How does someone who needs a divorce figure out how to proceed? Which services would be most useful? Whom to call first? (Attorney? Mediator? Coach?) What will be the process most likely to keep costs down? Which approach will yield the most satisfactory results?

Here are some tips:

If you have contacted a Collaborative Law attorney first, then he or she can provide structure for your divorce process and provide referrals to other professionals as needed.

If you already have begun work with a divorce or parenting coach, then have a discussion with him or her about whether Collaborative Law or mediation would be a good fit for your needs. Then ask for attorney recommendations. With whom does your coach already have good working relationships?

If you have found a mediator and need separate legal counsel, ask your mediator for leads. What attorneys have provided good support and offered helpful insight to clients in the past?

Have you been asking around? Have you sought advice from your friend who had an awful divorce, or your sibling who constantly complains about her ex-husband, or your colleague who says she can’t make ends meet because she doesn’t get enough child support, or your neighbor who says he never gets to see his kids . . . STOP. Those people who are not thriving after divorce, dear to you as they may be, are not the ones to guide you. Turn instead to qualified, peace-making professionals who can give you the kind of advice that will enable you and your spouse to find your way to satisfying futures.

Conventionally, lawyers have provided a bundle of services. When hiring a lawyer, you could expect him or her to handle your case from start to finish – including drafting pleadings, investigating and verifying information, interviewing witnesses, preparing arguments, writing letters, negotiating, appearing on your behalf in court, and finalizing all documents. Lawyers were a one-stop shop.

Those of us who went to law school several decades ago expected to do all of these things. We were taught that it could be dangerous and unethical not to: when we signed up a client, it was our duty to provide thorough and zealous representation. If we left any stone unturned, we could be rightly accused of professional negligence.

Then, lawyers were also the keepers of all legal information. To find out about your legal rights and obligations, you went to a lawyer. Or, I suppose, you went to a law library, where you might have faced walls of books comprehensible only to the professionals. What a frustrating experience it would have been to try to represent yourself!

All of that has changed. With the internet at our fingertips, we have grown accustomed to seeking and finding answers to our questions, often without even leaving home. As a result, I and other lawyers are seeing clients who often are better informed, more focused, and more independent. They can do more themselves, and they don’t want us to do it for them.

Additionally, of course, lawyers are expensive. Comprehensive representation by a lawyer is not affordable for many. So, whether they want more autonomy in resolving their legal matters or whether they simply have to economize, clients are asking us to tailor our services to fit their specific needs, and to trust them to determine where those needs start and stop.

So, we are “unbundling” our services — offering them in parts rather than only as a whole. This means that you can hire a lawyer for just an hour’s consultation or for ongoing phone or face-to-face support; to draft documents or to review documents prepared by another; to give advice and then back away, or to actively assist you in your negotiations. Your attorney can accompany you to mediation, or not. Your attorney can speak for you if you wish, or will be quiet if that is what you prefer.

In my practice, I try always to support the out-of-court process the client has chosen — whether that involves negotiating with a spouse directly and without facilitation, or working with a professional mediator (who is sometimes an attorney, sometimes a divorce coach with a mental health background, and sometimes a financial analyst). I tell my clients I can be as active or inactive as you choose; let’s discuss what works for you.

Mothering is complicated in the best of circumstances, full of loss and worry as well as joy and hope. Mothering as a divorced mom has its additional challenges. This Mother’s Day wish is particularly for those moms who…

listen, let go, and have faith in a vision of shared parenting;

long for the nightly bed-time rituals that happen, now, less often;

deal with the loneliness of an empty nest, not at eighteen, but at four, or six, or eight;

perfect the art of cheerfully saying, “that’s terrific; I love hearing about it and I love that you had a great time” even while silently grieving;

learn to fill their time with other important things;

and it is to those moms…

whose teenager, needing at last to bond with his dad as never before and lacking any graceful way to ask for the opportunity, rages and rages and rages (this being the price of having raised a son secure enough in his mother’s love that he knows that though he pushes her away with all his might, she’ll never go away).

For you, I wish that at least part of Mother’s Day (because you may have only part, if this is your ex-spouse’s weekend), feels uncomplicated. I wish that for several hours, you experience nothing but the pure joy of your children, and of being the terrific mom that you are.

How privileged I was to be Forrest (Woody) Mosten's intern at his January, 2014, family mediation training in his L.A. home. I was able not only to participate along with the other students, but also to discuss with Woody his pedagogy and observations of the class. What an outstanding learning experience!

Woody is a master trainer, an ability honed in his many years of helping to define the family mediation field as we know it today. There seems to be nothing he hasn't confronted, no complexity he hasn't helped to untangle. His skill is humbling, and his commitment to peacemaking is inspiring. Having already transitioned my own practice to mediation, Collaborative Law and unbundled services in recent years, I now embark on the post-Woody phase of my professional life, in which I expect the clarity of my vision will be sharper, my skills will be better refined, my curiosity will be more acute, and my clients will be better served.

Thank you, Woody, for the superb example you set for us all. And thank you, Jody, for your warm hospitality throughout the week in which the lucky eighteen of us took over your house.

For the many moms I see whose marriages are ending when they are in their ’40s or ’50s and they have been out of the workforce for many years, I wonder whether this advice might have been useful:

Do stay-at-home moms need a ‘postnup’?

If you are one of those stay-at-home parents now trying to figure out how to secure your post-marriage financial future, this advice to negotiate before giving up your career comes too late. But you needn’t face your fears and your future alone, and you needn’t resent your wage-earner former spouse because he is now economically advantaged. This is a time for cooperation and planning — working together to ascertain and meet your needs, your spouse’s needs, and your children’s needs. You’re likely going to need to get back into the work force, and your path might be totally new to you. A good vocational counselor can guide you. A good Collaborative Law professional team, with everyone working together, can support both you and your spouse so that fear and conflict don’t undermine the ability of the two of you to make the most of your assets, financial and otherwise.

The documentary Divorce Corp, scheduled to be released in January, will undoubtedly generate conversation about the horrors of divorce litigation. Take a look at the trailer and other clips available on YouTube. Then talk to your friends and loved ones about Collaborative Law and mediation, viable alternatives that enable couples to stay out of court, save money, and avoid the indignities, the injustice, and the harm to the children of adversarial divorce.

Start here:
Divorce Corp: The Trailer

This week I received from a friend a blog post by Tom Erich, a writer, consultant and Episcopal priest (see www.morningwalkmedia.com). His specific topic is conflict within church communities, but it seems to me that his insights are applicable to conflicts of all types. Of course, I thought of my divorce clients, all of whom are working their way through marital conflict. My clients have chosen mediation or Collaborative Law as means of negotiating their divorce agreements, and so they have rejected adversarial approaches to divorce in favor of working together as much as possible to reach mutually satisfactory solutions. But still, there are conflicts that need addressing — the shadows of those that doomed their marriages, and those that arise in the process of divorce negotiations. Those conflicts can be discouraging, and often my clients express the desire to forget or avoid them if possible. Sometimes, conversely, those conflicts ignite passion or self-protectiveness, and clients may form rigid adversarial positions. But as Erich suggests, conflict may also inspire creativity, and may offer an opportunity for achievement. His perspective might help us all develop a more honest and productive relationship to conflict:

There is nothing inherently unhealthy in conflict. Like failure, conflict is a sign of life and can lead to further vitality and accomplishment. . . . In a healthy system, conflict provides a lively place to deal with change, failures, errors, and personal shortcomings. An unhealthy system, by contrast, stores up negatives and weapons. In an unhealthy system, there is no search for perspective, no deep thinking, no forgiveness. Just scorecards: Did I get my needs met? Did I make you pay for wounding me? Did I win or lose?

As I work with clients, I will keep in mind Erich’s distinction between healthy and unhealthy systems, and will try to create an environment for our collaborative team meetings or mediation sessions in which all feel safe enough to experience conflict honestly, openly, and productively; without either avoidance or scorecards; and with respect, caring, and forgiveness.

If you are divorcing, undoubtedly you have had frustrations during your marriage. You might see divorce as a way to break free from those difficulties. And if there has been a power struggle between you and your spouse, you might be hoping that you finally can “win” the battle. You might be hoping that this time, you will be able to hold the line, keep from folding, finally be heard, finally be vindicated.

But is trying to “win” worth it in the end? Too frequently in litigation, everyone loses, especially the children, who internalize the strife between their parents. And the battle will likely bring out the worst in both you and your spouse, recreating those very dynamics that you are trying to get away from.

And when it’s over, what then? What will happen when you and your ex-spouse need to get back on the same team to deal with something in the lives of your children? Will you be able to do it? Can you be effective co-parents — providing the love, nurturance, stability and consistency your kids need – if you’re at each other’s throats?

So, what to do?

There is a school of thought that ascribes to mediation and to Collaborative Law the potential to guide former spouses to a place better than the one they inhabited during marriage. The hope is that a dispute resolution process facilitated by one or more skillful, empathic professionals has transformative power. Maybe it does. I hope so. I hope that a well-done divorce (a compassionate, dignified one as opposed to a contentious, disrespectful one) can help a couple disentangle in such a way that two healthy individuals emerge with much of their respect and affection for each other intact, so that, if they have children, they are able to create a new parenting partnership that enables their kids to thrive.

Even if this hopeful view is too rosy, there is still reason to commit to mediation or Collaborative Law. If the two of you cannot do it alone (and if you could, would you be divorcing?), then would you rather do it with the professional support that helps you stay positive and productive, or would you prefer to dig in and fight it out? Neither approach is easy. A divorce is difficult, any way you do it. When you are beginning the process, take the opportunity to choose your process wisely.

When examining witnesses at trial or taking depositions, lawyers ask questions, right? But what kind of questions are they asking? Are they information-seeking questions? Are they curious questions?

No. They are questions to which the lawyer already knows the answer, questions designed to elicit evidence, including admissions of bad behavior.

If you look up the verb “question” in a thesaurus, you”ll see as synonyms “interrogate,” “cross-examine,” “challenge" and “dispute.” Why? Probably because questions are used so frequently in our culture not to gather information, but to entrap. Not as an expression of curiosity, but as a route to a particular goal.

Do you ask your spouse or your children this type of question? If you do, for what purpose? Are you trying to gain an admission, win an argument, teach a lesson? What effect does your questioning have? Do you get calm, honest, informative answers? Or do you face resistance? Do problems get solved, or do tension and conflict increase? Do you feel better? Does your spouse? Your child? (Note that my questions aren’t really curious questions either. I have answers in mind.)

If your spouse or child responds defensively to you, consider whether the nature of the question is a root of the problem. If you are trying to entrap, that intention will be clear, and you are not likely to receive a calm and helpful answer. Nobody wants to feel cornered or manipulated.

If you’re experiencing discord at home, work on your questioning style. I highly recommend two books by Sharon Strand Ellison: Taking the War Out of Our Words, and Taking Power Struggle Out of Parenting.

It’s Not Just Financial “Settlement” Anymore…

We call them “financial specialists” or “financial neutrals.” They are Certified Divorce Financial Analysts (“CDFA”) and they are at the core of the Collaborative Law team. The more I do Collaborative Law cases, the more I appreciate the CDFAs and the more I believe it is their function that for many couples most differentiates this process from a more conventional divorce.

Why are they so important? Imagine the financial anxiety that surfaces for many (all, in my experience) who are ending a marriage or domestic partnership. For most, the marriage or partnership has been the most significant economic relationship of their lives (excluding only their dependence on their parents as children). The questions that confront them now seem to reach into every corner of daily living:

• Who gets which of our assets?
• Where will each of us live? In an apartment? House? Rented? Owned?
• Can one of us keep our current home?
• Who will pay our debts?
• How will I support myself?
• How will we divide the responsibility of providing for our children?
• How much of our savings will I be able to keep?
• Will I still be able to retire as early as I hoped?
• Will some of my future income go to my former spouse? How much and for how long?
• Will I need to significantly change my lifestyle?
• Can I keep my health insurance?
• Can I make ends meet?
• How will we fund the children’s education?
• What will be the tax consequences of these decisions?

Addressing these questions thoughtfully, assessing the needs (emotional as well as material) of each spouse, analyzing the numbers, projecting the future. All this can be done in an atmosphere of open-minded reflection and serious, compassionate problem-solving. It does not have to be with a focus on scarcity and loss. Rather, it can be done to make the most of available resources and ensure as much financial security for each spouse as possible.

In my experience, the work in addressing these financial questions is more satisfying if a CDFA is part of a professional team. Attorneys, as good as we may be, are not (usually) financial experts. And even when our financial competence is high, we are not the most efficient laborers at the financial oar. When two attorneys represent two spouses without a neutral professional synthesizing the financial information, we necessarily duplicate efforts. And our two minds rarely reach as far as the three minds of two attorneys and one CDFA, and are rarely as creative as the group – the spouses and the professionals – together can be.