Who Participates in the Collaborative Process?
There are different templates for collaborative divorce depending upon each family's needs and the particular issues involved.
California Collaborative Lawyers are required according to the terms by which they become members in collaborative associations (IACP) to have specific training in collaborative law practices.
Because resolving cases collaboratively depends on experts whose roles are often more important than those that lawyers customarily fill, a unique attribute of Collaborative Law is the creation of the Collaborative Team. In order for this type of dispute resolution to be successful, the professional members of the Team must know and trust each other, and the more experience on successive cases that the Team accumulates together the more efficient the Team becomes, the more efficient the outcomes for clients.
Collaborative Teams are typically comprised of the following participants: The parties, a lawyer for each spouse/partner, a divorce "coach" for each party (a licensed therapist or psychologist), and a neutral financial professional who works for both parties. Divorce coaches interact with the clients directly to support healthy communication and dialogue, redirect emotional reactions, work through impasses when they occur and help clients achieve their highest values and hopes for a successful divorce or domestic partnership dissolution. Coaches are the same gender their client. The financial expert is a licensed CPA, CFP or CDFA with training in forensics, whose job description includes everything from cash flow analysis, financial needs of the family going forward, determining child and spousal support (as well as the ability to pay), and establishing budgets as one household transitions into two. If needed, attention is given to training a spouse or partner how to handle finances where they might not have understood or controlled them during the marriage. This balances power during the process, and supports skills in managing one's separate finances into the future. Experts in vocational rehabilitation may also be utilized to assist party's in identifying reeducation needs, or acquiring new skills, that will assist that person in becoming independent.
In cases involving kids, the parties may select a joint therapist with experience in developmental issues to be the voice of the children. Many divorcing, warring parents proclaim their only interest is the minor children when the minors' needs and feelings are never even assessed! Collaborative process integrates children into the dissolution experience, and radically changes their experience of your break up. It facilitates cooperation between parents, fosters healthier children of divorce, and improved relationships between the parents and the children for years to come. It models appropriate behavior for children in their future adults in relationship.
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