Family Law Collaboration: the new solution for hard cases

From my article published in B2B Canberra in June 2012

Believe it or not, not all difficult divorces need to end up in Court. Collaboration is great alternative to resolve family law matters and keep parties out of Court.

In Collaboration each client is represented by his or her lawyer through a series of meetings and all information and advice is given openly in those round table meetings. This process helps to address any power imbalance between the parties, so that one party is not bullied into a settlement. It also allows the parties to structure more creative solutions which go beyond the scope of the Court. 

(visit this page for more info on the idea behind Collaborative Law: http://www.fgd.com.au/lemon.html )

What makes Collaboration unique from other methods of dispute resolution is the contract that is signed by each of the parties and their lawyers, committing not to go to Court. If the matter doesn’t settle, then the lawyers cannot represent the parties at Court. It means that instead of lawyers playing the traditional role of a litigator and being strategic in negotiations, their goal is to settle the dispute by agreement.

So far all of my Collaboration matters have been “hard” cases. Often separating couples have zero trust in the other and will take steps simply to push each other’s buttons. In some cases, in addition to the hostility, there has been a complicated property structure, including companies, self managed superannuation funds and investment properties.

Was reaching a settlement via Collaboration for these matters cheap? No. Was it easy? Definitely not. Did the parties improve their relationship by the end of the process? Sadly not in all cases. Was it better, cheaper, faster and more controlled than Court? Absolutely!

If the parties had chosen the Court process, they would have been faced with: the Court imposing timeframes on them, limited capacity of the Court to deal with urgent issues, the lawyers only able to question the other party directly at the end of the matter (in a hearing), being unable to raise matters considered irrelevant by the Court, the possibility of the Court ordering the sale of assets, possible delay in receiving a judgment and large expenditure on lawyers, barristers and experts. 

Overall, in these cases, the Collaborative process was by no means easy, but it gave the parties the power to control their own settlement rather than rolling the dice with the Court.

For more information about lawyers who practice Collaborative Family Law in Canberra, 

visit: https://www.facebook.com/CanberraCollaborativeFamilyLawyers 

or see Canberra Collaborative Family Lawyers  spread in B2B Canberra