5 Questions to Ask if You’re Thinking About Collaborative Divorce

Either you prefer filing for divorce online or go through the process with a professional family law attorney, it is never going to be easy. If you aim to beneficial outcomes and convenient life conditions afterward, you need to put decent efforts, make the right decisions, and have the strength to finish up your marriage with dignity.

One of your right decisions is to go for a collaborative divorce. If you work well and are ready to cooperate, collaborative divorce is to save your money, time, physical, and mental health and grant you with the most beneficial outcomes.

Are you Physically and Emotionally Ready for the Divorce?

Before you even care about the type of divorce, professional support, documents for divorce, and any other details, you are to realize whether you are ready to get divorced at all.

• Emotionally – once you get divorced, there are no guarantees you will find a partner in a month, a year, or till the end of your life. So, are you emotionally prepared to be lonely? Have you got someone else to support you in harsh times? Are you ready to give up all memories and things that have once brought you together and move on?
• Physically – it is obvious that when there are two of you, it is easier to handle many routine things. Are you ready to cover all the house chores on your own? Is it ok for you to be deprived of intimate life, you once had with no limits and for free? Will you manage to cope not only with everyday things, but parental duties, if you have children and are going to be a custodial parent?
• Financially – family life is not cheap, but sometimes a well-organized family budget copes with major financial issues with ease. So, are you ready to be financially independent? Are you going to start working or change your workplace up to the situation? Have you got some “plan B” savings or financial solutions?

Do You Qualify for Collaborative Divorce?

You need to understand that the key principle of collaborative divorce is cooperation. You hire the whole team of specialists, counting mediator lawyers, counselors, relationship coaches, to come to the agreement beneficial and convenient for both you and your partner. More to this, when you sign the collaborative divorce agreement you confirm that neither you nor your family law attorney will bring the case to court. In general, if you are not ready to deal with the divorce case peacefully, cooperate and work in a team to reach advantageous results, there is no point to discuss the option of collaborative divorce at all.

What Way of Divorce Do You Choose?

There are many options to proceed with collaborative divorce which varies in time, cost, difficulty, and other features. It all depends on the way you pick out to get divorced. You can hire multiple specialists to assist you in reaching the most beneficial results. Family law attorney is to help you with divorce documents preparation and dealing with lawful issues. Mediator is to lead you through all discussions without emotional and irrational decisions and release the tension in general. Divorce counselor will handle the process in general, assist you to make the divorce well-organized, integral and fruitful.

In any case, you are not obliged to hire all kinds of specialists, but can save money and time for searching professionals by doing part of work on your own. You can start with searching for trustworthy do it yourself divorce forms and file divorce online for the final thing. But you also to mind that if your case has some complications, like alimony, custody, major assets, and debts, you’d better reach for a professional consultation not to miss significant things while doing everything on your own.

What Attorney is the Best for the Case?

The right choice of the divorce lawyer is to predetermine your success either in case of litigation or collaboration, yet, the best candidate for the first situation is hardly good for the second one.

A collaborative divorce attorney is to be experienced in this certain field for the primary thing. He/she should have a good portfolio of successful collaborative divorce cases behind. You should be also confident that this lawyer is professionally and emotionally predetermined for a successful divorce case. And last but not least you need to feel comfortable in the company of this attorney and be ready to trust him/her. Anyway, you are to cooperate for one aim- your beneficial divorce, so care about it.

Do You Really Understand All the Benefits of Collaborative Divorce?

If you still have some hesitation as to collaborative divorce, you need to look thoroughly at its major benefits. The primary thing is that you personally control the whole process and the outcomes as well. When the divorce comes to the court, the judge cannot look in the essence of each case and take totally fair resolutions. So that you can finish up with less convenient conditions than you hoped for. While in collaboration you can get everything you manage to agree on with your partner. More to this, if you value privacy, the litigation is hardly good for you, with all public announcements, discussions, and more. While collaborative process touches only you, your soon-to-be-ex, and several professionals. Last but not least, it really saves you time and money, since collaborative process is less time and money-consuming than litigation, with its scheduled and postponed meetings and court procedures.

Overall, collaborative divorce is to give you more freedom in all relations, covering your future, life conditions, handling finances, processes, and vital decisions.

Authors Bio

Greg Semmit has years of experience working with different types of legal documents and writing about Family Law for educational purposes. Currently, he is working at OnlineDivorcer company, where he writing blog articles about divorce and divorce cases. In his free time, he likes roaming the streets of New York with his Olympus taking photos of the best spots in the city.