When you are learning how to get a divorce, it may feel as though the only options are adversarial and costly, both financially and in terms of time and energy. It doesn’t have to be that way, though.
Collaborative Practice Kansas City, LLC is a greater Kansas City community of independent legal, mental health, and financial professionals working in concert to create client-centered processes for helping individuals and families transition through divorce. Our vision is to transform the way divorce is resolved to make the usually difficult process less stressful, less drawn-out, less expensive, more respectful, more transparent, and more engaging.
The Collaborative Approach
A contested divorce, the traditional divorce process also known as litigation divorce, is often laden with bad feelings that make a mutually beneficial resolution difficult, if not impossible. Both parties communicate almost exclusively through attorneys and bargain from their own often conflicting positions. It is a stressful process that typically breeds and reinforces feelings of anger, insecurity, and animosity.
We want to help divorce in the greater Kansas City area evolve from that old-fashioned process that is so frequently destructive into a creative process. We do this by showing clients how to get a divorce using the collaborative divorce model. The collaborative divorce dispute-resolution process is based on a pledge in which you, your spouse, and your attorneys contractually agree that the attorneys will not go to court, except to finalize the divorce.
How To Get A Divorce That Is Less Costly
The collaborative process has the advantage of much more predictable and often significantly lower costs than contested divorce. Both spouses still have their own lawyers working on their behalf, but collaborative divorce involves a team consisting of collaboratively trained attorneys, a financial advisor, and a divorce coach. This eliminates duplicate expenses, rather than each party hiring individual professionals as needed.
Divorce is a very emotional event. Naturally, those emotions sometimes show up in the process. Your collaborative divorce team can help spouses manage those emotions and keep the meeting discussions respectful. When respect is given and received, discussions are likely to be more productive and an agreement reached more easily, limiting financial costs as well as stress and time.
When you are deciding how to get a divorce, Collaborative Practice Kansas City, LLC is here to help. For more information about collaborative divorce and to learn if it’s right for you and your family, contact a Collaborative Practice team member at 913-380-2560 or click here.