What Are Durable Divorce Solutions?

Merriam-Webster defines durable as follows, able to exist for a long time without significant deterioration in quality or value.

The longevity or durability of the solution that you are searching for is not always your first priority when you are in the throes of a divorce.

This is understandable. Divorce brings with it many difficult emotional, financial, family and legal questions. Stopping to consider what your best options are is the exception rather than the norm.

Next, after you identify what your divorce options are, you should also consider, how will each of these options and proposed solutions look for me and my family 5, 10 or 15 years down the road?

Durable Divorce Solutions:

Court Litigation – this divorce option provides you with an adversarial process option that appoints a circuit court judge as the person that will decide all of the issues in your divorce. In my experience, the solutions that a judge mandates upon you and your family are not durable. These solutions are slightly better than no decision at all, but much worse than what you and your spouse can achieve if you work with trained collaborative divorce professionals to guide you through your divorce.
Divorce Mediation – this option is often times much more durable than Court Litigation because you and your spouse are the decision makers in your divorce mediation process. You and your spouse agree upon a trained divorce mediator to sit down with you in person or by zoom to discuss all of the issues in your divorce, and to help you work toward a compromise that you both can live with for each of the important issues in your divorce. The drawbacks of mediation can be that you don’t know what you don’t know. A trained family law mediator will provide you with great value regarding potential options and solutions to resolve those matters that you know you need to address. However, the mediator cannot provide you or your spouse with any legal advice that will help you to identify other important issues that need to be resolved to assure that you and your spouse are not left with lingering problems and questions long after your divorce is finalized.
Collaborative Divorce – this option is the gold standard in helping you to achieve durable divorce solutions. Collaborative divorce provides you and your spouse with the benefit of having experienced divorce attorneys working with you to identify all of the issues in your divorce that must be addressed to assure that you leave nothing to chance. You will not be faced with business interests, deeds, retirements accounts, or liabilities that were ignored in your divorce, and then must be re-negotiated with your spouse years after you have divorced and started your own financial life. Additionally, in the collaborative divorce process you will maintain control of your divorce. You won’t be subject to the mandates of a judge. You won’t be forced to wait months and months for court dates. You won’t be forced to share your most personal financial information and statements with the court. You won’t be subject to subpoenas and depositions and adversarial court hearings that can cause lifelong damage to your family.
Team of Collaborative Divorce Professionals – The out of court professionals that help you in your collaborative divorce process to provide you and your family with peaceful and durable solutions include: collaboratively trained mental health professionals, financial neutrals, and family law attorneys.