balanced Coaching Duo

As Deborah Tannen points out in You Just Don’t Understand, the different socialization of males and females makes for difficulties in understanding one another. This problem becomes exacerbated at the time of divorce. A balanced gender approach helps bridge this difficulty. To address this difficulty, the licensed mental health professionals who serve as coaches meet individually with the spouses of the same gender. We have found that having the same sex coach makes gaining the new clients trust in the process faster and easier since their anger toward - and suspicion about their spouses tends in divorce to generalize to all people of the opposite gender. By having the gender - balanced team, we increase the potential for effective communication.
What do the coaches do? They assess the personality dynamics of the adults and their relationship through evaluative interviews and screening inventories while identifying and prioritizing each person’s concerns. They try to separate psychological facts from fantasy. They work with the individuals to reduce their personal stress by teaching them effective stress reduction techniques. They provide information about normal child development and coach positive parenting skills, especially for the less skilled parent. In this process each adult has a chance to tell a same-gendered person his or her own personal marriage story. With the pressure reduced somewhat; the coaches are able to teach communication learning is learning how to co-parent. Coaches thus form an active safety net for the clients to come to terms with the emotional issues and communication needs and to facilitate their change of communication patterns through four- way meetings.

Child Specialist

The child specialist assesses the child individually and the child with each parent. The specialist is concerned with the child’s development and temperament, her relationship to family members - including the extended family - her interests, emotional attachments and support structure beyond the family. The specialist assesses the child’s reaction to family changes, her worries, hopes, fears, and expressed needs. Our experience is that it is helpful for a child to have her own special “outside” person, the child specialist, to talk to about his or her view of the family changes. The parents also appreciate the opportunity to express their fears and concerns about the child with an expert in the field. It gives both parents and opportunity to focus their attention on the needs of their children. The child specialist presents feedback about the children and their needs to the parents at one of their four-way meetings with the coaches, which is followed by discussion.

The Financial Specialist

A practical financial counselor understands the fundamentals of household financial matters, has good interposal skills, can help gather information about assets and debts and can develop realistic budgets. The financial counselor is the neutral person on the Collaborative Divorce team who assists the couple in collecting the financial data needed for the divorce process. Both parties have an opportunity to take a look at their assets and liabilities, as well as the living expenses of a divided household. The financial counselor encourages the couple to see the process as information gathering and at this stage actively discourages either party from making claims or trying to negotiate any division of property.

The focus is on gathering information, identifying levels of understanding and identifying issues that look problematic. When needed, the counselor assists one or both parties to develop realistic budgets.

If one party is less sophisticated in financial matters, the counselor may spend time helping that person understand simple things, such as keeping a checkbook. Knowledge builds confidence and makes an unknown future less fearful. Fear often underlies anger; as this process abates fear, anger tends to diminish. This process allows clients to develop a realistic perspective while fighting what can be paralyzing fear that she will end up a bag lady or he will be working to the end of his days just to support his ex wife. It reduces the tendency for one spouse to suspect that the other spouse is hiding resources.

The information developed by the financial specialist is used not only by the attorneys, but also by higher-level financial specialists, such as Certified Public Announcements, financial planners or other business consultants whose expertise may be needed in a specific case. Our experience suggests that it is contact with the team during their work.

The Power of the Team

A direct result of the collaboration of the professionals on tea us the free flow of information within the team. Having the information relevant to each profession (at least in summary form) available to all team members provides a greatly expanded view of a family’s problems, potential for future problems and positive possibilities.

This is true first because different disciplines - law, mental health and finance - tend appropriately to seek information relevant to concerns within their own areas of expertise. Secondly, this process is reinforced by clients expecting to talk budget with a practical financial person, express concern for an upset child with a mental health person, and ask questions of an attorney about child support issues and community property concerns. Hearing other professionals’ information, taking advantage of their knowledge of their respective disciplines and the varying perspective of a family helps all team members gain a more balanced view of the problems faced and the family dynamics involved. This shared knowledge can be essential for finding creative solutions and crafting strategies to solve problems. When team members agree on priorities and strategies for working as a team, they can impact the family in consistent ways. We believe that it takes this system to change the family system in an effective way.

The Clients

Clients get support from different perspectives. They are secure in their representation by their attorneys. They have the support for their coaches, whose focus is guiding them through the emotional roller coaster of divorce and teaching them ways of learning to communicate about important matters with each other. This process of talking and listening to different people often loosens the tyranny of set ideas and softens the seemingly fixed positions of both parties, allowing for the possibility of more creative solutions. As possible solutions to problems appear, fear diminishes and anger subsides. This makes way for better communication between the parties and the potential for meaningful understanding of the other’s needs. For those with children, the focus is on their children’s needs and on finding ways to minimize the impact of the divorce on them through positive co-parenting.

How Clients Enter the Collaborative Law/Collaborative Divorce System

Clients may enter the Collaborative Law/Collaborative Divorce System through any one of three doors; legal, mental health or financial. Some clients come to collaboration the traditional way: by contacting an attorney trained in Collaborative Law. The collaborative lawyer will explain the options available so that he and the client may decide together whether this new process might fit the circumstances of the client’s case.

Clients may also begin the Collaborative Law/Collaborative Divorce process by making an initial telephone contact with mental health professionals trained to work as Collaborative Divorce coaches. If the case seems appropriate, the coach will suggest that the prospective client ask his or her spouse to call a same gender coach for information about Collaborative Law/Collaborative Divorce. If that step is successful, the divorcing couple might then come in for a personal discussion of the process either together - or if emotions are running to high - separately.

Sometimes an attempt to refer to an attorney meets resistance. However, people who fear attorneys can be reassured that the engagement of an attorney will not escalate their fight by a frank discussion of the collaborative principles. The discussion is not only helpful to clients who fear attorneys, but also to those wary of lawyers because of past experiences in other areas of disputes when the process and the costs may seem to have gotten out of hand. It may take a firm stance and a keen sense of timing to make a successful referral to an attorney.

Some clients come to the process via the financial door. Clients coming to the financial specialist may see that they need help financially in dividing their assets and liabilities, yet resist or be unaware of the importance of the legal and psychological aspects of their case. The financial specialist must be sensitive to the interpersonal relationships within the family so that he or she can endorse the usefulness of the child assessment and the need to improve the adults’ communication in order to learn to co-parent effectively.

What is Collaborative Divorce?

Collaborative Divorce is a systematic, interdisciplinary team approach that consists of specific steps and emotionally supportive patterns of interaction that facilitate a cooperative, non-adversarial divorce process. It is predicated on the willingness and ability of the clients to retain skilled collaborative lawyers in their community, because without effective collaborative lawyers in the case, the work if the Collaborative Divorce team may be thwarted.

The process draws on effective aspects of other processes. So although it is not therapy, Collaborative Divorce does not involve therapeutic interventions. Collaborative Divorce is not mediation, although mediation techniques are used and a shared goal is to assist the parties to come to agreements that will facilitate the family transition. Collaborative Divorce draws on some of the assessment approaches, including interviews and inventories common to child custody evaluations. And, as with child custody evaluations, the child is assessed to determine the individual child’s needs.

A Caveat

Not all professionals can work within the collaborative team environment. Some individuals become attorneys, psychiatric social workers and financial specialists in order to work primarily autonomously in their individual practices. Of these, some maintain a strong preference for independence and freedom rather than to relating more or less continually in the team mode that an organization may require. Their need to take responsibility predilection for adversarial situations. Many of these people would not be comfortable in - or willing to make -the shift to the collaborative mode.

For those with a cooperative conciliatory commitment, we would invite you to seriously consider expanding your professional and personal horizons by entering into the paradigm shift to collaborative mode, and joining with others working with families going through divorce as an interdisciplinary, collaborative team.