Dr. Judith Gerhart, CFP
Certified Divorce Financial Analyst 
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“Collaborative Divorce” May Increase the Cost of Divorce
September 4, 2008
“Collaborative divorce” is marketed as a cost-saver for clients, but is it really? We all know that settlement is less costly than litigation. The issue is not whether “collaborative divorce” is less expensive than litigation, but whether it permits participants to spend less than they would if they employed more conventional settlement approaches. Most lawyers try informal discovery first and proceed to interrogatories or requests for document production or depositions only where informal attempts have failed or where the information provided is suspect. Most lawyers schedule contested trials only after repeated attempts to arrive at negotiated settlements. Most lawyers genuinely believe that better and more creative settlements can be achieved through negotiation and creative planning rather than through a court-imposed resolution. Virtually no good lawyer chooses litigation as the first and best option.
In a conventional divorce, the lawyer who has worked up the case, who knows the client and the facts, and who understands the interpersonal dynamics of the case, can use this knowledge base to proceed if necessary to a litigated conclusion. In “collaborative divorce,” if negotiations fail the clients have to begin again with new counsel and pay a new lawyer to learn the complexities of the case. If the clients have a relatively simple financial situation, they probably can’t afford to pay twice. If they have a complex situation, the time and expense necessary to duplicate or recreate the financial analysis and valuations will likely be outrageously high. In some cases, clients may save some money, though there is no evidence that “collaborative divorce” is less costly or less time-consuming than any cooperative settlement approach. In other cases, however, overall costs will skyrocket, and the time it takes to complete the process will be significantly extended because of the duplication of effort entailed by substitution of counsel. And while “collaborative divorce” proponents suggest that its practitioners will have fewer uncollected accounts, one may reasonably question whether clients who are forced to change lawyers will fully pay both sets of counsel.
By Linda Roberson
Posted by Judith Gerhart on September 4, 2008 | Permalink | Post a comment
