Collaborative Family Law - It’s not about percentages

When your relationship breaks down, dividing assets doesn't have to be about percentages. You can have a 'legal' asset division and still focus on what you each need and want for the future.

How?

Collaborative Family Law gives separating couples a chance to talk through the difficult issues of separation in a respectful and supported way. Your lawyers work with you and with each other to help you both achieve your best possible outcome.

You can talk through whatever matters to you. After all, this is your settlement. This is your life. You should decide what it looks like.

The end of a relationship is emotional, sad, stressful, and difficult. There is no minimising the turmoil. For a while, you will feel lost and adrift. In fact, separation is for many people the most difficult and intense grief to be experienced in your lifetime. This is normal. It will pass.

And yet, while experiencing this deep grief you are also supposed to be making decisions about your future, your finances, and your children. This is where working Collaboratively with your ex-partner and a team of professionals can be the difference between increasing that stress or helping to heal.

How you embark on post-separation life, can set the tone for the future.

How you embark on post-separation life, can set the tone for the future. Your future and your children's future. If you want this to be civil and amicable then that is how to start. Collaborative Law is all about what matters to you now, in 12 months, in three years, and beyond. It is about helping you to solve current problems and future ones too.

So how does Collaborative Family Law work?

Unlike traditional adversarial family law, Collaborative Family Law is lawyer-assisted, not lawyer-driven. You are the driver of the Collaborative Law process and the lawyers offer support and advice. You decide what you need, who you need to help you, and how it is going to happen. The Lawyers help you work through the issues by identifying what these are, helping you to create lots of options to solve the issues, doing a bit of a pro and cons analysis with you to land with solutions that tie in with your goals.

Back to percentages.

Percentages do not create options, they create disharmony. A win-lose mentality. In the Collaborative Family Law process, we bring in a wealth advisor to help you, the financial neutral. After all, lawyers are legal experts, not financial experts.

Percentages do not create options, they create disharmony. A win-lose mentality.

The role of the financial neutral is to help both of you identify your assets and liabilities and provide financial modeling to project how to divide your finances to achieve your best scenario and desired outcomes.

Financial modeling is making financial projections so that you can see the long-term effects of all the financial alternatives open to you. This lets you make informed decisions about the division of property in a future-focused way.

The cost?

It’s a no-brainer. Having your professional team working with you and your ex-partner is always going to cost less than the alternative.