Many clients who contact family law attorneys for the first time have a poor understanding of their states’ laws surrounding divorce, property division, and parenting time. Lawyers often spend their initial consultations with clients clearing up misconceptions that clients gained from fictional stories about divorce, tabloid reporting on celebrity divorce cases, and biased accounts from relatives and friends about their own divorces. Clients might come to your office spoiling for a fight and full of ideas about how they can make the judge order their ex to pay up or otherwise humiliate their ex. Others may arrive terrified about having to go through a stressful and time-consuming trial. Most clients do not realize how many divorces become final without a trial. In most divorce cases, the judge’s role is just to sign paperwork; the judge does not make any decisions about the couple’s property division or parenting time. It is worthwhile for family law attorneys to inform their prospective clients about alternative dispute resolution in divorce, both in their marketing content and during in-person meetings with new clients.
Arbitration vs. Mediation
An Arbitrator Acts More Like a Judge Than a Mediator Does
The usual way that divorce plays out is contested divorce, where each spouse presents the court with his or her list of requests for the details of property division and parenting time. The court then orders the couple to attend mediation, so they can try to negotiate a settlement; the mediator only helps them negotiate and does not make decisions for them. The parties only present their cases before a judge if they cannot reach an agreement during mediation.
If mediation does not sound less stressful for your clients, then arbitration might be the best solution for them. In arbitration, the arbitrator decides the outcome instead of simply facilitating negotiations. Despite this, arbitration has more confidentiality than a trial, so it may make clients feel less like they are at risk of their financial hardships and interpersonal conflicts becoming a matter of public record.
Collaborative Divorce is for Couples Who are Too Posh to Air Their Dirty Laundry
Conscious uncoupling is not just for celebrities anymore; an increasing number of wannabe celebrities are also getting in on the action. In a collaborative divorce, each spouse hires a lawyer, and then the two spouses and two lawyers sign a collaborative divorce agreement. They negotiate for as long as it takes until they work out all the issues of property division and parenting time. If necessary, they enlist the help of accountants, vocational counselors, or any other professionals whose guidance could help them reach an agreement, everyone except judges and mediators. When they are finished, they submit all of the completed divorce paperwork to the court, and the judge signs off on it to finalize the divorce. Collaborative divorce is increasingly popular with high-net-worth couples, especially after they wanted Tom and Gisele to have an apparently painless divorce, so if your client base includes affluent couples, it is worthwhile to add collaborative divorce representation to your toolkit.
Most Contested Divorces Resolve During Mediation
One of the biggest misconceptions about divorce is that mediation is only for couples who are totally committed to having an amicable divorce but cannot afford a collaborative divorce, or else for couples who cannot stand each other but are too poor to hire any lawyers at all. Your job would be easier if everyone knew that mediation is the usual way of finalizing a divorce. You would be doing your client base, as well as the entire Googling public, a service if your blog content focused on divorce mediation strategies and advice on coping with the stress of mediation.
It Makes Sense for Family Lawyers to Invest in Alternative Dispute Resolution
Divorce is one of the many areas of the law where increasing the public’s understanding of the laws and the rationale behind them would serve the interests of justice and make people feel empowered. Even in equitable distribution states, family law attorneys get a flood of phone calls on the first business Monday in January from people who assume that, since their spouse filed for divorce, their spouse is going to walk away with half of their property and most of the parenting time. They do not understand about separate and marital property, and about how divorce is more like two former business partners dissolving their partnership than it is a matter of a judge ordering you to forfeit your property and your relationship with your children.
Sources
https://www.justia.com/family/divorce/the-divorce-process/divorce-arbitration/
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