What Is So Scary About Alternative Approaches to Divorce?

Ever since I discovered alternative approaches to divorce like Collaborative Divorce and Insight Mediation, I’ve been promoting them to clients and colleagues alike.

But there’s a hesitation when I mention the idea of doing something different than duke it out in court.

I understand that new and different aren’t easy to accept—especially when a person is at a traumatic and pivotal time in their life, like at the moment of a marriage ending.

I understand that a colleague who’s practiced a tried-and-true approach to divorce—in court, lengthy battles over conference-room tables, each spouse trying to win over the other—might be hesitant to adopt a new way of practicing that might not entice clients.

I understand it all.

And yet, what I don’t understand is why people divorcing or facing other family conflict more easily trust the court system rather than a private, out-of-court legal process?

Let’s take a look, for a moment, of what it’s like to divorce in the court system.

A person files papers to end the marriage. The other spouse is served the papers. They each choose a lawyer who charges multiple hundreds of dollars an hour to represent them in a process that takes dozens to hundreds of hours.

(Do the math.)

Each spouse has a vision of what they want, defenses are up for survival naturally, and they fight for what they want until they are worn down, convinced or otherwise, perhaps faced with the ‘threat’ of a multiple day trial, finally resign themselves to not getting even close to what they want because, hey, each lawyer has something to say, and the judge will have something to say, plus the Friend of the Court referee, and maybe others, too.

 

The traditional legal process includes delays, hurdles and, most importantly, people who don’t know the couple or their family or their history or their hearts making the ultimate decision of how their lives are going to unfold starting tomorrow.

Americans pay tens of thousands of dollars to end a marriage according to other people’s timelines and guided by other people’s values. They pay money they’d stashed away for retirement or for their children’s college educations to not get what they want and have to wait for it.

Does this make any sense?

I’m not sure why we automatically trust the legal system for families, as it is set up today, when it’s ill-suited to listen and mirror what we want and need. Our judges and Friend of the Court referees are well trained and are in their positions because they want to help families, but even they will tell our clients that it is better when the spouses can reach their own decisions for themselves and their family.

Perhaps now you can see why I am so enamored of the Collaborative Divorce and Insight Mediation processes!

Collaborative Divorce by definition is a team-based approach, outside of court, that is guided by the values and needs of the couple and their family. Everyone works together on the couple’s timeline to finalize the details of their divorce.

Everyone listens to the divorcing spouses, and they hear each other. The goal is to create a divorce settlement that allows them to move forward in the best way possible for themselves and their children. Adult children (i.e., any child over 18) and grandchildren, too, come into the mix, something never considered by the decision makers in the court system.

Likewise, Insight Mediation is all about listening and hearing and making decisions guided by personal and family values. Outside of court. On the couple’s timeline.

So I ask again, why do so many so easily trust the legal system but not an alternative legal process to divorce?

It makes no sense to me, and in fact seems to go against every instinct and fiber of human logic.