by Richard Prior
Staff Writer
Getting a divorce is never pleasant.
It doesn’t have to be as harrowing as the trauma Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner churn up in “The War of the Roses.” But a fair amount of psychic and financial bloodletting seems inevitable.
And that’s what collaborative divorce tries to prevent.
“What I try to bring to a client is more of a healthy life experience,” said Rod McIntyre, who practices family law out of his office in the 3100 Building on University Boulevard. “We’re going to be more concerned about your overall life down the road and how to get you there so you’re not embittered.
“There is life after divorce.”
Collaborative divorce was devised 12 years ago by Stuart G. Webb, a Minneapolis matrimonial lawyer fed up with what the adversarial model did to clients. It is reportedly available in 35 states, including Florida.
In many ways, the process resembles mediation, except for the absence of a neutral mediator. Both parties and their lawyers agree at the outset to negotiate an out-of-court settlement. It requires everyone involved “to voluntarily disclose all relevant information, to proceed respectfully and in good faith, and to refrain from any threat of litigation,” according to a pamphlet prepared by First Coast Collaborative Family Law.
If a settlement cannot be reached, both attorneys have to withdraw. They then help the couple find alternative lawyers to take the case to court.
The requirement to withdraw removes the incentive some lawyers may have to prolong the process. And their clients are motivated to reach a settlement because they, understandably, don’t want to start all over.
The advantages are many: lower attorney fees; taking better care of the children’s best interests; eliminating the uncertainty that comes of being in court; reduced willingness to feed anger and resentment; less time devoted to the attitude that, “What’s mine is mine . . . and what’s yours is mine.”
The problem is getting divorcing couples to agree those benefits are worth giving up the drive they may have for revenge.
“Under a best-case scenario, it probably works pretty well,” said McIntyre. “The problem is trying to get two people with the intellectual and maturity level all on the same line.
“You get two people like that, and, quite candidly, you can almost do it without any type of mediation.”
McIntyre already puts a lot of effort into making sure clients have tried everything possible to reconcile before they “go to the dance.”
“I ask them, ‘Are you sure? Have you gone to counseling?’” he said. “I make sure they’ve turned over all the stones.
“Who would want anybody to go through divorce? Not me. I’m a divorce lawyer who doesn’t believe in divorce.”
With his concern that clients come through the experience with no new bruises, McIntyre declines to participate in some time-honored tactics in the adversarial process. Such as responding to “nastygrams.”
“I won’t waste the time,” he said. “Sure, you get irritated when you get a nastygram from the other side. The normal human reaction is, ‘I don’t have to take that.’
“So you respond. And you start another round of letters. At $200 an hour.
“It’s wasted effort, wasted emotion. It’s not only the cost, but imagine the emotional wear and tear. I’m going to come back and say, ‘I want you to be in more of an attitude of forgiveness, moving on. I’m going to try to work smart for you and spend the money where it needs to be.’ ”
The toughest hurdle for collaborative divorce is embedded in the structure of most marriages. Articles about the process point out that it is made more difficult when there’s a “power imbalance” in the relationship — when one side has been making most of the money, for instance, and makes most of the decisions.
And that, quite often, is the way real life is.
The way to handle it, McIntyre said, is to keep the client’s eyes on what is truly important.
“You need to get your client’s head right, get them out of the revenge-seeking, anger-seeking attitude,” said McIntyre. “You need to get them focused on the children, get them focused on what’s best for their life.
“And that’s hard to do.
“But if you can do it, then you can sort of focus on the equitable issues — what’s right for you, what’s right for the children. When that happens, you’re negotiating on the substantive issues, not the emotional issues. There you become very dogged. You dig in.”
Another possible reason why collaborative law hasn’t become more widespread is the requirement that lawyers have to bow out if they can’t reach an out-of-court settlement.
“That’s going to be a very difficult element to get most people to agree to,” said McIntyre. “They’ve gone to a lawyer and bared their souls. The thought of going to another lawyer and baring their souls again, I think, is a huge jump.”
While McIntyre hasn’t adopted the doctrine of collaborative divorce, he stresses many of the same goals — creating a cooperative atmosphere, reducing tension, using time and money wisely.
“It can happen if you get your client on the same page with you, in terms of the right attitudes,” he said. “Some clients will say, ‘He’s not aggressive enough; he’s not mean.’ But if they go around the right kind of people — a pastor or counselor — they’ll say it sounds like I’m on the right track.
“They’ll say this vengeful, resentful, hateful thing is only going to hurt you.”