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Thank you,
Admin CL

Thank you for sharing your experience and running this site. Reading your personal story gives insight into this process and is helpful as a learning experience.

You experience is similar to mine. I live in Marin County, CA, where collaborative law divorces are widely touted by local attorneys as the way to avoid litigation and considerable expense. For anyone considering their options, here is my advice after my experience, much research, and many discussions with others who have gone through this process:

+ if you are on friendly, trusting terms, do all you can to avoid attorneys. Here in CA the process that has seemed to work best in my informal poll is mediation.

+ if you are NOT on friendly, trusting terms, collaborative law is probably not for you. My experience is consistent with this poster's experience. We entered this process on fairly good terms. The decision to take the collaborative route was based on representations from psychologists and the attorneys involved that it would be a less expensive, lower conflict approach than all alternatives (mediation, litigation). We had also looked at using a mediator several friends had used. We almost went that way but my ex- was talked out of it by our children's therapist. I reluctantly acquiesced in an attempt to take the most cooperative approach.

My ex-wife's attorney is known locally as probably the largest public proponent of this process and is widely regarded by her peers and other professionals.  What I learned -- and corroborated with several others who had been through this process after doing some research -- is that she talks the collaborative talk but plays all of the litigious games. In other words, you end up subject to a process, without a judge, where she would not provide information, break agreements, chastise me (but never my attorney), pursue highly emotional arguments, etc. My attorney was consistently professional and constructive but reluctant to challenge the other attorney. At one point, after the other attorney had browbeat and lectured me in a session, he took on a mediators role in an attempt to diffuse her behavior.

IF all parties are participating and communicating in good faith and transparently, the process could work. IF NOT (as has been my experience), then mistrust is fed by attorneys who are essentially litigating without supervision. The entire time the meter is running. The attorneys routinely communicate how much all of this would have cost if litigating. What is worse, the psychologist / coaches are in on this same program. All involved are reluctant to call out behaviors inconsistent with collaboration principles. We spent over $60,000 and could have done this easily for less than $6,000 with a local mediator who is widely respected.

The worst part of this process is that my ex-wife and I are on worse terms.

So, for anyone considering this option, there is NOTHING that requires that all parties communicate transparently despite representations to the contrary.

I must agree with this. Sometimes divorces end up tearing you apart financially...I hope it will all work out well for you. Thanks for sharing your story with us!

It's a must to find a collaborative divorce attorney with proven track record. You have to sift all important information about the lawyer so you won't end up haggling with the unjust pricing. It is important to ask the collaborative divorce attorney if he/she specializes in this field, because it will be more practical if this lawyer helps you resolve the divorce quickly and convince your spouse to agree with the terms.

                     Divorce is essential to marriage. Thanks for sharing this story.



________________
California Criminal Defense Attorney

I am almost done with a collaborative divorce.  If you are contemplating this with any notion that it will be less painful or less expensive, you are wrong.  It is a money hole designed to enrich a small group of lawyers and their friends.  The circle of participants where I went through this process (Minnesota) is almost incestuous they are so close.  The lawyers will recommend coaches, financial planners, child-custody specialists, and other people in their circle.  They will propose four-way, five-way, six-way meetings that cost upwards of $1000 per hour.  It all adds up to huge amounts of billing.  A meeting which shouldn't require more than the two lawyers and the spouses includes three or four other people, at gigantic cost.  A lot of time (and money) is wasted on process issues that have nothing to do with the divorce.  The point of the process is to resolve issues of dispute.  The CL process wastes a lot of time on issues that are not in dispute.  I would strongly recommend against anyone using this process. 

Now to my story.  My (soon to be) ex-wife is mentally ill, primarily paranoia.  When this was too much to bear, I sought a divorce.  We had informational meetings with mediators, traditional lawyers, and collaborative law lawyers.  Although I felt that a mediator could handle the case, her paranoia pushed us toward collaborative law.  It was a gigantic mistake with enormous financial costs.   Even though I can't live with my ex-wife, the mental illness was not to be used in discussion relating to custody or otherwise.  It was agreed before the process began that my wife would retain custody of our teenage children.  We also agreed, before the process began, to divide assets equally.  The only area of dispute was how to structure spousal maintenance and child support.  Nevertheless, her lawyer encouraged her to have a "coach".  Thus, at the initial meeting where we should have been discussing the sole area of dispute, we wasted two hours (at approximately $1000 per hour) reading a list of ground rules and discussing process and what we wanted out of the divorce.  Needless to say, I blew up at this waste of money and was severely chastised for not following "the collaborative process". 

The result of this meeting (which cost more than $3000) was that we met with a financial planner to divide assets and figure out a spending plan.  As I near the end of this whole mess, this was the only part of the process that made sense.  We are fastidious about the finances in our family (no debt, credit score above 800, etc), so I had every piece of information required at my finger tips, including monthly expenses by category down to the penny.  The financial planner developed a plan that made complete sense, although it required some juggling.  This process made sense because we couldn't accomplish it ourselves given the complexity of tax laws, but it still required another two hour meeting with the lawyers and my wife's coach (I refused to have a coach since I saw it as a waste of money).  This plan was to be put into the final decree. 

The child custody specialist met with us and our children, and this, too worked well, although it was completely unnecessary.  I don't hold this against CL, but against the courts.  The parenting plan and custody did not require another overpriced "expert."  There was no dispute, but another pile of money went down the drain.

This morning as a write this, a decree hasn't been issued.  I have no idea when it will. 

For anyone contemplating this process (which means that you are still on terms that you can communicate), I would suggest the following before you consult a lawyer.  Find a competent divorce financial planner and develop a financial plan.  This plan will spell out the division of assets, support issues (if any), and identify what needs to be divided and how.  There is no need to have lawyers involved in this process as they have no special expertise.  The lawyers will have to draft papers related to pension plans, but this is primarily boilerplate. 

Secondly, if your state requires it, consult a child custody expert.  In Minnesota, some counties require that a child custody expert help draft the custody arrangement.  Although this is a waste of money if the parties can agree, the alternative is that the court will require stupid things like parenting classes. 

A note is needed here: it is not clear that the experts we used would have met with us prior to our meetings with the lawyers because they are part of the club that includes our lawyers.  However, I am sure we could have found alternative experts. 

My final two cents: do everything you can before you ever meet with a lawyer.  If you are a candidate for collaborative law, you are probably on good enough terms to find the appropriate professionals yourself.  At that point, present the information to the lawyers to draft the decree.  Don't, under any circumstances, involve the lawyers prior to that point.  I think it is essential that each party have their own lawyer, but only to advise them if they are making a long-term mistake.  Once you have lawyers, make clear that their only job is to help resolve issues in dispute.  Everything else enriches them and costs you money.  I don't know how to do this, but it is the most frustrating thing to sit in a meeting full of process unrelated to the reason for the meeting. 

Finally, in our case, given that the central issue was financial, had we not wasted more than $20,000 on lawyers, coaches, etc, the financial issues might not have been issues at all. 

Good luck.

See the http://www.MyCollaborativeLawDivorce.org/links.htm page also for helpful links.  -Admin

It's taken eight months to get past the bitterness that collaborative divorce has so kindly given me.  Personally, I think the very concept of collaborative divorce is a joke.  "A calm, respectful path to marriage disillusionment."  Ahh, yeah.  RIIIGHT!  That might work if both lawyers follow their own rules.  OK, I was the male in the divorce.  That said, most of the people reading this are probably thinking "Oh, he's just a bitter, greedy philander who mistreated his wife so much, she just had to divorce him for fear for her life."  Yeah, who cares if it was the wife who cheated and caught a nasty, chronic, yet non-fatal disease.  Who cares if she cheated while her husband was in the ICU recovering from surgery.  Oh, that that was just one of her MINOR 'lapses in judgment." 

Because I'm a sucker who though that being nice and compassionate was the right thing to do, I took the recommendation of a coworker to chose collaborative law.  I wasn't in very good shape since my mother had died a couple weeks before she told me about her infidelities so I wasn't exactly thinking straight.  (She thought it was a good time since I was already extremely depressed and she didn't think her fooling around was that big of a deal.)

So I sign up for the most expensive and allegedly the best collaborative lawyer in the North Shore of Chicago.  She's extremely nice and calm. I like that.  We agree on the fact that for me to view things to be fair the whole 50/50 thing is out of the question since I supported that parasitic jobless-wonder (well she usually has a 'job' for about six months before getting fired) of a spouse nearly 100% for 11 years of marriage. The first meeting goes well.  My ex's lawyer is a bit of a shark but they agree to no alimony and 45% of everything (just so I don't feel completely raped).  Then the ex loses her job and all the collaborative rules go out the window.  For two months she refused to move out even though I had to deal with her threatening suicide every evening when I got home from work.  Her parent thought it was my responsibility to comfort her and refused to let her move out.  I hate to say it, but deep in the back of my head, the suicide idea of hers sounded pretty good.  I told her parents that they were equally nuts wanted to keep her mentally screwed up daughter living with a scorned man.  But they said I was a nice guy and they trusted that I would take care of her.  I eventually go her out by cutting off her internet access.  If she was living under the same roof, I'd prefer her to not expect me to continuing supporting her online dating habit.  My collaborative lawyer and her disapproved of me making her move out.  I guess that's when I became the bad guy.  From then on, my lawyer sat on her ass and let my ex ask for and get whatever she wanted.  And her lawyer ignored EVER SINGLE rule of collaborative law.  No alimony all of a sudden became $1800 a month alimony because my ex got fired for cause her employer was trying to cut off her unemployment insurance.  Luckily they acquiesced and I was only stuck with $750 a month.  She refused to pay for her own insurance or for any money she owed me.  45% ended up being well over 55%.  Yes, and my lawyer sat on her ass and let it happen.  Oh, yes she kept charging me $375/hour.  In a moment of weakness, I let my ex come over to my condo and play with the dog while I wasn't there.  She proceeded to steal stuff she had given me as gifts.  Her response, "I got those things for BOTH of us."  Now that's f'd up.  The lawyers didn't even let me change the locks after that.  I had to do it myself and they blamed me for making things worse.  That's the point when I realized that my ex had two lawyers and I had none.  And, in the long run, I was paying for both lawyers.  Nice deal.

The coaching idea was even more ridiculous.  My idiot coach tried and succeeded in convincing me that I was being totally unfair to my ex.  "She was just so cute and vulnerable.  Why on earth was I trying to punish her?"  WTF. 

Well, eight months later and the 50% equity I was supposed to have has shrunk by about 20% due to the downturn in the housing market.  My ex attempted to stalk me but I put that to an end.  My lawyer actually gave me a freebie and told her to cease a desist.  OMFG. At least I got something for my $12,000.  Anyone who says collaborative law is a cheaper alternative is full of it.  Well, maybe if both lawyers ACT like collaborative lawyers maybe.  But in my case, it was just a shakedown racket, plain and simple.

So, in short, I would never, never, never recommend collaborative divorce unless you are absolutely sure that your lawyer is 100% going to support you, you know that your spouses lawyer agrees to follow collaborative law rules and your spouse agrees to follow the rules.  If you're the only one paying attention to the rules, you might as well hand your checkbook to your spouses lawyer and let them do whatever they want.  It's an absolute waste of time.  Yes, I wanted to file a complaint against my lawyer and my spouses lawyer but there apparently is no recourse for legal malpractice.  Keep that in mind.

In postscript, I'm not as bitter as I sound.  A couple months after my divorce I met an amazing woman who actually gives a damn about me.  And gorgeous and caring to boot.  No amount of money can buy that.    Unfortunately, It's going to take a very long time for me to get over the marriage thing.  Eleven years of being conned (yes, the ex admitted that: I was just a paycheck, nothing more) really takes a lot of getting used to.

[Instructions:]

Going through a divorce is tough under any circumstances. But if you can document your experiences and post them to these forums, you may be able to help many other people going through the same sorts of things. It will also help give others ideas of what to expect in terms of successes and failures.  The power of this site is in your hands. So, please contribute when you can!

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Regards,
AdminCL
Site established in October 2007.