TheCRT.com - The Center for Relationships in Transition

What is Collaborative Practice?

Collaborative Practice, or Collaborative Divorce, is a new way for you to resolve disputes respectfully -- without going to court -- while working with trained professionals who are important to all areas of your life. The heart of Collaborative Divorce (also called “no-court divorce,” “divorce with dignity,” “peaceful divorce”) is to offer you and your spouse or partner the support, protection, and guidance of your own lawyers without going to court. Additionally, Collaborative Divorce allows you the benefit of child and financial specialists, divorce coaches and other professionals all working together on your team.

In Collaborative Practice, core elements form your contractual commitments, which are to:

Negotiate a mutually acceptable settlement without having courts decide issues
Maintain open communication and information sharing
Create shared solutions acknowledging the highest priorities of all.

What can you expect from the mental health professionals on your team?

The Collaborative Coach

The Collaborative Coach is a mental health professional with many years of experience in his or her discipline as well as in child development, working with families going through separation and divorce, and mediation. In a Collaborative divorce it is most likely that your team will include a Coach for both you and your spouse. Below is a brief description of your coach's role:

For you:

Empathy and containment for pain and loss. You need to tell your story and to have it acknowledged, validated, and taken in. Until you feel fundamentally understood, you will not be able to move forward in the process .
Normalization of your emotional experience. Everyone going through a divorce feel overwhelmed by feelings. Some feel ashamed by their own reactions and behaviors. As mental health professionals who have worked with many divorcing people, we are able to speak to the normalcy of feeling abnormal during this period of crisis and still help you to bring your best self to the Collaborative table.
Understanding what went wrong. We work towards helping you to recognize and acknowledge your own contribution to the difficulties you face so that you will be able use the Collaborative process as an opportunity for growth and the development of new modes of relating beyond the divorce. Also, the success of the Collaborative venture itself hinges on you and your spouses' recognition of each others' humanity.
We can help you to identify “hot spots,” areas of particular psychological vulnerability that may cause you to become emotionally flooded and may impede progress. We can help you to strategize ways of managing strong feelings (both in yourself and in your partner) when they arise.
We can teach you effective, non-attacking, non-defensive modes of communication.

We can help you to identify priorities and particular areas of concern. What is most important to you? What are your greatest fears?

For the team:

We can help attorneys to understand your emotional “hot spots,” fears, and concerns.
We can help attorneys to understand when marital dynamics are re-played in the collaborative process in such a way that they create impasse or cause stalling or positional behavior in the process.
When we are included in meetings with attorneys we can make real time interventions to identify unconscious or un-named psychological blocks to the process.
Our ability to closely track process (both on and below the surface of the dialogue) allows us to facilitate focused and efficient pacing of meetings.

For the Parenting Plan:

We can work with you independently from the entire team, thus saving time and money.
We offer extensive expertise in child development and the psychological aspects of divorce on family members.
Our experience in developing parenting plans allows us to facilitate option development, anticipate potential difficulties associated with various options, help you to imagine both the near and far futures, and manage intense emotions so that you can remain able to think creatively in considering new and evolving options.
Our therapeutic backgrounds allow us to help you grapple with the challenges presented when you and your spouse are at different levels of acceptance of/feeling about the divorce, and gives us the necessary tools to help yours craft a “shared narrative” about your divorce for your children (as well as for extended family and friends).

The Child Specialist

This is one of the most unique and special components of the Collaborative Process. The child specialist is typically a child therapist with extensive experience in separation and divorce. His or her role is to gather information about your child/children's emotional state and experience, and to bring your child/children's voice into the Collaborative process. The child specialist is not an advocate or custody evaluator, he or she will not be making specific recommendations. Rather, he or she is a truly neutral member of the team. He or she is likely to meet with both you and your spouse, as well as your child/children, and offer observations about your family dynamics that can be helpful to you and your coaches in the development of your parenting plan. The question of how and whether to bring a child specialist onto your team is best discussed with your coaches and/or attorneys.

For more information about Collaborative Practice, visit the website of the International Academy of Collaborative Practice at www.collaborativepractice.com

For more information about the offerings of Collaborative Practice Training Institute (of which I am on the faculty), visit www.collaborativepracticetraining.com