I I mean collaborative is a world view

but it is also a different way of

proceeding in divorce and in Colorado as

in Texas and in other states uh it’s

embodied in our statute so in a

collaborative divorce you have two

parties who are willing to undertake

their divorce come to all their

agreements before anything is filed to

the court it requires two

collaboratively trained attorneys and

parties who sign an agreement that says

they will share all information

collaboratively and they will work with

joint experts and that they will meet

together in a series of meetings where

they will address the issues in their

divorce usually the meetings being

broken out into things like what are we

going to do with the children what are

we going to do with the house how are we

going to Value the business how are we

going to allocate the assets how are we

going to allocate the debts so parties

sign an agreement called a collaborative

agreement ahead of time and they agree

that they’re going to proceed with this

process and settle their case and then

file everything with the court it takes

takes the pressure off the parties of

being on the litigation path it has a

tendency to decrease conflict because we

provide support for the parties within

the context of collaborative divorce to

deal with emotional issues as they arise

and it has the benefit of ensuring that

hopefully people will be able to

co-parent together in the future because

they haven’t sort of undertaken this

high conflict litigation path that can

really disrupt families

difficulties with the collaborative

process I think are that if you sign on

to the collaborative agreement you’re

agreeing that if one of you decides you

can’t finish the collaborative divorce

and you’re just going to go ahead and

file the case

then the case automatically drops out of

collaborative and both collaborative

attorneys have to be fired and the

parties will hire at that point new

litigation Council to move their case

forward in addition any joint experts

that were hired during the collaborative

process uh also have to be fired unless

both parties agree that they can use

that work product

this is I think tough for people to

comprehend but it does help keep people

in the collaborative process because

nobody wants to start their divorce over

pay new attorneys to get up to speed so

it makes it feel like everybody has some

skin in the game and it has a tendency

to ensure that everybody pushes to get

the collaborative divorce done it also

ensures that you don’t have counsel in

the collaborative process who are really

strategizing and creating their

litigation case during the collaborative

process it’s a very very helpful way to

run a divorce for certain people some

people have extremely complex issues

that judges aren’t going to have the

time on their docket to be able to

address some people really have a focus

on ensuring that they can maintain a

good relationship going forward and the

team is really focused on ensuring that

that is the case so there are times when

collaborative divorce is really the best

resolution because litigation can spin

out of control and it can damage people