Why Collaborative Lawyers Choose Not to Go to Court
Having seen the likely results of family litigation, Lawyers in CollabLaw.org have made a commitment to no longer participate with families in the adversarial litigation process, i.e. we don't go to court and we are not adversarial in the way we work with our clients or each other.
The Lawyers in CollabLaw.org have all been trained to go to trial and to litigate zealously for their individual client's success. We have significant experience in Family Law trials, and we have seen what happens when busy judges are asked to solve a family's difficulties with limited information. The court process does not allow Judges to see the whole picture of each family, and so Judges can't know all the important facts when they make life-altering decisions. The results are usually disappointing, and often distressing, even for the so-called "winner". Every CollabLaw.org lawyer has tried cases in which we were able to achieve results our clients thought they wanted from the legal process. But those results didn't heal the issues at the root of the controversy.
The lawyers in CollabLaw.org have come to the conclusion that Family Law trials are very short-sighted. Litigation is in no one's best interests. The litigation battle doesn't take into account the continuing relationship of the parties and their extended families. In the process of litigation, hard feelings and disappointments fester into full-blown warfare. The litigation process doesn't value the costs in time and money and how those resources might be used to greater benefit for all who are involved. It doesn't consider the toll of expressing so many negative emotions. The trust and respect of Husband and Wife typically disintegrates into resentment and insult. Instead of building a new relationship of trust as co-parents, litigation polarizes the parents.
Unfortunately in many of our former cases, our clients were not just warring spouses. They were fathers and mothers of children. The trials caused irreparable damage to already troubled relationships and irreparable damage to the children, in “divorce wars that never end.”
Even if the family's children are grown, parents are still intertwined through their children and extended family. There will be many family events--weddings, graduations, and other significant events --where the former spouses will want to be together. When children have kids of their own, former Wife and Husband will be grandparents of those kids. And even where there are no children, there are relationships to be preserved with members of the extended family and among friends.
So what do we do? (Click for more information.)
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