How to Do a Collaborative Divorce

A collaborative divorce is more like a mediation between you and your spouse than a court battle. You will both sign a participation agreement where you will agree to get a new lawyer if the case goes to court, not hide any marital information from the lawyers involved, to remain in good faith during the agreements and agree to the confidentiality of the meetings.

Instructions

Difficulty: Moderately Challenging

1. Educate yourself on the collaborative divorce process in order to decide whether or not it is a road that you would like to take. Make sure you understand what you will have to agree to before beginning the collaborative divorce process and that you are comfortable making those agreements.
2. Discuss this road with your spouse. Hopefully, if you are considering this road, then you and your spouse are still on good enough terms to sit down and talk about whether this is the way that you would like to proceed. For a collaborative divorce to work, you both need to be on the same page.
3. Find your attorney. It is important that you find a lawyer that has experience handling collaborative divorce cases, as it is a very different process than litigated divorce. The more experience both of your attorneys have, the smoother the process will be for both of you.
4. Begin the process. The collaborative divorce process will go no further than talks and agreements between you, your spouse and your lawyers, unless there are issues that you and your spouse cannot agree on. In this case, you will both have to get new lawyers and begin the process of a litigated divorce.