Collaborative Law Institute Blog – Family Law Attorneys & Professionals
The End is the Beginning
The secret to a constructive and respectful divorce is to start at the end and work backward. Ask yourself, “What do I want my life, my spouse’s life, and my children’s lives to look like when the divorce is all over? What is my vision for the future?” In fact, the...
Law, Like Medicine, is Reconsidering How They Do Things
Ask anyone who has ever gone through a divorce whether they have recommendations for how the process could have gone better and I bet they would have a list of ideas. They would likely identify a need for their legal counsel to have communicated more frequently with...
Generalist or Specialist: Can an Attorney Wear Too Many Hats?
A friend of mine who knows I am intricately woven into the divorce-planning and alternative dispute resolution circles in the Minneapolis St. Paul metro recently asked me if I knew a certain divorce attorney. He knew of a person who was not feeling too well about...
3 Tips for Co-Parenting
Co-parenting can be exhausting, especially if your communication skills while you were married were not great to begin with. During your divorce you may have asked yourself, “If we couldn’t communicate effectively while we were married, how are we going to when we are...
Divorce: What’s Co-Parenting Got To Do With It?
Divorce is a crisis in the life of a family. It is not actually a legal crisis, though it requires this expertise to ensure that legal resolutions are reached regarding financial matters. It is not a theoretical crisis. It is a genuine emotional crisis. What does...
Budget Your Way to a New Life – Part Three: Daily Tips
Once you have created a budget and projected your expenses into the next 12 months, there are additional steps you can take on a daily and monthly basis to improve your cash flow. Remember your goal is positive cash flow that allows you to save money for short and...
Why You Can’t Afford “Free” Divorce Advice
The world is full of divorce experts willing to give you “free” advice about how to handle your divorce. Divorce is so common today that everyone from your hair stylist to your parents are likely to have advice about how you should handle your divorce. There are...
Divorce & Emotions – Not Just a Business Transaction
I heard an advertisement on the radio this morning for a litigating divorce attorney. This attorney discussed the importance of removing the emotion from divorce and treating the divorce itself as a business transaction. I understood her point – emotions can be...
4 Common Divorce Mistakes
1. Forcing Your Kids to Take Sides The last thing a parent wants to do during a divorce is to cause more pain for the children. Divorce is a painful time during which many negative emotions can arise, including anger, fear, regret and grief. Often there is a perceived...
Part III – The Power of Neutrality in the Collaborative Model
In Part I we learned that advocacy in the “rights-based” Court Model is hard on the people involved because by focusing on the 3rd-party decision maker, e.g., the judge, the parties care little about each other’s view. As a result, their relationship can become more...
