Coaches have mental health backgrounds. They are counselors, social workers and psychologists trained in the collaborative divorce process. Initially your coach will meet with you one on one to help you define goals for the collaborative process. They are interested in understanding your special needs and any issue that could create a logjam at the legal level. They help keep you on track with the collaborative divorce process and coordinate with your attorney and the rest of the team.

Your coach creates a safe place to sort through feelings you have about your divorce and provides supportive counseling. They work with you to identify ways to improve communication with your spouse, solve problems, articulate your needs and wants and resolve conflicts. In short, they help you achieve the goals you define for your divorce process and on-going relationships with your children and former spouse.

In addition, some coaches offer help with reentering or enhancing involvement with the workplace. Career counseling can provide the team with information regarding career plan timing, vocational activities and potential earnings. This can help facilitate the couple’s financial, custody and support decisions.

With the vocational counselor’s guidance, clients become more aware of interests and values that support an emerging and stronger sense of self. The experience of self-exploration, decision-making, follow through and success all confirm that you have the power to reshape your life after the major disruption and loss of divorce. The process can help you take charge of your life and empower you to reach decisions about a future that is yours alone.

Source Reviewed: Collaborative Review, Spring 2008/ Vocational Counseling Helps Clients with Work, Collaborative Process and Life by Betty Kohlenberg, MS, CRC, D/ABVE

By Gail Jean Nicholson, MA, LPC

The main reasons that I see for the breakdown of the process is as follows:

• Improper Initial Screening:  A failure by the attorneys to properly understand the parties’ interpersonal dynamics and personalities.  With good attorneys and good support personel most spouses can utilize the collaborative process.  In situations where one party or the other cannot or will not share information in good faither; where one party or the other has been physically abusive; or where there is a complete lack of reasonableness, the collaborative process will not work.  Many times a potential client will want to use the process, but doesn’t understand why he/she or the other party will not be able to do so effectively.
• Unrealistic Expectations:  Many parties look into the Collaborative Process to save money or because they want something that they know a court cannot provide.  These can be outcomes that result from the process, but not in every situation.  If a party is unwilling to accept or back away from an unrealistic expectation the process will not work.  This will result in both higher costs and a longer process.

What happens next.  After the breakdown, the parties need to look for new traditional legal counsel and start the whole discovery and information gathering process anew.  This is costly and frustrating.  In addition, one party or another may be in a worse position than had the collaborative process never started in the first place.  This can be very upsetting to clients and can be a potential source of problems for the initial collaborative attroney if he/she failed to properly screen the case.

If you are looking into the collaborative process, it is a terrific way to work through a difficult legal issue, just be sure that you ask your attorney, or your client, some tough questions to make sure the process is the correct one for your situation.

Both people meet with one attorney, after signing conflict waivers.  That attorney ends up officially representing only one of the parties.  At the meeting, the attorney explains his/her view of pre-nuptial agreements and works with the parties to come up with an agreement that they want to have drafted.  Since it is a requirement of the statutory laws regarding pre-nuptial agreements that the parties fully disclose everything to each other, meeting together with the attorney should not be a problem.  After the document is drafted, the parties bring it to another lawyer, who officially represents the other spouse.  That lawyer reviews the document with them.  If any issues come up, the parties and lawyers meet together to resolve the dispute.

Rather than having the pre-nuptial process cause a rift between the parties, this process allows the parties to work together on the roadmap of their financial future.

Refusing mediation or a face to face meeting was an enormous strategic mistake for the other lawyer.  A more collaborative approach would have left the other lawyer with a happier client vs. a miserable client, and a better outcome.

In Collaborative cases, parties focus on how to achieve their goals. The parties set goals, gather information, and then brainstorm to generate options. After evaluating the options, each party asks for what they want to help meet their needs. There are no automatic formulas. Rather, there are sincere discussions that lead to agreement.  The process empowers the parties to ask for what they really want, and usually the parties reach an agreement where they are both satisfied.

A new study commissioned by Wakefield on behalf of the New York Association Of Collaborative Professionals found that 1 in 5 Americans know someone who got so caught up in “winning” a divorce that their family, work or social life suffered. A link to the press release about the study is here.

The Collaborative Practice model for divorce can keep a couple focused on a more positive outcome, and avoid the stress and anxiety of a courtroom battle. Stephens Margolin P.C. is committed to the growth of collaborative divorce as an option for Oregon families.

This development may speed the adoption of the collaborative divorce model in Oregon, as our experience has been that the process more frequently selected by higher asset couples.