Families don’t belong in the courtroom! How can it be that one buys a license to create a family but must sue one’s spouse to restructure one? Because the collaborative process requires attorneys to focus on the interests and goals of their clients, rather than on their positions, attorneys must make a paradigm shift from […]
The following “story” is not make-believe. I only cut-and-pasted a series of e-mails I received late last year from a former divorce client. I’ve added no embellishments and I’ve only edited to 1) remove real names and replace them with pseudonyms; and 2) make it easier for you to read. When you finish with this
Is Collaborative Ever Appropriate When a Client Has Borderline Personality Disorder? Colette didn’t trust anyone. She needed to be in control. She feared abandonment. She suffered intense mood swings. She was impulsive. She displayed inappropriate anger. She could not view things realistically. Colette had a child with Tom, although they weren’t married. The second time
Is Collaborative Ever Appropriate When a Client Has Borderline Personality Disorder? Read More »
When I married my husband, he had already been married once before to someone else . . . and divorced. Early on, I remember him preparing me to go with him to his semi-annual martial arts training and the test that would accompany it, all the while explaining to me the festive gathering of old
Collaborative divorce offers families the opportunity to work with a team of professionals to negotiate a resolution that meets the highest goals and interests of the entire family. The only constant in life is that there will always be change. Good times will transform into not-so-good times. Bad times will get better. Life is a
Who is an effective collaborative attorney? An effective collaborative attorney is confident in her ability to practice law; she has an appropriate amount of experience in her practice area, in this case in the dissolution of marriages. As with any other practice method or area, it is crucial for your attorney to be skilled in
Collaborative Divorce isn’t just a process; it’s a vocation. I recently escaped for ten days to the Virgin Islands to take a breath, to re-examine my role in the collaborative process, and to assess whether I am doing all that I can to move the process into the mainstream. Ten days without shoes, without my
As soon as both clients have chosen their collaborative process attorneys, if you have not yet, reach out to your co-collaborative counsel (that would be “opposing counsel” in a litigated case) and introduce yourself. You should begin discussing who might be appropriate team members in light of the issues involved in the divorce at hand
There is nothing like a crisis to bring families, even split ones, together. After a divorce with children, you must remember that, to those kids, you are still just one family. This year, Hurricane Irma took a path that threatened my community. As a result, my ex-husband and I were faced with our first emergency
I was recently invited to be part of a collaborative divorce team as the notetaker. Here’s what I learned: I have become familiar with the collaborative divorce process over the last few months, discussing how the process unfolds with clients and our lawyers and working with clients as we prepared them for their meetings, but
Note Taking – First Collaborative Divorce Team Meeting (MD) Read More »
