As a lawyer, it's my opinion that your car has a torqued-out bindle rotor..
I had a Collaborative file a while back, which, unfortunately, didn't work.
We moved through he parenting and property division like a knife through butter.
Child Support - no problems.
And then we came up against the alimony wall.
We did all the things we're trained to do.. we tried to focus the parties on the common elements of the discussion - avoiding the risk of litigation, understanding the need for both homes to have standards of living which would allow the children a similar experience with both parents.
We reviewed budgets, we discussed future needs.
We discussed how the parties felt about the issue of support and what roadblocks might exist which made it difficult for them to find compromise.
We reviewed BATNA and WATNA.
And, oddly enough, counsel was very close to agreement on those parameters - and the "most likely result" of a litigated outcome.
Husband was agreeable to compromise his position to accommodate the "most likely" outcome.
And, still, we failed to find resolution for our clients.
I reached out to other expert Collaborative counsel for advice - to no avail.
And, as a result, the Husband requested that the Collaborative Process be terminated - and it was - about a year ago.
So what happened? Why did we fail to find a solution to our clients' needs?
Why did we spend thousands of dollars, and still find ourselves without resolution?
At the end of the day, it appeared that there was an emotional aspect to the discussion that we couldn't overcome. The Wife perceived the Husband as abandoning his family for another woman, and Wife perceived that even with a 40% allocation of the parties' income, plus child support, the Husband's lifestyle would still exceed her own, having regard to the income of the Husband's probable future partner.
So. Why am I sharing this "failure" on my part?
Well, if there was a failure on the part of counsel, it was, I think, in not fully understanding the depths of the Wife's emotional strain, and not pressing the parties to counsellors to address that aspect.
To be sure... the process may well have still fallen apart. But I think we made a mistake that I see fellow counsel grapple with quite often - which is allowing their clients to "save money" by not getting counselling where it is necessary to facilitate the process.
I've had this discussion with many other counsel to whom I have recommend the "team approach" of Collaborative Divorce.
The response I am often met with is, "It's difficult enough for my clients to pay me, let alone hiring two more professionals."
My response. The job of a lawyer is like being hired to drive your client from Lethbridge to Medicine Hat, or Calgary, or Edmonton, or Grande Prairie.
It takes a while, the lawyer is hired to help their client navigate the journey through the laws and issues their clients encounter along the way.
We, as lawyers, take on that task, confident of our ability to drive the vehicle, to navigate the course, and to avoid collisions along the way. This is what we do as lawyers - and we charge a significant fee for that effort.
Now.
Imagine that our vehicle has some serious mechanical problems.
We are not trained as a mechanic - we are trained as a driver.
So then...
You could hire a mechanic along the way to examine and fix underlying difficulties with the vehicle, at an hourly rate of about half of what you would charge.
Or. You could just keep driving, but knowing there was a high probability that the vehicle problems were going to get worse. As the vehicle begins to break down - you could "band-aid" solutions, for which you have no training, charging your clients double what the mechanics charge for service which is, well, grossly inadequate to the task.
Which choice appears to be more economical, in the long run?
Speaking from experience in the file referred to above, we tried to use our legal skills to band-aid an emotional problem, and the, ultimately, the collaborative vehicle just died.
This could be you.
Don't be either blinded by the false economy of not hiring proper assistance, or your own false pride in your own ability to "fix a broken car."
Take the benefit of my mistake - and don't make it yours.
