From Adam Moghadas, attorney:
In a heightened emotional situation, where there are different opinions on important matters, there may well be conflict. The key thing is that any natural conflict is managed constructively and positively, and not repressed so that it bubbles up later – particularly around the children. This is where collaborative law has the advantage. In a court situation on divorce, it can seem that your conflict is all out in the open: you say one thing, he/she says a different thing, and the court makes a decision unless one of you verbally beats the other into submission before. But it isn’t that simple because the court is focusing only on technical legal arguments: in the context of finances, these revolve around needs, sharing and objective fairness, and in the context of children, it’s all about what the court will perceive to be in their best interests. Inevitably, these narrow guidelines about what you can and can’t argue about are more likely to lead two people into increasingly polarised positions, which are more likely to spill out of the court process into everyday life and increase bad-feeling and destroy channels of communication, than they are to assist you in moving towards making things better in the future.
In collaborative law, the two of you set the agenda and decide what is relevant to sorting out your dispute. You can of course be guided by lawyers in this respect, but it’s really down to the two of you to work out what your view of fairness is, or what’s right for your kids, and what’s important. There’s scope to talk about whatever needs to be talked about and the ability to express differences of opinion in the presence of people trained to handle conflict positively may be transformative.
Read more at Cambridge Collaborative Family Law Group.
ABC Collaborative Divorce Blog 
Posted on July 20, 2013
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