You and your partner have decided to go your separate ways. You’re not looking forward to heading to the courtroom to hash out your divorce, and thanks to some adjacent options, you may not have to.
Collaborative divorce relies on your willingness to resolve the split in a constructive and agreeable manner. You generally enter into a good faith agreement with your partner in the name of coming up with terms of the divide, which can come with an array of benefits.
Cleaving collaboration
Limiting the influence of the courts while coming up with your own conditions can have a lot of advantages:
- Stay in control: Since you’re likely working outside the confines of the courtroom, you could be freer to search for mutual fulfillment. While a judge may not be able to take certain things into consideration, you might enjoy more leeway when conducting discussions. This increased involvement often leads to more satisfaction with the process and outcome.
- Maintain privacy: Divorce in the public courtroom will usually become part of the public record. Since your discussion in the collective process happens elsewhere, you may receive additional privacy. This means details of your deliberations could be kept a secret while the judge only sees your final terms.
- Protect children: You probably won’t just be shielding discussion from the public eye, but also from your children. You may be able to save them extra stress from being included in court proceedings and witnessing the airing of grievances. You’ll generally have more of a say over their custody as well, instead of the judge likely holding primary say.
Before you head to the courtroom, it could be in your best interest to look at collaborative divorce. Understanding the system could be the first step toward getting what you want out of the process.