Going through a divorce is a huge transition in anyone’s life.
You are going from a joint family dynamic to a single parent dynamic. Many decisions must be made during this transition and these decisions have legal, financial, and emotional implications.
Mediation and Collaborative Divorce Give You Control
Using Mediation or the Collaborative Divorce process is beneficial for a family going through this transition, because the family has a team of professionals help make those important legal, emotional, and financial decisions. The family can make this huge transition in a positive way instead of a destructive way. The parents are in control of what will happen in the future and it is possible to learn how to co-parent and be able to dance at your children’s wedding together. At the end of the day, you are still a family.
Litigation Gives Control to Others
Often in litigation, people see their attorney as a gladiator – someone who will fight for them and go to battle for them. This means there are two attorneys with swords drawn battling each other, however, at the end of the day, the judge makes the final decision for you. The judge does not know your family, your situation, or what your values and goals are for the future. That judge in the black robe Is a stranger to your family, but with the power to makes these very important decisions for your family. For some people, that is their best option, yet for most families it is better if they work with a Collaborative Divorce team or in Mediation using professionals who will help them through this difficult transition and not wage a battle. The team of professionals will help you weigh the pros and cons and look at the different possible outcomes and reach agreements that are right for your family.
Benefits of Collaborative Divorce and Mediation
Among the benefits of Mediation or the Collaborative Divorce process is that the professionals that help you through the initial divorce transition phase remain available to you in the future if new problems arise. Sometimes one spouse wants to get remarried after a few years and this may create some questions about potential parenting plan changes or restructuring holiday and vacation time. The Collaborative Divorce professionals or the mediator who helped the now divorced couple can help with this next transition in their life.
Being in control of your divorce also means that you determine how quickly or slowly the pace goes. In the court system, the amount of time a divorce takes is based on the backlog of cases, with even more delays due to Covid-19. It can be many months before you could even get a judge to make a decision that affects your family. On the other hand, you choose Mediation or a Collaborative Divorce process to get professional help in making decisions now and move forward instead of being stuck in limbo for many months.
One of the important components of a Collaborative Divorce process is the mission statement that the Professional Team helps the couple create. The mission statement includes each of their goals for the divorce process and goals for the future after the divorce. The mission statement helps keep the couple focused on the big picture as they go through discussions of how to divide the bank accounts, how to share parenting time for the holidays, whether to sell or keep the boat, what happens to the vacation property, and other related topics. The mission statement is the roadmap of what they each want their future to look like, and they are in control of the decisions, and they don’t have to leave it up to that stranger in the black robe!
