The center, the first court-based collaborative law center in the country, offers New Yorkers an alternative to resolving their divorce through litigation, which is often emotionally economically draining.

In the collaborative process, the parties agree not to go to court, and, instead, each hires a specially-trained collaborative law attorney. Through a series of face-to-face meetings, the couple and their lawyers work to resolve all divorce-related disputes and mutually decide on issues such as child custody and finances. The parties are aided by  mental health professionals and neutral  financial professionals.  The process continues until all issues in dispute are resolved and a settlement agreement is reached.

One of the biggest benefits of the collaborative process it gives control of the divorce to the parties. The divorcing couple, rather than a judge, get to decide for themselves what is best for their families and their futures.

The Collaborative Family Law Center  is available to clients from all five boroughs. For more information, click here.

While I was away on vacation, last week, I was asked to handle one of the first cases being processed through the center. I will report here about my experiences with the collaborative law center.
 

Collaborative Law is a dispute resolution system that permits the parties to a divorce or family law issue to settle out of court in a respectful, private and mutually agreeable manner. The parties each have their own attorneys, but they agree at the outset to not go to court. Instead, they set goals, gather information, create solutions and reach agreements in a series of relatively short meetings which they schedule themselves. They control the timing, the subjects and, most importantly, the solutions. Courts are used to formalize the agreements once the parties have worked things out.


One of the reasons why Collaborative Law works is that once the Collaborative participation agreement is signed by the parties and their attorneys, the attorneys are required to withdraw from representing their clients if the process fails to reach an agreement and someone wants to go to court. Those attorneys cannot represent those clients in a contested matter in court. That creates a huge incentive for both attorneys and clients to stay with the process and look for other solutions when the going gets a little tough. In a regular litigation case, the easy cop-out is for one or both parties to tell the other party that they will just let the judge decide if the other party won’t agree to an offer. That can’t be done without costing both parties a lot of money and without the attorneys losing business. Everyone loses by that alternative, so everyone generally keeps trying to find an acceptable solution.