At King, Koligian & Associates, LLC, in Ohio, we realize that divorce is never easy. Your dreams of marital bliss have crashed, you face an uncertain future and you feel highly stressed and upset. You do not want to fight with your spouse, and in all likelihood (s)he feels the same way. You both fear, however, that divorce is not only a fight, but also a long and expensive fight.

Divorce does not have to be this way. As FindLaw explains, a collaborative divorce is different from a traditional litigated divorce in that you and your spouse do not fight each other through your respective attorneys. Instead, the four of you meet together so that you and your spouse can make your own decisions rather than leaving it up to a judge to make them for you. Your respective attorneys do not see themselves as adversaries, but rather as legal professionals who can work with each other collaboratively while still protecting their respective client’s rights and interests.

How collaborative divorce works

As stated, you and your spouse each hire your own attorney just as you would do in any divorce. You then meet privately with your respective attorneys to voice your concerns, fears and wishes regarding your divorce and its conditions. You also discuss the possible issues on which you can compromise if need be.

Most couples have the following basic issues:

• Who will have primary custody
• Who will pay child support
• How your post-divorce parenting plan will look
• How you will divide your marital property
• Whether one of you will stay in the family home
• How you will “divide” your family business if you have one

You and your spouse will resolve these and any other issues you may have by yourselves, with the help and guidance of your respective attorneys, by way of a series of meetings. The purpose of a collaborative divorce is to allow you to do this in a respectful, cooperative and non-stressful atmosphere.

The rewards

You and your spouse receive many benefits by engaging in a collaborative divorce. First and foremost, you maintain control over your own lives. Of equal importance is the fact that the whole collaboration process keeps the acrimony, stress and fear to the minimum levels possible.

Possibly the greatest benefit, however, is the way in which your collaborative divorce affects your children. Because they do not witness their parents fighting, but instead working together, they feel much more secure and far less fearful than children generally do when their family breaks up.