A significant part of my practice is to represent clients in hotly contested divorces. A contested divorce is financially beneficial to my practice. I would be lying if I said that I don’t reap a certain financial benefit by a divorcing couple that simply cannot get along at any stage of the divorce process. Some divorce attorneys (but honestly not most) actually encourage conflict to make sure the billable hours remain.
I am a divorced father of two wonderful children. Believe it or not, my ex-wife and I still get along almost all of the time. When we disagree, we are able to figure things out. I credit our ability to positively co-parent our children to the way we went through our divorce process. We came to an agreement on how we were going to co-parent before we engaged in an adversarial divorce process.
Let’s be honest with ourselves: Divorce is much more than a legal separation. A divorce involves financial separation, emotional separation, physical separation, and an understanding on how the future of the relationship will continue. When a divorce involves children, there is no doubt there must be a future relationship between you and your spouse in one way or another. Sometimes the process of a legal divorce hinders ones ability to divorce his or her spouse financially, emotionally, and physically.
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I have personally progressed in my legal practice from believing that a judge is the best decision maker to knowing that the parties themselves are the best decision makers. A judge that I respect highly always tells the parties before trial, “You still have the opportunity to reach your own conclusion. Otherwise, I am going to make a decision for you without enough time to know each of you, and it is likely neither one of you will like my decision.”
So how can you avoid the stress of a formal contested divorce? Some situations cannot avoid a trial, but most parties can reach an agreement on how to work together in the future in some of the following ways:
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PRE-SUIT/PRO SE MEDIATION
Pre-suit means prior to filing paperwork for divorce. Pro se means that the parties are not represented by attorneys.
In more cases than I give credit for, the parties come to a mutual agreement that they just cannot remain married. Unfortunately, the parties then believe that they must engage in a long-term fight. However, there are many different people that will assist divorcing couples in working out their problems without the expense of attorneys. They will work with the parties to negotiate all terms of the divorce before a single paper is filed in the court. Depending on the number of children or the complexity of the assets, this type of process can last anywhere from three hours to several days.
There is a valuable video on pre-suit/pro se mediation here.
COLLABORATIVE RESOLUTION
There is a movement in the legal community for directing divorcing couples to a collaborative resolution process. I have found the following information on the collaborative law process to be helpful. Choosing a collaborative law process is slightly different than pre-suit/pro se mediation. In this process, you hire an attorney, but the attorney is not advocating for you in the court process. Rather, your attorney and your spouse’s attorney agree to work together to try to collaborate on an agreement. It is intended to be non-confrontational. Additionally, this is also a means to save resources and time to reach an amicable resolution to a dissolution.
As attorney Amanda Colon from New Port Richey so rightly suggested, “Imagine if the Hulk Hogan divorce had been under collaborative law. No one would have known all the dirt about the marriage.” The parties would have been able to agree on a single expert for the marital estate’s value and TMZ would have been none-the-wiser.
Should the negotiations break down, you may have to hire a new attorney to advocate for you during the formal legal process. I wish I had more room to discuss this process in more detail, but there are some excellent resources available in the Tampa Bay area to research should you want to consider collaborative law.
POST FILING MEDIATION
The truth is that pre-suit/pro se mediation and collaborative law are not widely used by most parties – yet. After a divorce is filed, the judge assigned to your case will almost always require you to go to mediation regardless of whether you have an attorney or not.
Regardless of whether you have an attorney or not, please take the mediation session seriously. Bring all of your financial documents. Carefully outline your alimony needs if alimony is an issue. Come with a check-list of all concerns and areas of dispute you have about co-parenting.
Additionally, while you may not want to look your spouse in the eyes ever again, I highly suggest staying in the same room with your spouse at the beginning of the mediation unless you are the victim of domestic violence.
TRIAL
Trial should be treated as the last alternative to a legal divorce. It is expensive, confusing, and it takes your self-determination away. If you are in a dispute about what parent has the children, the realm of possibilities are far less certain than playing roulette.
I want to thank attorney Amanda Colon and mediator Elinor Robin for their guidance on this story. Each of their respective knowledge is far vaster than mine and I hope I summarized their main points. All words herein are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views and positions of people I consulted for this story.
No one wishes divorce on anyone. However, there are alternatives to a boxing match that will cost you more than what is necessary.
