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When couples who have children seek a divorce, often their greatest concern is how the process will impact their children. It is widely accepted that divorce is stressful for children and can cause long-term emotional damage, especially when it isn’t dealt with properly. It is absolutely essential that parents help their children feel safe, secure, and loved during and after a divorce. 

At VKBAR, we highly recommend working with a child specialist during a divorce. Child specialists fit naturally into the collaborative divorce process, but can be useful during a traditional divorce as well. The child specialist’s role in a divorce can typically be broken down into a few stages. Read on to learn about each one and how it benefits you and your children.

Meeting with Parents

When the child specialist meets with the parents, jointly, they have the opportunity to voice their concerns about the impact of their divorce on their children. The child specialist will obtain pertinent information about the child’s background and developmental history. If this meeting occurs before the parents have told the children that they are getting a divorce, the child specialist can help them prepare for that difficult conversation. There may be multiple meetings between the parents and the child specialist to ensure that they get all the information they need about helping their children throughout the process. 

Meeting with Children

Typically the child specialist will have one or two meetings with the child or children. If the divorcing couple has multiple children, the sessions may be held together or separately depending on what the specialist deems appropriate. Whether the sessions are more structured or play-based depends on the child’s age. The child specialist is a safe, neutral party who can answer the child’s questions about the divorce, work through issues with them, and help them feel better equipped to face the changes in their family.

Creating a Developmentally Responsive Parenting Plan

After these meetings, the child specialist will help the parents create a fair parenting plan. They aim to create a plan that provides the child with the support and comfort they need. It should be a plan that is functional and will last for years to come, but the child specialist also acknowledges that the plan will likely have to change as the child gets older. He or she helps the parents anticipate how they will let their plan evolve over time.

Ongoing Consultations

As the divorced couple begins to co-parent, most child specialists offer ongoing support to help with changing the parenting plan, minimizing stress on children, and more, as needed.

Where can I learn more about collaborative divorce?

If you are interested in learning more about the collaborative divorce process, VKBAR, PLLC is here to help. To discuss your options, give Irwin Kuhn a call at (615) 321-5659.

More and more people who come to our office after deciding their marriage has reached its end want to avoid the additional financial and emotional cost of a traditional divorce. There are good options.  If you’ve learned about collaborative divorce and think it might be a good approach for you and your soon-to-be-ex, make sure you approach them in a way that allows them to really appreciate the things that make collaborative divorce different. An initial consultation will include suggestions on how to talk to your spouse about a collaborative divorce. 

Do your research.

Become as knowledgeable as possible about what you are proposing before you bring it up. If your spouse is completely new to the idea of a collaborative divorce, he or she will likely have many questions. We will provide you with resources to help you talk to your husband or wife. Our website has lots of information about the collaborative process; it is ok to let your spouse see it!

Schedule an Information Session.  

A collaborative lawyer does not represent both sides and can’t give legal advice to a party who may be on the other side of a case. We can, however, give both sides information about various approaches to divorce, including collaborative, without giving legal advice or hearing confidential information. Feel free to schedule a joint informational session with your spouse, if that would be helpful.

Let Us Invite Your Spouse to Collaborate.

Some clients think it is helpful if we send a letter or email to their spouse to explain what the collaborative approach is and how it might be helpful in their situation. Let us know if that would be a good idea in your case. 

Explain the financial advantages.

Courts and litigation proceedings are expensive. Make sure your spouse clearly understands that a collaborative divorce can save you both time and money.

Tell your spouse what attracts you to collaborative divorce.

Is it the chance that it gives you an opportunity to talk things out in a comfortable, respectful environment? Is it because you want a more efficient problem-solving approach to your divorce? Are you looking for a process that addresses the unique needs and interests of your family? Do you want to avoid a process that makes it harder to co-parent after the divorce? Is it because it protects your privacy and you want to stay out of court? Let your spouse know what appeals to you, personally, about choosing collaborative divorce over traditional divorce and why it might work best for them.

Listen to their thoughts and opinions. Understand that you have to both agree to it in order for it to happen.

A collaborative divorce can’t work if both sides aren’t willing to collaborate. Understand that no matter how badly you want to divorce this way, it can only happen if your spouse agrees. We will help you think about how to talk to your husband or wife. 

For more information about collaborative divorce or to get started, call our offices at (615) 321-5659. Attorney Irwin Kuhn has extensive experience with collaborative divorce and is eager to work with you.

The process of collaborative divorce helps couples find creative solutions to the problems they face as they divide their assets and make plans for their lives apart from one another. There are many financial challenges that come along with a divorce and each case is different. The couple must navigate taxes, family support, and fairly dividing the value of real estate and business interests. Emotions can run high when it comes to these very important matters, which is why collaborative divorce relies on the help of a neutral financial professional, who helps in a variety of ways. As the name implies, the financial neutral works for both parties in the divorce process and agrees to work for neither party after the divorce.

The financial neutral is often the key to making the collaborative process efficient. Since one skilled professional gathers all the relevant financial information from both sides, cleints do have to pay two legal teams to do the same thing. 

Educating the clients: Sometimes in a marriage, one party is far more involved in financial management and planning than the other. Sometimes neither party has a solid understanding of their financial position. In these cases, the financial professional educated them so that both parties have a clear, honest understanding of where they stand financially.

Budget development: The financial professional helps the divorcing parties develop reasonable budgets for their lives outside the marriage.

Guiding the couple in discussing their settlement options: Before the couple can reach an agreement, they need to know what their options are. The financial professional helps guide these discussions, providing insightful analysis of each possibility, including the ways they would be taxed.

Financial reports: The financial professional creates financial reports for the divorcing couple and the lawyers. These can serve as the clients’ declarations of disclosure, which is a document required by courts.

Business Valuations: Often it is important to place a value on a family’s business interest. Collaborative financial neutrals are available to collaborative teams to offer such services. 

In most collaborative divorces, the role of neutral financial professional is played by a Certified Financial Planner (CFP) or a Certified Public Accountant (CPA) or Certified Appraisers. They must have no loyalty to either party so that they can guide the couple in a completely neutral, fair manner.

If you and your spouse are ready to work together to find a win-win solution for the end of your marriage, collaborative divorce may be right for you. At Venick, Kuhn, Byassee, Austin, & Rosen, PLLC, we work with clients to efficiently end their marriages, in the least acrimonious way possible. In fact, Attorney Irwin Kuhn was among the first collaboratively trained family law attorneys in Tennessee. If you are interested in working through your family law matter with our Nashville team, give us a call at (615) 321-5659. 

When a marriage ends, anger and hurt is a natural response. No matter who’s to blame or what factors contributed to the divorce, it’s normal to lash out—but this is one situation where you should take a deep breath, take a step back from the situation, and think about what really matters to you. For many divorcing couples, a collaborative divorce is much more peaceful and respectful than a traditionally litigated divorce. Read on to learn how.

1. Maintains Decision-Making Power

When you and your spouse choose to collaborate, you decide to treat your divorce more like a business deal than a battle to be won. You and your spouse decide what give and take makes the most sense for the two of you. If you go through the litigation process and end up in trial, the judge decides how you’ll divide property, how parenting time will be split, and which financial obligations each party absorbs. When you choose to resolve things through the collaborative process, you and your spouse maintain control. Your collaborative lawyers will guide you to make sure your agreements meets the requirements of the law.

2. Lays the Groundwork for a Healthy Co-Parenting Relationship

Life goes on after divorce, and the hurtful decisions made in the heat of litigation can damage your co-parenting relationship for years. If you and your ex-partner have children together, you owe it to them to get along as much as possible. Setting aside your hurt feelings and deciding to work together during divorce can help you learn to work together as co-parents.

3. Minimizes Animosity

The focus of the traditional divorce process is the day of trial. Lawyers want to be prepared for the court battle, even if the vast majority of cases never reach that point. That usually means getting ready to make the other side look as bad as possible. That is a process with a great chance of permanently damaging the relationship between people who, no matter what, will be a part of each other’s lives until death do they part. Going to court is off the table in the collaborative process so the focus is on finding solutions that work best for both parties. The level of animosity and future stress declines when both parties are treated with dignity and respect.

4. Protects Your Privacy

If privacy is a top concern for you, collaborative divorce is a good choice. Business people, professional athletes, entertainers, other with high profiles, and just ordinary couples who value their privacy have chosen the collaborative route to keep their private business out of the public spotlight. In a collaborative case, the only documents in the public file are the bare minimum required by law, a divorce request on no-fault grounds, routine notices, and the divorce agreement made by the parties.

5. Can Reduce Expenses

Perhaps one of the main benefits of a collaborative divorce is the fact that it is efficient and because of that is often much less expensive than lengthy litigation. When a divorce case moves toward trial, pretrial motions, lengthy written discovery, document production, and depositions coupled with lots of back and forth between layers can draw out the case and add thousands to your legal bill. In a collaborative case, the parties often together hire a neutral financial expert to gather all the essential information needed to help them and their attorneys make decisions about dividing their assets and liabilities. Both parties are expected by court rule to make “full, candid, and informal disclosure of information without formal discovery” That information is put together for both parties by the financial neutral rather than two teams of lawyers and paralegals in separate offices. It saves lots of time and money in that way.

Divorce is never easy, but the right legal support can make it as stress-free as possible. If you’re ready to explore your options, call Irwin Kuhn of Venick, Kuhn, Byassee, Austin & Rosen, PLLC and set up a consultation. We’ll help you compare your options and prepare you for a smooth transition to your post-divorce life.

A very wealthy Dallas couple decided on the collaborative approach to divorce after they spent $7.4 million in litigation. The litigation attorney called it a marathon case. The collaborative attorney suggested it should have been a 5K. Here is the story from D Magazine September 2012.

DVKB Family Lawyer Irwin Kuhn and Nashville attorney Marlene Moses wrote this article outlining the steps of a hypothetical collaborative divorce. Collaborative divorce problem solving settlement approach to divorce. The article was originally published in the Nashville Bar Journal.

Download Article

Kevin Fuller, a top Texas divorce lawyer, discusses why collaborative divorce makes sense for people trying to preserve family businesses. Among the reasons:

• Negotiations are conducted in a private arena.
• Legal fees are used more efficiently.
• Settlement discussions can be scheduled to fit business needs rather than the court’s calendar.
• The collaborative process is less disruptive for the business’ staff.
• Results are often quicker.

Kevin’s full article is here: http://www.koonsfuller.com/dividing-the-family-business-without-destroying-it

Irwin Kuhn and Dot Dobbins are divorce and family lawyers who practice collaboratively at Dobbins Venick Kuhn & Byassee, PLLC.

Irwin Kuhn recently authored an article in the Nashville Tennessean concerning the divorce of former Senator Bill Frist and his wife Karyn. The Frist chose the collaborative divorce approach. Irwin Kuhn is a collaborative divorce lawyer in Nashville and commented on that choice.

Frists Work to Make Divorce Less Painful

(Originally published by The Nashville Bar Journal, December 2011-January 2012)

The stage for a workable post marriage relationship between two people whose lives will always connected through children or family or friends is not set well by a divorce complaint dramatically setting out the gory details of one party’s “inappropriate marital conduct” followed by interrogatories requiring each side to commit to writing “with specificity” all complaints they have about the other and to list “with specificity” all acts of misconduct, and to “identify each witness thereto”. But this is often how the divorce process begins. And, then there is “Have you had any intimate physical contact, including …” Come let us reason together?

As have many celebrities and high profile business executives and politicians, the comedian Robin Williams and his Marsha chose an alternative path to a traditionally litigated divorce, collaborative divorce. Said Williams, “I’m lucky, you know, with someone like Marsha, we have amazing kids and it’s not a slash and burn. But the idea that it’s going with love, I think, is important. And for me it’s been… a good thing.”

The collaborative path to divorce is being chosen nationally and now in Tennessee, not only by people with high profiles concerned about personal privacy. Those who chose collaborative divorce do so to preserve civil relationship with someone they once loved and may well have to continue working with in the future as parents. For some there is little hope or need for a future relationship but they want to end their marriage without the added stress of litigation.

FACING THE STRESS

Divorce and separation are the most stressful life events for American adults trailing only the death of a child or spouse. For children, elevated levels of discord during divorce increase the chances of psychological problems such as depression, anxiety, aggression and other disorders. In the worst cases, where one parent in the process alienates their children from the other parent, studies show that when those children become adults 70% suffer depression, 35% battle chemical dependency, and are frequently estranged from their own children.

Traditional litigation based divorce cannot be blamed for problems that may have their genesis well before the divorce process began. But, tales of the divorce process making a bad situation worse are familiar. Too often aggressive tactics designed to present parties in their worst light to gain a larger share of the pie and battles over children create lasting fissures.

COLLABORATIVE FAMILY LAW IS …

Collaborative family law is the newest tool in the alternative dispute resolution toolbox. Collaborative traces its roots to Minnesota in the 1980s. But, it began to take off in the first years of the new millennium. The International Academy of Collaborative Professionals (IACP), the ABA of the collaborative world, had just 200 members in 2001. Last year it topped 4000.

North Carolina attorneys led the first collaborative training held at Vanderbilt Law School in Tennessee in the summer of 2009. Additional training was offered in 2010 and again last September.

The Middle Tennessee Collaborative Alliance (MTCA) was formed by a group of lawyers, mental health professionals, and financial planners interested in a divorce process more likely to preserve relationships.

The collaborative process begins when husband and wife hire lawyers who enter into a participation agreement with them and each other that they will work to help the clients reach a negotiated settlement. They will not go to court with them except to file a complaint on the grounds of irreconcilable differences, and then to have the judge enter a final decree.

COLLABORATIVE IS NOT …

The agreement to not go to court with clients is the essence of the collaborative process. If the attorneys do not make such a commitment, it is not a collaborative case.

The agreement to forego court puts a premium on settlement for clients who will have to spend more money and more time if they must hire litigation counsel. The collaborative divorce attorney is transformed from litigator to transactional lawyer. The measure of success is reaching a negotiated settlement that endures the test of time. There is no financial or other incentive to let a court decide the outcome of a case.

GOALS V. POSITIONS

The emphasis on a negotiated settlement encourages clients to pursue their goals and interests rather than their positions.

Dad may demand “50-50” parenting time, or “joint custody”. Mom may insist on “standard parenting time.” Those are positions.

In collaborative negotiations, the focus is on the “why” behind the position. Dad needs to know he will have an important, active role in his children’s lives. Mom is concerned about the amount of time the kids will spend with caregivers in the 50-50 model since Dad works long hours as a busy professional. Creating a parenting plan that addresses those needs and concerns is possible without excluding any. The result is a win-win for Mom and Dad, and a win for the children.

DISCOVERY

Discovery? Of course there is, but form interrogatories and requests for production focusing on past defalcations are jettisoned. The parties from the start make a commitment to what the MTCA calls in its participation agreement “full and honest disclosure of all information pertinent to the resolution of [the] case.” This is hardly a radical idea. Judge Philip Smith, who handles the bulk of Nashville’s family law cases, states in his chamber rules, “[i]nformal discovery will save the parties significant cost in attorney fees and may result in less adversarial attitudes toward one another rendering settlement more achievable.”

Will clients be forthcoming? Experienced attorneys have a practiced ability to tell not only if their own client is withholding information but also whether the other side is providing what they should. The collaborative agreement instructs the attorney to withdraw rather than allow a client to act in bad faith.

USE OF OTHER PROFESSIONALS

Collaborative practice is also a major change from traditional family practice in the way other professionals are used. Rather than hire battling experts, such as financial planners and child specialists, parties look to neutral authorities trained in the collaborative process who work by agreement that they will never be called on to testify in court for one side or the other. They also agree they will not represent either party following the divorce.

Since it is usual in collaborative practice for the parties to meet together, with counsel, to identify goals and negotiate settlement, the possibility for highly charged emotions is distinct. It is not uncommon for parties to bring in a neutral to help control the discussion. These neutrals, called coaches , usually have expertise in mental health and relationships. Their role is not to provide counseling, but to use their training to keep difficult conversations civil and focused on goals. Attorneys find that skilled coaches help them understand the subtextual or unspoken goals of parties in a way that profoundly helps them develop settlement options.

The use of coaches varies from jurisdiction to jurisdiction. In some, it is common to use two coaches, one for each party. In others, a single coach facilitates discussion in a manner similar to a mediator in other cases. In still other jurisdictions, coaches are rarely involved.
MEDIATION V. COLLABORATIVE

As effective as mediation is in many cases, too often conciliation efforts come after damage has been done. Many lawyers refuse to go to mediation with clients until completion of discovery that is often meaningless, frequently burdensome, and usually expensive. As well, parties learn little about working together when, as is the common but anomalistic practice in Nashville, parties are separated from the beginning of mediation until the end.

COST

Naturally, the question of expense arises. Multiple meetings with both lawyer; add in mental health professionals, financial experts, and child specialists. It certainly sounds expensive and the perception that collaborative is only for the wealthy persists. But, seasoned collaborative lawyers disagree.

Kevin Fuller addressed the issue. Fuller is a Dallas, Texas, matrimonial lawyer listed in Best Lawyers in America, Top 100 Lawyers in Texas, and chair of the Texas Bar’s collaborative section. Since 2007, Fuller says he has done 56 collaborative cases and three he describes as “go-get-‘em” cases. He calculated that the fees from the three “go-get-‘em” cases exceed the fees in all 56 collaborative cases. So much for the expense fear.

Why were Fuller’s collaborative fees lower despite the meetings and the experts? Paying counsel to propound and answer discovery requests and then spend time in court over the sufficiency of such responses and for other motions is no bargain. Oh yes, and, then one might toss in a motion to have a psychological exam to determine just how crazy their spouse was for being married to them all this time.

On the other hand, collaborative protocols are designed to make meetings efficient and the goal of all is to achieve settlement. Put another way, the cost of war is usually more than the cost of diplomacy.

CONCLUSION

One colleague when first presented with the term “collaborative divorce” joked that it was an oxymoron. Is it pie in the sky? In the late 90‘s when mediation was new in this area, the common refrain was that if couples could mediate their differences they would not be getting divorced. Now, mediation is required by statute in most case involving children or before a case goes to trial.

Certainly collaborative methods of marital transition and post-divorce dispute resolution emphasizing clients working together to craft their own agreements are far less likely to promote alienation, distrust, and bitterness through traditional litigation and more likely to be durable and workable. Privacy is protected. Business disruption is minimized. Collaborative divorce is the next phase.

     Many Tennessee courts and attorneys by reflex insert parenting plan provisions prohibiting residential parents from allowing overnight visitation by “paramours” or “members of the opposite sex to whom they are not married”.

    The Court of Appeals for the western section of Tennessee recently struck down a local rule in Gibson County requiring similar language in all permanent parenting plans. Barker v. Chandler (September 18, 2009) was widely publicized because it struck application of the mandatory language to a mother and her same sex partner who are not allowed by Tennessee law to marry.

     The decision has wider implications for all parents who may be cohabitating or involved in other relationships without the benefit of marriage. The court noted that Tennessee statutes and court opinions require “that trial judges make decisions regarding residential parenting of children ‘upon the basis of the best interest of the child’”

     Trial courts in Tennessee following the western section’s opinion will almost certainly be allowed to consider a parent’s relationships and living arrangements, but those factors will have to be balanced with all others presented to the court when making parenting decisions in the best interests of the child.