We’ve seen a few recent accolades in the news for collaborative law — one of the most recent comes from CNBC, who published an article earlier this month comparing it favorable to traditional litigated divorce. The headline itself proclaimed collaborative law a way to “ease [the] economic [and] emotional stress” that often accompanies divorce, and starts by saying, “Divorce will never be a walk in the park, but it doesn’t have to be a traumatic process, either.”
The article goes on to quote Ross M. Katz, current president of the International Academy of Collaborative Practice, who asks, “”One of the first choices people have to make is: What process do they want to use? Do they want the nuclear option — litigation — or peaceful resolution? When people go into litigation, they use their attorneys to carry their swords into battles.”
The article goes on to make many of the same points we’ve been making in this blog for years about collaborative law — that it gives couples more privacy, autonomy, and the ability to bounce back faster from divorce because both parties are working together to create a solution. It also made points suggesting, based on interviews with financial advisors, that litigation can cost at least three times the amount of a collaborative case.
The article concludes with one of our favorite points about collaborative divorce — that it affords couples the chance for a win-win settlement, as opposed to litigation, where there’s likely to be at least one “loser” in the case — or, indeed, two newly-divorced people unhappy with the outcome of their litigation, with a judge ready to move on to the next case on his or her docket.
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