Gentler Approach to Difficult Issues
Celebrity war stories regularly show up in the nightly news and gossip shows as the latest Hollywood power couples break up and begin the battle for assets and custody in the public eye. For weeks or months, the newspapers and magazines lining the grocery store checkout aisles will treat readers to the latest updates as famous couples dissolve their relationships.
Often, the couple’s lives, skirmishes, and the resulting deals are published for all the world to see. Separations like these can make it easy to believe all divorces are overwhelmingly difficult, and will always end in blood, sweat, and tears.
However, the path to marital dissolution no longer needs to include adversarial legal teams and strategic battles. Although the traditional process still exists and may be the proper approach for some couples, other solutions have become popular ways to bring a peaceful end to a couple’s failing marriage.
Divorcing couples today have more options than ever before. Gentler solutions, such as Collaborative Divorce, mediation, and arbitration provide alternatives meant to put families first and preserve a couple’s relationships with each other and with their children.
More peaceful solutions such as these help couples find common ground, placing decisions on the table for discussion, instead of for debate. Couples seek out common sense solutions to financial issues, child custody schedules and the division of assets.
By participating in the formal Collaborative Divorce process, couples contractually agree to enlist the aid of a specially-trained team consisting of legal, mental health, and financial professionals, who help guide and support the couple throughout the process.
Instead of victories and failures, each decision leads to an outcome that tends to favor both parties’ interests and needs, while also heavily focusing on the children’s best interests. The Collaborative Divorce process attempts to preserve relationships between spouses by helping to remove the adversarial nature of a more traditional divorce. Whether a couple resides in Hollywood or Grand Rapids, they have more, and often better options for divorce than ever before. Discuss the available options with an experienced attorney to find the solution that best fits your needs before deciding on a traditional divorce process. In West Michigan, please contact the experienced attorneys at Johnsen Wikander and let us help you through your most difficult time.
