Photo courtesy of Michael Zara. All rights reserved.
COLLABORATIVE DIVORCE: A Daily Journal Exposé
By: Ronald M. Supancic, CFLS
As Chief Justice Warren Burger stated in 1984, “The entire legal profession … has become so mesmerized with the stimulation of the courtroom contest, that we tend to forget that we ought to be healers of conflict … Trial by adversarial contest must in time go the way of the ancient trial by battle and blood … Our system has become too costly, too painful, too destructive, too inefficient for truly civilized people.”
This is especially true of divorces. A divorce is not an event – it is the process by which one makes the transition from being part of a couple to being single. The goal of a healthy divorce should be to begin as two, end as one and still feel whole.
This journey will lead the parties through an often treacherous and painful maze of transitions: legal, physical, emotional, financial and spiritual.
If this maze is to be successfully navigated, then in addition to attorneys, parties should enlist the services of experts in these other specific transition areas. This will more likely assure that dissolution can become a key to wholeness.
If we are to successfully navigate this treacherous and painful path, we must enlist the services of those who have expertise in specific areas of the divorce process, to guide us along the way, so that at the end of our journey we remain whole. When we do this we are doing something new and extraordinary called “Collaborative Divorce.”
