Neighborhood Attorneys, LLC offers collaborative law solutions that may fit your goals.
The goals of an attorney who utilize collaborative law include:
· meet the highest prioritized needs of each client · protect and safeguard the children’s well being and security · maintain (or, if necessary repair or create) a working relationship between the clients · be practical enough for the clients to be able to live with and carry through · be informed enough by the legal backdrop to withstand judicial scrutiny · do no harm
Vision of Collaborative Law: Each family will have the support it needs to make healthy and rational choices to maximize the long term financial, emotional, and legal health of the individuals and the reorganized family.
Mechanics of Collaborative Law: Each person retains his or her own trained collaborative lawyer to advise and assist in negotiating an agreement on all issues.
All negotiations take place in a “four way” settlement meetings that both clients and both lawyers attend.
The lawyers cannot go to court or threaten to go to court. Settlement is the only agenda.
If either client goes to court, both collaborative lawyers are disqualified from further participation.
Each client has built-in legal advice and advocacy during negotiations, and each lawyer’s job includes guiding the client toward reasonable resolutions.
The legal advice is an integral part of the process, but all the decisions are made by the clients.
The lawyers generally prepare and process all papers required for the divorce.
Characteristics of Collaborative Law:
· constructive not destructive · peacemaking – parties share in the control of the future · transparentcy and informed decision making · discuss needs and resources instead of wants and entitlements
