Regina DeMeo is a family law attorney in Rockville, PA who became trained in and started practicing collaborative divorce after she went through her own litigated divorce.
DeMeo, who is president of the Collaborative Divorce Association, a group that promotes the practice, says the process is less painful than a divorce that involves litigation. “There are no surprises,” she says. “And they feel like they own it because they’re the final decision makers, as opposed to some person they’ve never met before who’s going to hear their case for six hours and make a decision for the rest of their lives.”
And maybe more important than that, she says, the collaborative divorce process forces two people whose lines of communication are broken to learn to work together and talk respectfully to each other. “Because if you have kids, you’re going to have to continue to communicate for the next 20 years,” she says.
