No, it's not an oxymoron. Collaborative divorce is a relatively new and better way to separate from the bonds of matrimony. When a marriage has failed, the spouses are obviously at odds with each other. Unfortunately, a traditional divorce often makes things worse. Clients "lawyer up" and the battle is on. By the time it's over, the war has left two individuals with more animosity than when the process began. Ever see the movie, "The War of the Roses?"

Collaborative law is an alternative. Instead of confrontation, discovery battles and the war of witnesses, the parties each hire a specially trained Collaborative attorney, and participate in group meetings, often with a mental health facilitator and/or a jointly retained financial consultant. These meetings may involve some venting, but consist primarily of agenda setting, brain storming and problem solving. Financial information is freely and fully shared and nothing is hidden. The lynchpin is the Collaborative Divorce Agreement. The crux of this agreement is that the clients and attorneys agree to resolve the divorce by settlement BEFORE filing a divorce complaint in court. If that turns out to be impossible, all agree that the attorneys may not represent the parties in the contested divorce, and the parties must each retain new counsel. If the process is successful, a written settlement agreement is signed by the parties, a divorce complaint is filed, and after the statutory waiting period expires, a pro forma court hearing is held at which the agreement and a proposed judgment is submitted and approved by the family court judge or magistrate.

As I said, each party MUST retain a TRAINED Collaborative attorney. Not a cooperative attorney, but a Collaborative attorney, with a capital "C." And this is where the difficulty begins, particularly in our State of Maine. In the greater Bangor area (meaning anything north of Augusta) there are only six trained Collaborative attorneys. Whichever spouse consults an attorney first, that spouse must seek out one of these six attorneys. Then that spouse must convince the other spouse to retain one of the five remaining attorneys. By the time a couple is on the verge of divorce, it is difficult for one to trust the other to act in their mutual best interest, and paranoia tells the second spouse that if the first spouse is directing him or her to one of only five attorneys, those are the last attorneys the second spouse wants to consider hiring. That's why our loosely associated local Collaborative Divorce Group has been trying to raise public awareness.

So what's the benefit of a Collaborative Divorce? First of all, the parties control the outcome. Studies show that couples who reach a settlement of their divorce come back to court less often and have a better relationship than those who go through a contested divorce. Most importantly, children are left far less scarred by the process, and the family's dirty laundry is not aired in public. It's not a silver bullet, but neither is it a bazooka.