- Distributive bargaining, also known as “win-lose,” “zero-sum,” and “divide-the-pie” negotiation, assumes that resources are fixed and that future relationship between the parties is unimportant. Everyday examples include buying a house or car.
- Integrative bargaining, also known as “win-win,” “interest-based,” and “expand-the-pie” negotiation, can lead to better outcomes when issues are complex and the parties value their future relationship.
I had a familiar conversation recently, this time on the golf course. As with life, golf is both precise and random: precise because there are exactly 18 holes to play, and random because a golfer never quite knows how the ball will fly from time to time nor with whom the starter will pair you up to play. We were paired with two great golfers who both happened to be named Sean.
Sean #1 asked what I did for a living. I gave him my elevator speech about being a Neutral Child Specialist in Collaborative Team Practice and he said, “Wow, that sounds awesome…..it must be really hard work.” My response is always that sometimes it’s hard work, but mostly it’s very rewarding to help families make the difficult transition from married to unmarried with less acrimony and stress for kids. Sean got a faraway look in his eyes and said, “I can sure see that.”
What he was seeing in his mind’s eye, I can only imagine. But often I will hear from young adults with whom I share my work that they wished Collaborative Team Practice had been available to their family when their parents were getting divorced. I have yet to meet anyone who said, “Well, I for one am very grateful that my parents’ divorce was highly acrimonious and adversarial because it was so character-building for me.”
We can’t pretend that ending a marriage will be a pain-free proposition, especially if there are children involved. Divorce is a life crisis for all family members. Collaborative Team Practice is designed to help keep the crisis of divorce from ever becoming a trauma for a child, because there is a profound difference how each impacts the child’s resilience and sense of hope.
If you are a golfer, here’s another way to think about it. Collaborative Team Practice is both precise and random: precise because there is a structured, supportive format for the process and random because of unique family circumstances and unpredictable challenges that arise from time to time. But the pairing of a family with a Collaborative team has great potential value. Collaborative Team Practice helps parents keep their eye on the ball and the ball on the fairway, away from hazards and deep rough where it could easily get lost.
I was reminded of this recently when a client I represented in a Collaborative divorce five years ago sent me a note. I have always remembered him because of the great shift in his attitude toward his wife by the time the case was over. When we began his divorce, he stated in an early meeting that the couple’s property should be divided in his favor, since he had always earned more than his wife (which is NOT the way the law looks at it). The statement was not well-received, either by his wife OR her attorney.
The couple had been married more than 30 years. As the case drew to a close, it became obvious that her job at a prominent Minnesota corporation, her debt-free house, and the even division of their property and substantial retirement assets would provide for her just fine. The only question left was spousal maintenance. We often see a spouse who doesn’t need financial assistance waiving maintenance—in fact, often the couple mutually agree to take jurisdiction over maintenance away from the court altogether, for all time. When I asked whether she had given any thought to waiving maintenance, she glanced at her veteran lawyer, then shyly said she would waive it. In the next instant, we were all stunned to hear my nuts-and-bolts, cut-and-dried, professional engineer client say, in a voice of genuine warmth, “I don’t think you should do that. You never know. You might need it some day.”
Approaching the end of their marriage as a family-centered problem-solving exercise, rather than a combat, allowed this wife to give up a claim I would have assumed she would keep. And it allowed her husband to decline her offer, in the interest of her potential long-term welfare, a gesture no one would have predicted. Their mutual trust of each other, reaffirmed during their weeks of working together, ultimately allowed them both to make decisions that considered each other’s welfare as much as their own.