If you are interested in a Tucson divorce and wish to use a Tucson family lawyer, you may wish to explore the use of the collaborative divorce settlement process to resolve your divorce issues. The first step would be to find a Tucson divorce attorney who practices in the area of collaborative divorce or collaborative law. This Tucson lawyer can explain the collaborative process to you. The following article by collaborative divorce attorney Laurie Israel will explain more about how collaborative attorneys can help out.

“Collaborative law is a form of alternative dispute resolution for divorcing couples who prefer not to endure litigation, but desire vigorous legal representation. One of the first issues of concern for every potential Collaborative Law client is whether the attorney will serve as a strong advocate for that client.
Often potential clients believe that everything in the collaborative process is done as a “team”. They believe that all parties (clients, Collaborative Counsel, and other collaborative professionals) work together at all times to achieve a solution to the divorce. There is a fear that this increased transparency in the collaborative process will cause their own Collaborative Counsel to fail to adequately protect the client’s own individual needs, issues, and concerns. They fear that their interests will be “sold out” in the process.

While understandable, these fears are generally unfounded. It is true that some of the collaborative process is purposefully transparent. However, much of the work in the collaborative case gets done in private between Collaborative Counsel and his or her own client. This “off-line” work is done between the group meetings, in person, on the phone, or by e-mail. During these times, Collaborative Counsel (much like ordinary counsel) works alone with the client to provide legal advice and case strategy.

Here are some of the matters that Collaborative Counsel addresses privately with the client as the client’s advocate while the case is ongoing:

Education about the Law

Collaborative Counsel will give the client a “crash course” in divorce law fairly early in the case. Most Collaborative Counsel think about the resolution of a particular case as being consistent with the framework of existing laws, cases, and judicial decisions. This model is termed practicing “in the shadow of the law”. There will be variations to this template, as agreed to by the clients after informed consent.

Legal Advice

Collaborative Counsel will apply the facts of the case to the relevant law and give the client a private, personal, confidential report based on counsel’s legal analysis.

Work on Strategy

Even in collaborative cases, attorneys and clients need to work on strategy. They work privately between the group collaborative meetings, using legal conclusions, as well as information gathered from, and progress made (or lack thereof), in each group meeting. In addition, when an impasse occurs in the process, Collaborative Counsel is trained in methods to help overcome these roadblocks.

Analyze Finances

This is a crucial aspect of virtually all divorce cases. Collaborative Counsel is a divorce attorney experienced in reviewing numbers and finances, who can assist the client greatly in thinking about settlement, and what the finances will look like after the divorce.

Client Receives the Benefit of Counsel’s Experience

Lawyers, including Collaborative Counsel, give the divorcing client the benefit of their experience, both legal and practical. This includes the attorney’s experience with how typical divorce issues have been dealt with, addressed, and resolved in other cases. Counsel’s advice and input goes beyond purely technical and legal advice, and will include other issues such as the practical and the personal.

Be a Sounding Board

Collaborative Counsel provides a sympathetic but rational “ear” for some of the disruption and fears a client may be undergoing during the divorce. Divorce can be very upsetting, and your attorney will be very well-versed in your situation and will be able to provide emotional ballast for you during the process.

Provide Objective Guidance

Collaborative Counsel will provide neutral, unvarnished feedback to the client regarding the matters that arise during the collaborative process. These include interpersonal relationships between the spouse and children (or in-laws), finances and other issues. Having a trained professional give you objective advice during the process is very helpful.

Analyze Agreements/Proposals

As proposals are generated during the collaborative process, they need to be analyzed by the clients and the lawyers. Much of this work is done with Collaborative Counsel and the client “off-line”, in private. Collaborative Counsel will provide an unembellished analysis and evaluation of all aspects of the proposals.

Help with Decision-Making

At many points in the collaborative process, the collaborative client will need to make decisions on various matters. Collaborative Counsel will assist by assessing the matter and providing feedback in private to the client to help the client come to a decision. This will involve evaluating the client’s aims, wishes and desires (and those of the spouse) against the legal and practical considerations. All advice will be informed with the realities (economic and personal) faced by the divorcing client.

Help with Problem-Solving

One of the strengths of the collaborative process is that all parties are included in participating in solving the problems of the divorce. I call this “a marriage to the divorce”. A great deal of brainstorming goes on, some of it usable, some not. Collaborative Counsel participates in this problem-solving both “on-line” in the joint meetings, and “off-line” in private with the client.

Other Functions of Collaborative Counsel

Other functions of Collaborative Counsel include helping the client gather all documents needed, working with financial information, presenting and obtaining financial disclosure, and preparing court-form financial statements. Collaborative Counsel also drafts, reviews, and revises the very important Separation Agreement, a requirement for the divorce. The written Agreement sets forth all the terms of the divorce, including the financial terms and those relating to the children. This Agreement will serve as the roadmap for future interactions between the divorcing spouses.

Conclusion

As is apparent from the above list, Collaborative Counsel actually performs all of the functions for his or her client in private that conventional counsel offers in a non-collaborative case. This should give a potential collaborative clients confidence that their needs and concerns will be protected and safeguarded by their own Collaborative Counsel in a collaborative divorce. In this way, Collaborative Counsel maintains the capability to be an advocate for his or her client.”

The following is an article by attorney Maury D. Beaulier. It talks about the use of the collaborative law process to reach divorce settlements. If you are interested in a Tucson divorce and want to use a Tucson divorce attorney or Tucson family lawyer familiar with colalborative law and Tucson divorce, go to the website: www.divorcewisely.com to find the attorneys experienced in this divorce process. These are Tucson lawyers who have been trained in the collaborative law model.

Collaborative law is a new way to resolve disputes by removing the disputed matter from the litigious court room setting and treating the process as a way to “trouble shoot and problem solve” rather than to fight and win.

As part of the collaborative law method, both parties retain separate attorneys whose job it is to help them settle the dispute. No one may go to court. If that should occur, the collaborative law process terminates and both attorneys are disqualified from any further involvement in the case.

Each party in the Collaborative law process signs a contractual agreement which include the following terms:

Disclosure of Documents.
Each party agrees to honestly and openly disclose all documents and information relating to the issues. Neither spouse may take advantage of a miscalculation or an inadvertent mistake. Instead, such errors are identified and corrected.
Respect.
Each party agrees to act respectfully and avoid disparaging or vilifying any of the participants.

Insulating Children.
As part of the process all participants agree to insulate the children from the proceeding and to act ins such a way as to minimize the impact of the divorce on them.

Sharing Experts.
The parties agree to implement outside experts where necessary in a cooperative fashion and share the costs related to those experts. (eg. real estate appraisers, business appraisers, parenting consultants, vocational evaluators, or accountants)

Win-Win Solutions.
The primary goal of the process is to work toward an amicable solution and to create a “win-win” situation for all.

No Court.
Neither party may seek or threaten court action to resolve disputes. If the parties decide to go to court, the attorneys must withdraw and the process begins anew in the court system.
One of the biggest differences in the Collaborative law process is that it recognizes that emotional issues exist that cannot be addressed by the legal system. How often have you heard stories of divorcing parties spending thousands of dollars in legal fees to argue about pets or furniture that has limited monetary value. Generally speaking, the parties in such cases are not arguing about dogs, cats or furniture. Instead, they are reacting to psychological pains that they experiencing These emotional issues that are ignored in the Court process. By contrast, the collaborative law process specifically addresses these issues by bringing them to the forefront and using professionals as part of team approach to find solutions.

A team of professionals is assembled to help the parties understand and resolve their disputes i many different contexts. The disputes maybe legal disputes or emotional and include: mental health counselors/ coaches for each party, neutral financial advisors, accountants, parenting specialists, child specialists, vocational experts, and appraisers, if needed.

A child specialist may play a very important role in the collaborative process. So often, children become the unintended victims in divorce proceedings. They internalize the conflict and often blame themselves for the break up of their family. The child specialist works with children of divorcing parents. It is their job to assist the children in understanding that the parental dispute is not their fault and to teach them how to cope and communicate with their parents. In this way, the children have a voice in the proceedings and become part of the team process.

Financial professionals may be used to help define values of assets. In the litigious court process often redundant appraisals are performed by one expert for each party. The end result is a duplication of services at greater cost and with increased distrust. this often results in an expensive war of experts at trial where each expert testifies regarding their different valuations. In the collaborative process, the parties choose a neutral appraiser that is not associated with either party. With a trust relationship established, the parties agree on some division of cost and agree to be bound by the appraised value.

Most Cases Settle. The Statistics state that more than 90% of all divorce cases are resolved without a trial. In the Court system that resolution often comes more than a year after the divorce was commenced and after many hurtful statements have been made part of the public record in the form of affidavits and motions. Doesn’t it make more sense to seek that resolution before the bridges are burned and the missiles are launched in a courtroom? Certainly, collaborative law will not work in every case. After all, it takes two to tango and it takes two willing participants to effectively use the collaborative law process. However, in the cases where collaborative law has been used, even if reluctantly, there have been more rapid settlements at a fraction of the normal cost associated with divorce.

Information provided by:
Maury D. Beaulier, Esq.

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In a Tucson divorce, one of the first decisions divorcing parties will need to make is whether to use a Tucson divorce attorney who practices the collaborative negotiation process or a Tucson family lawyer who only uses adversary methodology. In this article from the International Society of Collaborative Professionals, there is a description of the process the Tucson divorce lawyer uses in the collaborative process.

Who Controls the Process
Degree of Adversity
Cost
Timetable
Use of Outside Experts
Involvement of Lawyers
Privacy
Facilitation of Communication
Voluntary vs. Mandatory
Lines of Communication
Court Involvement
You and your spouse control the
process and make final decisions
You and your spouse pledge mutual
respect and openness
Costs are manageable, usually less
expensive than litigation; team
model is financially efficient in use
of experts
You and your spouse create the
timetable
Jointly retained specialists provide
information and guidance helping
you and your spouse develop
informed, mutually beneficial
solutions
Your lawyers work toward a mutually
created settlement
The process and discussion or
negotiation details are kept private
Team of collaborative practice specialists
educate and assist you and
your spouse on how to effectively
communicate with each other
Voluntary
You and your spouse communicate
directly with the assistance of
members of your team
Outside court
Judge controls process and makes
final decisions
Court process is based on an
adversarial system
Costs are unpredictable and can
escalate rapidly including frequency
of post-judgment litigation
Judge sets the timetable; often
delays given crowded court
calendars
Separate experts are hired to support
the litigants’ positions, often
at great expense to each
Lawyers fight to win, but someone
loses
Dispute becomes a matter of public
record and, sometimes, media
attention
No process designed to facilitate
communication
Mandatory if no agreement
You and your spouse negotiate
through your lawyers
Court-based
Divorce: Collaborative vs. Litigation
Collaborative Litigation

Tucson Divorce Attorneys and Tucson Family Lawyers seek to model themselves on the following model for client representation.

Shift our perspective, increase our skills, make different use of old tools.

Move from a view of conflict as a battle of wills to the creation of opportunities.

Are less concerned with rights than discovering interests and fulfilling needs.

Detach from the outcome, allowing our Tucson divorce clients to choose unpredictable outcomes.

Accept that the legal answer is only one possible answer for Tucson lawyers—because a judge is required by law to rule in a certain way, it does not control clients’ decision making.

Use their legal knowledge as a guide, not an absolute.

Trust that clients know what is best for them in the long term.

Guide clients from anger and disappointment to higher intentions and long-term views.

Plan forward, not look backwards.

Use community resources and focus on working together toward solutions.

Rely on the divorce Tucson team for answers. The lawyers don’t have to know it all.

Know that threatening to go to court is a violation of the principle that clients know what they want and need and have power to invent solutions that work.

Do no harm.

The followiong is an article by Sam Barrett from Moneywise Magazine. It is edited to be of local relevance to the Tucson divorce arena and to Tucson Family Lawyers.

Sometimes a parting of the ways is the only solution, but make sure it’s done with the minimum of fuss, hurt and expense. Sam Barrett answers your questions to help you get to grips with the best options for you.

Stopping smoking, getting fit, learning a new skill — New Year’s resolutions come in all shapes and sizes. But, for some, the new year means a much more radical overhaul, with more people starting divorce Tucson proceedings in January than at any other time of the year.

But whether it was a particularly poor Christmas gift or an excess of in-laws that proved the final straw for your marriage, it’s worth understanding the financial implications of divorce from a competent Tucson divorce attorney.

A good grasp of where you stand can help you reach the best agreement with your soon to be ex-husband or wife. Here we answer some of the most common questions that may arise when you decide to part company. Check with your Tucson lawyer for all legal specifics.

Q: I’d really like to move on as quickly as possible. How soon can we get divorced?

A: You’ll need to be married for at least a year before you can file for divorce and have sufficient grounds to satisfy the courts. This includes meeting at least one of five criteria.

These are: two years’ separation, with both the husband and wife agreeing to a divorce; five years’ separation if there’s no agreement to divorce; adultery; unreasonable behaviour; and two years’ desertion, although this situation is rare. “As long as you can tick one of these boxes you can file for divorce,” says Andrew Newbury, partner with legal firm Pannone.

“Unreasonable behaviour is the most common grounds for divorce, but you will have to cite reasons, which will be assessed by a judge.”

Newbury says it doesn’t matter who did what and, if the divorce is on the grounds of adultery, there’s no need to name the other person. “The courts aren’t interested; if they had to take all this into account, they’d grind to a halt,” he adds.

Q: I’m going to be looking after the children. How can I be sure my ex-partner will support them?

A: The power to determine, and enforce, child maintenance lies with the Child Support Agency (CSA) rather than the courts. “If a couple can agree a figure, and most do, this can be incorporated into the divorce agreement,” says Newbury. “If not, the parent who is looking after the children has to go to the CSA.”

The CSA uses a set formula to work out what should be paid. This is a percentage of the absent parent’s net earnings, depending on the number of children, the number of nights the children spend with the absent parent, and whether there are any other children living with the absent parent.

A calculator is available on the CSA website to help you work out what level of maintenance would apply to your circumstances.

Newbury recommends sticking with the CSA figures. “There isn’t much point deviating from these figures too much as the child support element of a divorce agreement is only binding for a year. Once the year is up, either parent can go to the CSA and it will revert to its formula,” he explains.

Q: What happens to our home and our other assets?

A: There’s no set formula for dividing marital assets. “The starting point in relation to the division of the assets is equal stakes, unless there’s a reason not to do this,” says Amandeep Gill, associate with legal firm Davenport Lyons. Provision for any children would be an obvious reason for an unequal split of assets.

Shorter marriages can see assets divided differently too. In these cases, the court might only take into account any wealth that has built up during the marriage.

If you’re unable to reach an agreement between yourselves, the court will take into account the welfare of any children and then look at factors such as the available assets, needs, resources, the length of the marriage, your ages and your contributions to the marriage.

Q: I gave up my career to bring up the children and run the home. Shouldn’t I be compensated for this?

A: Spousal maintenance is commonly awarded in the UK. “Maintenance takes into account the resources and needs of each party,” says David Lister, a partner in the family department at Mishcon de Reya. “If one party has given up work to look after children or support their partner’s career, this will be taken into consideration.”

Although spousal maintenance is usually awarded for life, it can end either at an agreed point or when the former spouse remarries. It does, however, continue to be paid if they move in with a new partner.

Further, if the person paying maintenance dies, their former spouse can lodge a claim against their estate for the maintenance they would have received. These rules only apply in England and Wales. “In Scotland, for instance, the law is different, and spousal maintenance is only payable for a short time,” Newbury adds.

Q: Will I have to pay maintenance to my wife forever? Could we negotiate a clean break instead?

A: Clean break is possible. “This does happen, especially where it’s a youngish couple who are both financially independent. Then there’s no real need for any ongoing support and both parties can go their own ways,” says Newbury.

Clean breaks also occur where there’s plenty of wealth involved, as one spouse can afford to pay a lump sum equivalent to roughly the annual amount times the number of years maintenance would be paid, which could be based on the former spouse’s life expectancy.

“A clean break can be risky for a husband if he pays a lump sum to his wife in lieu of maintenance. If his ex-wife remarries, maintenance stops, but he wouldn’t get anything back if he’d paid a lump sum,” says Jane Porter, partner and head of the family team at Lester Aldridge.

Q: What happens to my pension? I was the main earner, so it seems fair that my wife takes some of it.

A: For some, a pension can represent a significant part of their assets. In the past, couples would have to hand over other assets to offset a pension, but since December 2000 it’s been possible to split a pension, giving each person their own pot.

If a pension split is being considered, then you need to get a financial adviser or actuary to assess the value of the pension. They will then calculate how it should be divided, often giving the woman a larger percentage, as this would enable them to purchase the same pension income as their former husband.

Q: Do we have to go to court? Can’t we arrange the divorce without it getting confrontational and expensive?

A: It’s possible to oversee the entire divorce proceedings yourself without going anywhere near a solicitor, let alone a courtroom. In many cases, your solicitor can work with you, your spouse and their solicitor to hammer out an agreement that will prevent you having to go to court.

Another option is mediation, where an independent person — the mediator — works with both parties to reach a settlement. But make sure you get someone you trust. “It’s important that both parties trust the mediator as they may need to tell you things you don’t want to hear,” says Sarah Anticoni, partner with Charles Russell.

A newer process is collaborative law. With this, both spouses and their legal representatives agree to resolve all issues in four-way meetings outside of the court process. If this isn’t possible, then both parties must sack their solicitors and go to court.

Q: How much will it cost me?

A: Cost is another consideration, and one that might help stop the disagreements. “If it’s a relatively straightforward case and both parties reach an agreement, your legal bill is likely to be less than £5,000,” says Gill.

“If the financial arrangements are contested and it ends up in court, it could cost £50,000 or more.” Doing it yourself can cost less than £500.

Q: Second time lucky… But this time with a prenup?

A: Even if you’ve experienced a nasty divorce, there’s no reason why marriage shouldn’t work second time around. But, if you do decide to tie the knot again, you might want to consider a prenuptial agreement.

“Prenuptial agreements aren’t legally binding but they are one of the factors that can be taken into account in a divorce,” says Jane Porter, partner and head of the family team at Lester Aldridge.

To increase the chances of a prenuptial agreement being used in your divorce proceedings, you and your future spouse need to take independent legal advice a reasonable length of time before your wedding. The agreement also needs to be fair, or the court could decide to ignore it altogether.

It is possible that prenuptial agreements will be given more legal weight in the future. “They’re a common part of getting married in continental Europe and we might be brought in line, as the Law Commission is going to produce guidance on them in 2012.

We’re already seeing more people considering them as a form of asset preservation,” says Amandeep Gill, associate with legal firm Davenport Lyons.

David Lister, partner in the family department at Mishcon de Reya, prefers a post-nuptial agreement. These are drawn up in the same way as prenuptial agreements but after the couple are legally married.

“People get these drawn up if they feel things aren’t going well in their marriage. They are the exception rather than the norm, but they’re more binding than prenuptial agreements,” he says.