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Divorce is often one of the most traumatic periods in a person's life. Studies show it is the second-most stressful event in life, after the death of a spouse. Separation and Divorce is often associated with deep grief-based emotions over the loss of the desired-for relationship.
The emotional trauma can be exacerbated when the couples chooses an adversarial approach to the legal divorce, which itself adds additional stresses over and beyond the normal grieving. When in the anger-phase of grief, it can be tempting for a spouse to become adversarial, which can easily make things worse.
Hostile (litigated) divorces, in contrast, are expensive both financially and emotionally, and can tend to poison any future relationship the parents may have, which may be important for future co-parenting.
Non-adversarial methods of dispute resolution, such as mediation and collaborative divorce are less likely to add to the emotional trauma, and are better suited when an ongoing relationship is contemplated, such as for future parenting.
Mediation is a growing way of resolving divorce issues. It tends to be less adversarial, allows the parties greater control and privacy, saves money, and generally achieves similar outcomes to the normal adversarial process. Also, courts will often approve a mediated settlement quickly. Learn more of mediated divorce with the st. louis collaborative divorce.
Similar in concept, but with more support than mediation, is Collaborative Law, where both sides are represented by attorneys but commit to negotiating a settlement without engaging in litigation. Because of the additional support of attorneys and expert neutrals, the success rate of a collaborative divorce is very high. Learn more about collaborative divorce with the st. louis collaborative divorce.
In the rare event that the collaborative divorce process ends without the parties reaching a settlement, the collaborative lawyers become disqualified, and are replaced by new counsel. The reasoning is that the collaborative lawyers' sole interest will be to settle the case; and lawyers who specialize in collaborative divorce will often have additional training and skills to assist parties to settle. Visit the st. louis collaborative divorce for more information about this.
Non-court based dispute resolution approaches such as this may reduce the trauma of divorce for all parties.
Some believe that mediation may not be appropriate for all relationships, especially those that included physical or emotional abuse, or an imbalance of power and knowledge about the parties' finances, for example. For more information about collaborative divorces, then visit the st. louis collaborative divorce for more details.
www.stlouiscollaborativelaw.com
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