American law has long treated divorce as a legal issue, pitting one spouse against the other, requiring each of them to find fault with the other to try and gain the upper hand in negotiations or trial. This spouse versus spouse image is magnified in sensational coverage of celebrity divorces and in television and movies.

Here’s what’s wrong with this picture:

While the courtroom model may work well for contract disputes, automobile accidents, medical malpractice, and a host of situations where the opposing parties will never deal with each other again, divorce, especially with children at home or even grown up, usually involves two people who will encounter one another again and again for years to come.

Divorced parents of young children must cooperate around scheduling and financial issues, they will see each other at school and extracurricular events, and they must provide support as the children handle medical and emotional crises.

Parenting doesn’t end simply because the children have left home. Children at college want both parents to share in their achievements and to help them handle their newfound independence. Married children face a host of new challenges that their parents can guide them through.

And then there are the grandchildren. Both parents will want to bask in the unparalleled pleasure of grandparenthood, and the last thing their children need is open conflict in the delivery room, at the baby-naming, or at the birthday parties and other celebrations.

Collaborative Divorce, unlike the traditional divorce model, understands that divorce is not the end of the family. Rather, it is a reshaping and re-imagining of the family that will now exist in two homes instead of one. It understands that lobbing grenades at one another in a courtroom makes post-divorce life unnecessarily more difficult for the divorcing spouses.

To help the couple prepare themselves for life after divorce, the Collaborative Process employs a team of four or more professionals, each of whom has received specialized training, and each of whom has a unique role to play.

In addition to a lawyer for each spouse, the Collaborative team includes a mental health professional and a financial professional who are unaligned with either spouse, and who can help them navigate the unfamiliar and confusing issues they must address to settle their divorce. Where there are children, the team adds a child specialist who can speak directly with the children (and their counselors or therapists) so that the young people with a great stake in the outcome, but with no seat at the table, can have their unique needs addressed in a parenting plan.

The team combines its separate skills into a powerful tool aimed at achieving the best possible post-divorce life for the family. The lawyers engage in a kind of advocacy not seen in the courtroom. Each represents their client’s interests, but without tearing down the other spouse. They help their clients recognize the advantages of a mutually acceptable outcome which, in turn, allows the family to make a quicker and more peaceful transition to their new realities.

Speak to any of the Collaborative Family Law Association professionals to learn more about how the Collaborative team can usher you into a better future.