Collaborative Divorce: It’s Okay to Trust and Verify

Written By: Steven E. Sutherland, Financial Specialist

Are you considering the Collaborative process for your divorce?  If you’re reading this blog on the Portland Collaborative Divorce website, it’s quite possible.

Perhaps you don’t want to endure the time, invasiveness, lack of control and emotional toll of a traditional litigated approach.  You’ve heard the Collaborative process is based on mutual respect and transparency and that sounds good.

But does this mean you must choose between “no trust” and “full trust” regarding the family finances when deciding which approach is right for you?  Does choosing Collaborative mean leaving your healthy skepticism at the door?  No.  As I observed in a recent case, “I don’t trust what you’ve done with our finances” could mean “I don’t understand what’s happened with our finances”.

There is room in Collaborative for “trust and verify”.

Consider an actual case involving Ozzy and Sharon (names changed), a couple in their mid-30s.  Ozzy handled most of the finances – and it involved a lot of cryptocurrency accounts and transactions.  Although Sharon had a good understanding of crypto, what she saw didn’t make sense to her and Ozzy’s verbal explanations weren’t enough.  The case seemed stuck and I suspect that whatever mild suspicions Sharon had were beginning to grow.  

Enter trust and verify.

Although Ozzy felt it was unnecessary, Sharon agreed to cover the cost for me to conduct a mini-forensic analysis.  Ozzy provided several years’ worth of records for review.  After 4-5 hours I was able to reconstruct what had happened and summarize it in a format that made sense to Sharon.  Although the records were incomplete and the analysis could’ve gone much deeper (more time and money), it was enough to give Sharon the understanding and confidence to move forward in the process.