Why Does Collaborative Process Work So Well?

Sharing Power Within the Collaborative Process

In most relationships one person tends to have greater power or control over certain aspects of the family business or family unit, whether it be finances, assets, debts, or the children, while the other has different responsibilities.  When marriages are working it is often because a couple has divided responsibility for the hundreds of tasks that must be accomplished in cooperative and efficient ways.   



But one consequence of this specialization is that with it sometimes comes a shift or imbalance in the relative power and influence of the individuals.  If the relationship unravels the diversification that was once one of the strengths of the combined family unit can serve to advantage one spouse over the other.  In litigated cases much financial and emotional energy is aimed at guarding this power, wrestling it away, or in seeking pay-back for past power imbalances.   



One goal of collaborative professionals is to help parties to see that power imbalances that caused division in the marriage are also a barrier to settling their affairs now in divorce.  Many successful marriages depend on allowing one spouse to make the important decisions on some aspect of the family, like parenting, while the other makes the important decisions about another matter - like earning money.  Once the parties begin to separate their affairs each spouse may have a power advantage over the other within their particular area of expertise given their historical roles.  Not only does this quite naturally lead to fear and suspicion, which makes cooperation quite a challenge, but redefining the family relationship requires the attainment or perfection of new skill sets for each person whih may formerly been within the province of the other.  

Moving on after divorce depends not just on obtaining information that didn't matter to you before because you had other tasks to perform, but in learning what to do with that information.   When as a result of distrust and a refusal to cooperate each party must reinvent and entirely maintain their own wheel, resources like time and money are being squandered.  Dead-end emotions like resentment are being fueled, sapping energy needed elsewhere.

Perceived imbalances of power lead directly to this wasting, just as they may have contributed to the breakdown of the marriage.  But while these imbalances may have been disasterous in terms of the emotional bonds of relationship and be beyond repair, upon separating there are new opportunities to overcome or at least work with them.  You may need to like your spouse to live with them, but you don't need to like them in the same ways that once lead to marriage in order to co-parent effectively (although it certainly helps) after they move out. 



A chief tool for achieving a balance of power collaboratively, besides providing a respectful and safe environment for the process, is promoting transparency on all matters affecting the family.   A healthy rebalancing of power does not require, for example, that the operation of a family business be turned over to the spouse who historically devoted her energy to meeting the hour to hour needs of the children.  But within the collaborative process important information concerning what is happening within the family business can be shared so that Mom isn't left in the dark wondering and worrying is being siphoned off into offshore accounts, or that Dad might file a bankruptcy and stop paying child support at any time.  Likewise when the organization of the family has resulted in a mother having a more intimate knowledge of matters affecting the children, this information can be shared and processed to empower the father's relationship with the kids.   



Collaborative Divorce even increases the likelihood that parties can to some extent resume dividing responsibilities between them in efficient ways that benefit the family almost as much of the division of labor did pre-divorce.

People in the midst of the crisis of divorce, however, left to themselves characteristically have not succeeded in managing these power imbalances effectively.  Often those power imbalances are the very reason for the family strife.  Collaborative professionals are in many ways the advocates of the family, unlike adversarial attorneys who act only as the advocate for the self-interested goals on one-half of the family unit.  As a Collaborative Team we are trained to establish a balance of power without disrupting the the roles that parties have themselves established over time, except as both agree. 



You may be forced to trudge the adversarial road if the other partner insists, but when you can opt out of it why wouldn't you?