Collaborative Divorce – The Opportunity to Discern

One of the things I love most about the Collaborative Divorce process is that it gives clients the opportunity to reflect and discern if the decisions they are making are the best for themselves and their children.

So often, when clients go to court and “settle their case on the courthouse steps,” so to speak, they are doing in while facing an imminent hearing or trial. It also happens when people are in a mediation that is scheduled from 9-5 and the clients are forced to make decisions under the pressure of the time crunch of one business day.

Can you imagine having to decide your and your family’s financial and relationship future in the time pressure of one 9-5 day? Over 90% of cases that go to mediation are settled there, which is almost always better than having a court decide the fate of a family, but don’t our client and their children deserve more than those two limited process choices?

This article from Mindful.org talks about how your emotions can warp your ability to make decisions. It is pretty common knowledge now that, when we are under stress, in fight or flight mode, our decisions are made from an irrational survival mentality rather than from the cool-headed discernment that calm can give us.

In COLLABORATIVE DIVORCES, clients are given time to think about their options, their decisions and the consequences of those decisions without having the pressure of it being decided before walking into a courtroom for a hearing/trial or in a 9-5 day’s mediation.

Through a series of two-hour meetings, clients who handle their divorce through the Collaborative Divorce process are given the opportunity to make decisions, reflect on those decisions, then come to a final decision that is a durable (lasting) agreement that they, their spouses an their children can live with, that is in all their best interest. A lot of people think, “If I don’t agree to this right this minute or if I let my spouse go away and think about this, the agreement will go away.”

But in my experience of over 35 years of doing family law, the decisions clients make in Collaborative Divorce are much more durable (lasting) because they have had the time to “sleep on it,” and if there is some little “tweaking” that one or both client feels needs to be done, they have an opportunity to look at those and refine their agreements so that they will be an agreement with which they are satisfied, not only that one day but for the years ahead.

If you are facing divorce, please consider COLLABORATIVE DIVORCE as an option – the preferred option for divorce in Texas.