Choosing an Amicable Process: Mediation or Collaborative Law?
You and your spouse are separating -- either because you agreed or because one of you decided for both of you. Regardless of which camp you fall into, I imagine you might:
Be feeling overwhelmed emotionally,
Be wondering or worried about how the finances will work, and
Be looking for help and information about the law and the complexities of the legal system.
In short, you have emotional, financial and legal needs. You are looking for support through the process and trying to decide how best to be educated so you can make informed decisions.
Hopefully, you still care about your spouse and you want them to be okay…and you want you to be okay…and the kids to be okay.
You’d prefer not to go to court if that’s possible, because you don’t want the damage you’ve heard it causes.
You’ve been doing research, or your spouse has been, and somehow you have gotten to this blog. Perhaps you’re curious about the different amicable process options available for getting a divorce and which is right for you and your family.
Building a Team
One place to start is with building a team – in other words figuring out what type of a professional team you may need to make this transition as healthy as possible.
I like to picture your team as being a ‘triangle’ with each corner representing one of needs you have: emotional, financial and legal.
Emotional
The majority of divorce is emotional since nearly every decision you make will have an emotional component, so deciding how to get emotional support for everyone in the family is super important if you are striving for a healthy process.
Where are you going to get your emotional support? Many folks are lucky to have family and friends who support them but let me suggest that you need more. Even if you have your own counselor or therapist, I recommend that you consider a working with a mental health practitioner specially trained to work with couples who are separating. These practitioners are often referred to as family specialists or divorce coaches. They just work with you during the separation process.
If you decide you’d like to work with a family specialist, you’ll need to decide how many specialists would be best for your family. You and your spouse could work with the same professional in individual and joint sessions, or you could each have your family specialist. There are pros and cons to each approach.
Then you need to decide if that same family professional will also work with your child/ren (with the whole family) or whether the child/ren will have a professional of their own. If you choose the later, this professional is called a child specialist. They become the children’s “voice in the process.”
Financial
A large part of divorce is separating finances and deciding how or if incomes need to be shared going forward in terms for support. If you have all but the simplest divorce, I recommend adding a financial specialist to your team. They are generally either investment and retirement planners, or certified public accounts (CPA), and have special expertise in divorce – generally a designation as a Certified Divorce Financial Analyst (CDFA).
Financial specialists are neutrals in the process, working for both clients. They collect and verify financial documentation and put it in an easily workable format that can be explored and evaluated real-time in meetings with clients and their professional team.
A financial specialist’s expertise and knowledge are invaluable in the process. Some folks are worried about the cost of the extra professional, but the reality is that having the financial rather than the lawyers do this job is a cost savings…plus you get the added benefit the financial will bring to the table.
Legal
Whether we like it or not, the legal system is part of divorce and you may need the assistance of lawyers to educate you about the law and to guidance you through the process.
Who will be your legal specialist? The question here is whether you think you can work with one neutral lawyer or whether you each need or would like to have our own lawyer – your own confident.
In most cases, the law is not “rocket science.” If you and your spouse were educated about it and your finances, and supported emotionally, could you come to the table and make decisions from a place of confidence? If so, you could work with one neutral lawyer (a legal mediator). If you need or would like individual support on the legal front, then you’d want your own lawyer – so you would have two lawyers on your ‘divorce professional team.’
Choosing the Process
If you need individual support and your own attorney, then you will want to choose Collaborative Law as your process.
If you feel like you can work with a neutral lawyer mediator, then you will want to choose Mediation as your process. If you a forming a team of professionals, this is sometimes called Team Mediation or Collaborative Mediation.
There are also Hybrid Processes. For example, you can choose mediation and each have an ‘advising attorney’ who you see outside of mediation meetings. Or perhaps only at the beginning to lay an informational foundation or only at the end to review your potential agreement.
The best process is the one that you and your spouse feel will work for you. How do you want your legal, financial and emotional needs met?