I am trained as a neutral mental health profesion in the collaborative divorce process. Collaborative divorce is a process for divorcing couples in which both spouses and their attorneys agree to keep contested matters out of court and commit to a transparent process using interest-based negotiation to settle the divorce. The collaborative divorce process is a constructive alternative to a process that is frequently played out in courtrooms, or between adversarial legal teams.
Collaborative Divorce is an option for divorcing spouses who agree to keep their case out of the courtroom and who historically have been able to make important decisions together. Most people feel better about solutions they had a hand in creating rather than having solutions imposed upon them. Couples who choose the collaborative model retain and equally share control over the decisions that will affect their future lives instead of handing that power over to a judge or jury. The process practiced by most collaborative divorce attorneys involves the lawyers for the divorcing spouses jointly hiring a neutral mental health professional and a neutral financial professional who become members of the couple’s divorce team.